Root:

Let’s Remember Our Roots. The Root: MOVE YOUR AUDIENCE! Stop with the mindless droning on about what prop your holding and what you’re going to do with it, and where you’re gonna stick it. I’ll tell you where to stick it! Your audience members are not morons. You don’t need to say, “I have here a deck of cards.” Are you serious!?

Branch:

Let’s Build Our Branches. Your Challenge: MOVE YOUR AUDIENCE! For the next 30 days, I want you to take one effect in your current repertoire, and stop . . . and think . . . Think about what you’re saying, when you’re saying it, why you’re saying it. Make sure that your words have meaning and aren’t simply stating the obvious. As many of you may know, this is the final issue of Stone Cold Magic Magazine. So I thought I’d go out with a bang. I may ruffle some feathers, but this subject is near and dear to my heart. Why can’t our magic be moving and beautiful and emotional and meaningful? The answer is: it can!
This is why I wrote 793.8. My mission for that book is to solve this problem: too much of magic has no meaning. I’m not even opposed to “adventures of the props” as a way to present. What I’m opposing is a flurry of narration of every move and every breath you take. I’m opposing statements that are so obvious that by making them, you’re calling your audience members idiots/fools/etc.
What’s the point of saying, “I have here a pen. Take this pen and sign this card.” Why!? How ’bout saying something like: “Would you mind signing your name on the card” as you simply hand them the pen. Find these problems in your presentation and eliminate them.

Now go study the classics and go discover your true magical self.

Auto Responders

An auto responder is an email that’s set up ready to go for any new subscriber. You can schedule it to go out X number of days after they sign up, or immediately after they sign up. Further, you can schedule multiple auto responders to go out in relation with each other. In other words, if someone signs up, they get an email at day 0, then day 3, then day 4, then day 9, etc. You can set them up to be whatever you want.

One huge advantage of this is that you can have pre-set emails that go out to your new subscribers at regular intervals so that they are receiving constant contact from you on a regular basis without any effort on your part.

Your first email can simply be a “welcome” email. Then two weeks later have one set that gives them info about your site and the type of gigs you do. Two weeks after that, have one scheduled that contains a coupon for X dollars off of a show.

With a little forethought, you can easily have an scheduled to go out every 2 weeks or so for several months. The idea is to keep top of mind awareness of you and your brand.

List Management

In my case, I have several lists. One for Magic Reviewed, one for Stone Cold Magic, Stone Cold Magic Magazine, and many more. You can have one for potential clients, etc. Of course with each list, you can send out special announcements, emails, etc. any time you want.

Broadcasts

While the auto responder is a sent out based on when the subscriber signed up, the email broadcasts can be done to your list any time you want. For example, Though it’s February right now, that’s no reason you can’t write up a holiday season email and schedule it to go out in October/November. If you’re going to be doing a public show, next week, send out an email today to let your subscribers know what’s going on.

You can email them any time you like.

Templates and Sign up Forms

AWeber has a huge list of email templates that you can use. However, if you’re comfortable with HTML, you can make an email look however you’d like. Just build the page in HTML and dump it into the email editor . . . easy peasy. Further, you have a subscription form creator that is super simple to use. Just click on a few things, and you’re done. AWeber then spits out the embed code for you to place on your web site.

Free AWeber PDF

I’m an affiliate of AWeber because I believe in them and have had unbelievably awesome experience with them. I used to be a big Constant Contact fan, but their auto responder system is terrible, and their email template system is a pain. I’m now officially a die-hard AWeber fan, so I became an affiliate. In other words, if you decide to sign up, I get a small royalty from AWeber.

To sweeten the deal, here’s a free PDF from AWeber that gives you a good run down on what it can do for you.

Until Next Month . . .

Monkeyin’ Around with Survey Monkey

So you’ve had a few gigs . . . you even, maybe, had a few re-bookings. Good for you. That’s always a great feeling. But you can’t help but wonder; wonder, why? Why did they hire you? Why did they re-hire you? Why didn’t they re-hire you? Why don’t you ask them? It’s easier than you think. Enter Survey Monkey, a simple way to do surveys and get feedback from your clients. I actually created a survey in about 10 minutes. I’ve included it at the end of this article. Please take it when you have a moment. I really would like to know what you think. Either way, the point is that you, too, can make a simple survey in just a few minutes. Once you’ve created it, simply email it to your client after the show. You only need to make the survey once. You can continue using the same one over and over.

Gettin’ ’em to Respond

So how do you get your client to fill out the survey? Simple, offer them money. Just make sure you capture their name and any other pertinent info in the survey. Then offer them a discount of $50 (or whatever fits your price range and gig costs) off on a repeat booking. Survey Monkey stores all the data, stats, names, etc., so you’ll know who took the survey and who didn’t. You may also want to consider entering them into a drawing for a free gig if they fill it out. Do you have any products (particularly eProducts) that you can give away for free?

You may also suggest to the planner who hired you to forward the survey to all who attended the show. Make sure there’s a spot in your survey for “referred by” and give the planner instructions for those who receive the survey to fill out the planner’s name or company so that you can connect all the surveys back to the planner. Maybe X number of people filling out equals a free (or severely discounted) show.

What Questions Should You Ask?

That’s a great question, a question about questions. The free version of Survey Monkey allows for 10 questions. You don’t need that many. You can ask multiple choice questions, ranging questions (on a scale from 1 to 10, how good was the show), or you can ask open ended questions (i.e., essay answers). Break down your show into specific parts and ask, which was your favorite part. Or create a question asking which effect was their favorite, least favorite, etc.

What do you want to know? I want to know how good/bad my show was, and how likely they’ll be to re-book and/or refer me to someone else, so ask them. Once you look at setting up your surveys, you’ll see how simple it is to come up with the correct questions and what format to ask them.

Finally, make sure you leave at least one comment box at the end allowing them to just write anything that they feel. You’ll be surprised how valuable this can be. You’ll find that it’ll either be left blank or that it’ll be filled with excellent feedback. Take it all in.

All of the answers are stored in Survey Monkey and can be viewed as very useful graphs. As you’ll see in my survey below, one of the questions I’ve asked is what your favorite column in Stone Cold Magic Magazine is. I’m able to see a graph of which column is “winning” and which column is “losing.”

Practicing What I’m Preaching

Please take a moment to fill out the survey I’ve created. Please fill it out sincerely and make sure you enter your correct email address. It’s only 6 questions, and all are multiple choice. All who submit the survey (with their legitimate email address) will be entered into a drawing for a Free Stone Cold Magic Product of your choosing. Here’s the Survey: Stone Cold Magic Magazine Survey Monkey Survey.

Until Next Month . . .

You do have a website don’t you?

I’m just going to assume that the one guy left on the planet who does not have a website is not a subscriber of Stone Cold Magic Magazine and therefore will not be reading this article. For the other 7-ish billion people on the planet, here are some things to consider.

1 Contact Information

Don’t laugh. I’ve been to website where I could not find a single phone number, a link to an email, a web form for questions . . . nothing. That’s extremely frustrating. My guess is that they had the contact information somewhere on the site, but I just couldn’t find it. That’s just as bad as not having it. So make sure you have a clearly label contact page. Put all the ways that you are comfortable publishing.

• Phone Number
• Text
• Email
• Address

You don’t have to put all of those. Each of you will have different levels of paranoia about what you publish. But for Pete’s sake, put some contact info, and put it where it can be found.

2 Biography

No, you don’t need a history channel documentary done on your life to put content on your site. However, as a magician you need to have a bio page. For larger companies, they’ll typically have an “about” page. For a one man show (i.e., a magician) you are the product and the company and the brand, so tell people about you. What awards have you won? How long have you been doing magic? Where have you performed?

Tell any significant experiences or short (very short) stories that got your where you are today. You don’t want a bio that scrolls 200 feet below the fold, but a few (4 – 5) well written paragraphs that tell who you are and possibly why they should hire you (without actually saying “here’s why you should hire me”) will suffice. And . . . man o man . . . you’d better have a professionally shot photograph of yourself on that bio page.

3 Testimonials

You must have testimonials on your site, again clearly labeled. People need to know that your audiences have enjoyed watching you. If you don’t have any, get some . . . go back and read Can I Get a Witness! Amen! from the July 2009 issue. Meanwhile, get some quotes from friends, family, etc. until you have some more “legitimate” ones. The moment you start getting real ones from real clients, get rid of the “friends and family” ones.

These days, there’s no excuse not to have video testimonials on your site. Every phone had a video recorder any more. Most of them have a one-click upload to YouTube or Vimeo. It’s just a simple matter of embedding those videos in your site.

4 Performance Footage

You are the brand. They are hiring you/your act. Give ’em a taste. Again, these days . . . so easy. Have a friend film clips of you performing and some audience reaction shots. Edit them together in a simple software like Corel Video Studio. Slap some music on there and upload it to YouTube.

These days, this stuff is pretty simple to do. If you’re not sure how to do this, I guarantee you know someone who does . . . a neighbor kid, a random teenager . . . they’re out there.

5 Social Connections

This is really an extension of the “contact” page. However, you want to give people a chance to follow you and get to know you. If you have a blog that’s relevant to clients, link to it from your site. You’ll also want to link to your LinkedIn profile – if you don’t have one, get one. It’s today’s “resume.” There are a ton of social networking sites out there, but only a few of them are truly relevant to your potential clients.

LinkedIn is a must. Facebook and Twitter are also good to link to, but it depends on what type of things you post on there. If you’re confident that you’re not posting/tweeting anything that you wouldn’t want a potential client to see, then link to them. It’s good for them to “see” you on a personal level. I wouldn’t link to your Pinterest account or just about any other social media sites. Stick with the main ones, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Blog and . . . maybe . . . just maybe . . . Google Plus.

You want people to be able to interact with you, particularly if you post info about your shows and your clients on these networks. The client gets a little bit of free advertising if you mention them on your social spots. You may want to tweet out upcoming dates or specials that your clients/visitors would want to read about. It’s all about staying in touch with people . . . connecting with them . . . connecting . . . isn’t that what we, magicians, do?

Bottom line folks, if your website doesn’t have these five things, then you don’t have a website. Sure there are a couple of other things you may want on the site, but if you prominently place this five things on your site where they can be easily recognized and easily found, you’ll be miles ahead of the competition.Until Next Month . . .

NO SPECTATORS

One of the maxims I live by is “People support what they help create.”  This holds true in just about any organization, political movement, internet group, club and yes, even in the theatre or at a magic show.   I currently feel that the more audience participation there is in a show, the more successful that show becomes.  If you look at current Las Vegas shows, the ones that have lasted have a lot of audience participation:  Penn & Teller, Mac King, Amazing Jonathan.  Even Criss Angel has taken out most of the Le Cirque music and dance numbers, and replaced them with audience participation routines.

After years of study and professional training,  my personal magic style has evolved to include much more audience participation.  When I first started in magic, I didn’t have good role models.  Many of the magicians that I saw interacting with their audience members made jokes at their participant’s expense.  It was very typical to see magicians using “insult humor” to get quick and easy laughs.   I did not feel comfortable doing this type of comedy; in fact, I wanted to perform dramatic magic, without all the cheap comedy bits.

“Stand on the trap door.”

“Show me your hand, no the clean one.”

“Show the card to your friends… if you have any.”

This kind of humor simply was not what I was looking for.

MODELS AND MENTORS

Early in my career, I did not have teachers to coach me through the process of creating an effective magic show, or to help me design interactive audience participation segments for my show.  It was challenging enough to rehearse and control my own movements and choreography.  The addition of having to manage audience participants on stage was beyond my ability at that time.

Many of the most successful magicians utilize audience participation in their shows.  Before I go any further, I must really differentiate “magic acts” from “magic shows.”  The typical magic act, the kind we see on variety shows, on television or at magic conventions, are very often music-driven and highly visual in nature.  They are usually short, three to twelve minutes—acts like Rudy Coby, Kevin James, and Jerome Murat all come to mind in this category.  Many magicians start with an act, and then develop more repetoire, to create a full “magic show.”

MAGIC ACT OR MAGIC SHOW?

A “magic show” differs from a magic act, in that it is longer, often a full evening experience.  There are usually different styles of magic: dramatic, comedic, solo effects,  grand illusions, smaller close-up effects with video support, and yes, audience participation routines.

SPECTATORS VS. PARTICIPANTS

There is a huge difference between a spectator and a participant.  A spectator spectates, merely watching, witnessing without being directly involved.  A participant is co-creating the experience, and has a role to play in the production of the magic.

When I hear a magician say: “I have the spectator select a card,” I cringe inside.  I am aware that they are not conscious of the words they are using.  The more conscious we are of our words, the more conscious we can become as performers.  Spectators do not pick cards; they watch cards being picked.  Participants pick cards.

A MAGICAL FORMULA: TRANSFORMING LOOKERS INTO DOERS

When designing your show, try to find the times where you can move your audience from being objective witnesses into subjective participants.  Objective witnesses have less responsibility, and do not participate in the action.  A subjective participant is actively engaged in the magic experience.  They support the show by not only applauding at appropriate moments, but also by selecting cards, helping the magician with various tasks and activities like holding ropes or other props on-stage with the performer.

WARNING!

Not everyone wants to participate by coming on-stage!  I have seen many acts get into embarrassing situations by forcing an audience member to come to the stage.  An audience member doesn’t have to come to the stage to participate in the show.  There are many ways to transform individual objective witnesses into a collective of subjective participants.   Even getting the entire audience clapping rhythmically, to the beat of the music, transforms single individual objective witnesses into a group of subjective participants.  When an audience is all clapping rhythmically, you have given them the temporary role of “the drum section,” in the musical accompaniment, and they are helping to create the experience.

MICRO AND MACRO PARTICIPATION

My good friend and mentor, Bob Cassidy, taught me the difference between solo audience participation and mass audience participation.  Micro-participation is when one participant is involved with an effect, such as a book test or a billet reading.  A macro-participation effect is where the entire audience gets to play.  The classic “question and answer act” is a good example; everyone gets a pencil, a question card, and an envelope.  Many magicians have had good success with micro-participation.  The Amazing Jonathan has one person from the audience on stage for much of the show.  Mac King utilizes five or six people during the show, yet, at the end of his show, he has the entire audience chant his name: “Mac King!  Mac King!”  This is an example of macro-participation.

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

You can create subjective participants in the audience by having them involved, for instance, by:

• Saying “ladies and gentlemen, by a show of hands, how many people have traveled to Asia?”  Audience members raise their hands, participating in answering the question.  Another way to have people answer a question is by saying, “ladies and gentlemen, by a round of applause, who has traveled to Asia?”  Both ways work to not only create energy and movement in the audience, but also to give them another place to applaud, other than just the ending of an effect.
• Asking everyone in the audience to think of the first person they ever kissed for a prediction effect, and then tossing a ball out into the audience to select a participant is better than getting one person up onstage and then asking them to think of a person’s name.  Simply, more people get to play the “think of a name” game.

Another popular way is to have the audience all do the well-known “arm twist” illusion.  Penn & Teller, at the beginning of their shows, often invite members of the audience to come onstage and sign a special prediction envelope. When a magic theatre-goer steps onto the stage, they are no longer a spectator, they are an involved participant.  In many cases, these participants play the role of the Judge and Jury, to make sure that all the procedures look fair.

I encourage you to study great performers and how they generate excitement, mystery and fun by utilizing effecting audience participation techniques.  Explore ways you can welcome your audience into your magic world, and participate in the magic.  People support what they help create!  If you have ideas to share with me on ways that you engage your participants, email me and let me know!

Root:

Let’s remember our roots. This month’s root is honor your audience. Hey magician! Head’s Up! If you do restaurant work, unless you’re 2 feet tall, the table you perform at is about crotch-level, and your audience’s eyes aren’t much higher. To make things worse, when you perform down at the table level you’re directing your attention to said crotch area. Additionally, even if the audience does look up, they’ll see the top of your head because you’re looking down at your crotch where your hands, cards and magic is supposedly happening.

I said it once, and I’ll say it again . . . don’t be that guy!

Branch:

Let’s build our branches. For the next 30 days, I want you to take at least one effect from your repertoire and elevate it. Bring the action and focus area out of your crotch and up to your chest or face area. You may have to completely relearn certain moves – An Elmsley Count is not easy in front of your face with the cards facing your audience rather than the floor. You may even have to learn to do the moves without looking at the cards . . . look at the audience. Practice this simple technique until you’ve completely rebuilt at least one effect in your arsenal to be performed in this manner. You won’t regret it.

For even further advice on this subject, refer to the aforementioned chapter of McBrides’s book The Show Doctor>.

Now go study the classics and go discover your true magical self.

Gems and Rubble Gone For Good

A couple of issues ago, I announced the death of the Gems and Rubble column at the same time as the birth of my new site, Magic Reviewed. Let’s just say that my inbox got a little hot from all the flames I got. I shouldn’t say that.

They were all nice emails, but they were expressing their concern about the disappearance of the column. So I left it in place for a while. Then I watched the traffic . . . and it was weak at best. Just not a lot of people reading it.

However, the traffic at Magic Reviewed skyrocketed and has continued to climb the whole time, so I finally severed the ties. All of the reviews have been completely removed from Stone Cold Magic Magazine. All of my reviews are now found at Magic Reviewed.

Let’s all bow our heads in a moment of silence as we mourn the loss and celebrate the reincarnation of Gems and Rubble in the form of Magic Reviewed.

Sankey Magic and Stone Cold Magic Team Up

If you’re a fan of either of us (Jay or Me) – I now you’re out there – then you’re gonna love this. Jay and I collaborated on a really cool gimmick that is an excellent gimmick for restaurant workers. Jay says it all in the YouTube Video below.

Check it out. Then go to his site and order a copy of it:

Infiltrator by Jay Sankey & Jeff Stone

Enjoy the June 2012 issue . . .

Contest Winner

You may remember that last month we held a drawing for anyone who posted comments in the month of February. The winner was to receive three Karl Fulves books. The winner of the drawing was Mike Peterson. Congratulations Mike!

New Contest

Once again . . . let’s build up the amount of comments on the site. For every substantive comment posted in the month of March 2012, your name will be entered into a drawing. The winner will receive a free DVD from the Stone Cold Magic Collection. Good luck to all.

Huge Sale

Speaking of the Stone Cold Magic Collection, for the next 10 days, the entire collection of DVDs and E-Books ($134 value) is on sale for only $75.00! That’s almost half off. Consider it an early St. Patrick’s Day gift.

Enjoy the March issue!