Photo credit: Terry Johnston

ICSOM is very active on Twitter. Since 2009, we have generated nearly 10,000 tweets about classical music, orchestras, and the arts. Today ICSOM has over 9000 Twitter followers.
The account was created and maintained by former ICSOM Chair Bruce Ridge. Upon his departure from the Governing Board in August 2016, ICSOM’s social media duties were divided among several GB members. It has been an educational and rewarding experience to handle ICSOM’s Twitter feed after Bruce, and I sincerely thank him for his dedicated work in this arena.

I am pleased to say that since I began overseeing the account, all 52 orchestras of ICSOM have been included in our tweets. If the musicians’ group has a Twitter account, they are tagged within the 140 character limit of any post about them or their orchestra. This allows viewers to find the Twitter account of the players’ association easily, and also notifies the musicians of ICSOM’s tweet so that all are informed of the news item.

We create approximately ten tweets a day on ICSOM’s feed, which we may all agree would overtake an email account quickly. Instead of having your inbox bombarded with so many news items sent to an e-list, we ask you to visit @ICSOM on Twitter to view current stories at your convenience. If you do not have a Twitter account, please consider doing so and following ­@ICSOM to access our tweets.

An important element of our social media efforts has been a project that I envisioned, which started on Labor Day 2016, to feature one of ICSOM’s 52 orchestras each week. It has been an easy and free way to highlight all of ICSOM’s orchestras throughout the year, as well as increase traffic at our social media sites. The posts occur Monday mornings on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, with follow up stories during that week for the featured orchestra and its musicians. Thank you to the delegates who have worked with me on these “Featured Orchestra of the Week” posts.

ICSOM’s Twitter feed is a leading source of information about and for its musicians. ICSOM established the feed with the stated intent of promoting unity everywhere through tweets about orchestras, classical music, and the arts. I am proud to serve ICSOM in this way, and I welcome information about possible tweets that would further that goal.