An overemphasis on data-driven work within the nonprofit sector has been shown to result in cycles of disempowerment, driven by third-party data demands of funding bodies.. This compounds due to the many market orientations nonprofits need to adopt, particularly prevalent among the arts. A key to navigating these markets and funder requirements lies in identifying a specific data culture best fit for your organization and investing in resources and training in order to achieve that framework sustainably.
With AI’s ability to automatically produce content and process complicated datasets with high accuracy, museums worldwide are exploring ways in which this innovative technology can help them better achieve their missions and advance accessibility efforts. Through case studies, learn about three applications of this technology: content digitalization, language accessibility, and visual description.
October was filled with new debates on AI policies, a halt to one of the most significant AI safety bills in the United States, and a host of new AI developments in video, music, and even podcasts.
Arts and cultural nonprofits often operate in multiple markets for earned and contributed revenue. With increasing attention on data-driven decision making, effective market orientation often depends on effective data use. This fundamental collection, transmission, use, and interpretation of data within an organization collectively contributes to what can be considered an organization’s data culture.
Museums have increasingly begun to volunteer their spaces as polling places, acting as a democratic vehicle for their communities and adding to the greater fabric of America’s election infrastructure. In doing so, they can support local democratic processes and prove to their communities that they are not unbreachable temples for the elite, but open platforms for the people.
Check out the inspiring video from Pittsburgh Filmmakers entitled "Arts and Citizenship":
It feels particularly appropriate today as Pennsylvania's House Appropriations Committee discusses (and potentially votes) on the Senate's proposal to zero out arts funding within the state's budget.
There's a lot being said right now about the efficacy of utilizing social networking sites for fundraising efforts. A. Fine's blog brainstorms some real-world strategies, musing about organization/donor relationships, and how to encourage financial support. She notes that giving circles can be a place for discussion that may generate interest in other causes, raise awareness, and thereby encourage future donations. As social media changes and abets our causes, is our "audience" tuning out? Online, are our attempts to network as organizations being perceived as pitches? Sure, there are innovative ways to raise awareness, but is it just more of the same spiel? Do organizations that simply use the web as a way to market cross a line in our networking expectations that if you lead, you will also follow?
Those are my thoughts...what are yours?
Another thing to consider when using the internet to find money: I came across this article, urging caution when using the internet to find investors.
For many arts organizations out there right now, this is how we seem to be calculating the ROI for Social Networking and Media. Everyone seems to be groping in the dark to boil down a simple monetary answer to this question of, "What is *your organization here*'s return on investing in Social Media?"
While there are solid(ish) ROI calculators for Social Networking out there, and they do provide cells for number of friends added, and amount of donors added to your email lists vs. amount of volunteer/employee time and money spent, I feel like somehow they all miss the point.
Yes it is nice to have quantifiable data to back up the decision to dedicate precious and dwindling time and money to a project. However, the main source of return from social media simply isn't quantifiable. We're talking about trying to quantify human interaction and communication. And we are also talking about laying the groundwork to adapt to how the world is changing, and how our audiences are staying informed/using the internet. The worth of these tools, and the time spent cultivating relationships with our audiences does not exactly have a set monetary value.
We can begin by monitoring click through rates, and number of new "friends" on Facebook and weighing this against how much time and money is being spent, but this doesn't exactly give a complete picture of what is going on.
If an organization is really committed to utilizing social networking not just for marketing and revenue generation, but for communicating and engaging their target audience and creating a community of individuals that are interested in the core values and beliefs of that organization then how on earth can they boil that down to a Return On Investment.
As of right now, the amount of direct donations that non profits are receiving from their social network sites is arguably marginal. Admittedly there are some outliers who are able to generate significant returns from their social networks, the Brooklyn Museum's 1stfans springs to mind. However, as a communication tool for promotion and engagement, a method of gathering email-ing lists, and for managing and maintaining positive feedback about the organization, social networks are proving to be invaluable pretty much across the board.
The overwhelming problem of course is that once your organization has developed this online social network, simply having a static page isn't enough. A Facebook page is less a Billboard than it is a Soapbox, so you have to treat it like one. It might be ok for your organization to have an unpaid intern managing some of your social media because they are by and large in the Heavy User demographic and know all the ins and outs, but without some sort of direct executive insight and direction you now have a 20-something basically dictating the brand identity of your organization and running a large part of your marketing department.
So I guess that's another way of looking at the ROI, what would happen with no investment of time and resources? The whole "If not X" senario. As the world slowly begins to adopt social networking as a standard means of communication and the source for their daily information, we may see an increase to the direct donations to organizations through these social networks. I mean, if politicians (read old rich people) are already doing it, then how far behind the curve are we if we aren't?
Deviating from my usual blog posts about new technology's influence on the Art world, today I would like to talk about alternative exhibition spaces and some of the issues surrounding Marketing escalation.
I've mentioned in the past that the Younger than Jesus crowd has a general disdain for excessive marketing and that we simply do not like being sold to. We Tivo the shows we want to watch to remove the adds, and we employ as many add-ons as we can install into our web browsers to reduce the amount of online advertising we are subjected to. We have a certain amount of immunity to advertising, our eyes glaze over and we cease to pay attention to billboards, print adds, junk mail, spam, pop ups, and recently even most viral marketing has become groan worthy.
Some marketing companies like NPA outdoor have been upping the ante by advertising on billboards that are erected without permits. An intrepid group of artists took it upon themselves this past weekend to appropriate 120 of the over 500 illegal NPA outdoor owned billboards as alternative exhibition spaces. Some amazing images, and more information about the project Here, and Here. This project is a really interesting look at the debate over public space, and the ubiquity of advertising.
Not to say that there aren't innovative and interesting marketing campaigns out there. This add, for instance, probably sold more Cat Power and David Bowie songs on Itunes than it did Lincoln MKS's. (on a side note, if anyone knows where to find the full version of this cover, please post it in the comments) And this one shows how versatile Vimeo is more than it inspires me to buy a Honda Insight.
One thing that all of these projects, and even some of these advertisements point out is that there is still a deep appreciation for art out there, which bodes well for those of us making a living in the art world.
Does this make you think of how you can approach marketing an arts organization differently?
The MoMA recently received some blow back by hiring The Happy Corp to "mashup" their subway advertising campaign. But were their intentions in the right place?
Let us know what you think.
Last Wednesday I touched upon four readily available social platforms that Arts Organizations can use to maintain relationships with their audiences. Today we'll look at some more online tools that may have been overlooked.
Linked In:
LinkedIn is a professional social network that allows you to connect with peers in the field. Much like Facebook, organizations are able to create a LinkedIn Group with the ability to post discussion topics and aggregate blog posts into the News Feed. However, your audience within LinkedIn is generally different than your audience in Facebook. This also means that the content and tone of your discussion posts should be differentiated as well. Your Facebook fans will generally consist of audience members and people interested in your organization, where as LinkedIn will primarily consist of professionals in the field. Discussion topics will be more focused on the day to day nuts and bolts of the organization, and it provides a good platform to ask questions like,
"I had a question for folks working within arts organizations. What ticketing software are you using? Are you satisfied with your solution? Thanks!"
Google Alerts:
Depending upon the size of your organization, it may be a good idea to set up some Google Alerts that keyword search for articles about your organization, and artists or performances that you are presenting. It is a really convenient method of gathering information about what is being said about your organization online, and alerts are available as an email or via an RSS Feed.
Flickr/Youtube:
These are a bit obvious, but some arts organizations still are not taking advantage of these two media sharing sites. Keeping up with a Youtube channel can be quite a bit of work for an arts organization, especially if you are trying to maintain a constant stream of new videos to keep your audience engaged. However, by releasing videos that revolve around a significant event such as a performance or opening it can be more of a one time thing. There is a great article about the marketing power of video Here. I feel like The Soap Factory in Minneapolis has done an excellent job producing videos that grab the audience's attention without giving away too much. Flickr is also a great way to present images of events and performances online, and allow your audience to tag and upload their images of your organization as well.
Last.fm:
Ok, so Last.fm, ILike, and Pandora are relatively in the same boat when it comes to social networked internet radio sites, but Last.fm seems to be the most popular (this week). Users are able to create profiles that allow them to search for friends and groups that may have the same taste in music and create personalized "stations" and playlists that others can listen to and discover.
Orchestras are able to claim their profile on Last.fm, post basic information about the organization and upload music that listeners will be able to stream online. Your organization will also be able to set up a group much in the same way as Facebook and LinkedIn, that will allow your fans to participate in discussion and comment about your organization.
This is also a great forum to post information about upcoming concerts and events. Users are notified about events based on their proximity to the venue, and you can add direct links to ticketing sites. This site isn't just for Orchestras and indi rock bands, if your arts organization hosts performances during openings and other events it may be a good idea to start a profile, and post event information about the artists that will be playing your event.
More More More:
This is by no means a comprehensive list of everything that is out there. There are an innumerable amount of social networks cropping up specifically for artists. For instance, Peter Vikstrom commented on Wednesday's post about Cultgrid, which I haven't had the chance to explore fully, but looks like an good performing arts social network. There are Blogs such as the SITI group blog that are an excelent source for information pertaining to performing arts. And this awesome thing called CrowdFire, that just boggles the mind.
If you have come across a valuable source of information or an interesting social network pertaining to the arts, please feel free to leave a link in the comments below.
As traditional print media's coverage of performing arts and the arts in general continues to decline and audiences across the board start to adopt social networking sites, it may be time for your organization to strongly consider updating your website and starting to utilize a new set of tools to get the word out about your organization.
I realize that I may be preaching to the choir at this point, and other people have recently addressed this, mainly due to the release of Global Faces and Networked Places A Nielsen report on Social Networking’s New Global Footprint earlier this month. The report shows that social networking has now surpassed Email usage, and is currently the fastest growing sector of online use. This demonstrates how drastically the way that people are using the web is changing. It is moving from an information based, Google search oriented "Super phone book" to more of a community that relies upon members for word of mouth updates about events and information.
This means that the reasons people are visiting your organization's website are shifting from trip planning (directions, hours of operation, finding a place to eat/hotel) to engagement and becoming involved with the real life community centered around your brick and mortar building.
So, everyone is utilizing these social networking platforms to stay informed about their day to day lives, which creates some opportunities to get your organization's message across above the din of traditional marketing and the other media that is out there.
I'm going to briefly outline a few of these tools and how your organization may be able to utilize them to inform your target audience, as well as maintain healthy relationships with your existing community.
I briefly touched on Facebook's updated Pages features Here, but it may be useful to give a brief overview. Facebook is a social networking site that allows your organization to create a "Page." The Page exists much like a user profile in that you can post basic information about your organization, send event invitations for upcoming performances and exhibitions to people who have become friends of your organization, and update your audience about current events and offerings. It also has the ability for you to aggregate any blog feed that your organization may have, and update your fans when a new blog has been posted.
There is one very important issue that I cannot stress enough at this point. Do not approach Facebook from a purely Marketing perspective. Audiences are quick to selectively tune out organizations that they feel are just trying to sell them something. As an Arts Organization it is better to focus on audience engagement, informing people about upcoming events and cultural offerings like classes or discussions, and maintaining a dialogue about your organization. Facebook audiences prefer to be informed about an event or offering, not to have it sold to them.
Blogs:
Should your organization have a blog, and if so what approach should your organization take? Well, if your only reason is because Johnny Awesome's arts organization down the street is doing it, then probably not. Nina Simon, author of the Museum 2.0 blog, breaks down the blogging conundrum in exquisite detail Here. She breaks down the why and the how of an institutional blog. Before allocating time and resources for the production of a blog first think about it's relevancy to your readers. Who will be reading this, and what is the desired outcome? That question is the best place to start.
Twitter:
For as much as I have railed against Twitter, on an institutional level I recognize how useful it can be is. Twitter is officially everywhere, and I'll admit to drinking the Kool-Aid. We've posted time and again about Twitter and how arts organizations can be utilizing this tool to inform your followers of what is going on at the organization. Recently though, I have been relying upon Twitter to stay abreast of current events among peers within the Arts Management field by following people such as:
Maryann Devine and Jeffrey @ the MF and the Brooklyn Museum
Yelp:
There is so much information available to us at any given moment that people are now relying upon social constructs and taste makers to filter what is out there. Beyond asking friends on Facebook or on Twitter for help in finding something interesting to do, or a place to eat or go on a date, Yelp provides candid reviews of just about any business broken down by location. This happens to include an entire Arts and Entertainment category, so depending upon the city, your audience may already be posting reviews about your organization online. Yelp presents a good forum to address customer service issues by responding to negative comments, and it may be a good idea to upload some current photos and make sure that all of your information is correct.
Continued in part 2, I will present a few more tools that performing arts organizations should be aware of.
Some times Copyright can be too restrictive when you would like to share your work with the world.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Creative Commons licensing, this video helps to explain some of the ways in which it allows someone to publish their work somewhere in between All rights reserved and No rights reserved. This method of copyright allows the creator of the work to decide how it can be used by others, if it can be used commercially, sampled, remixed, or built upon. By using a Creative Commons License creators are able to maintain some rights while allowing others greater access to the work than the regular Copyright would allow.
FairShare is a free online application that allows you to track the usage of your creative commons licensed intellectual property, making it possible for people all around the world to reuse content while still attributing it back to the original creator. Currently FairShare works for any text based content that is available to the public via RSS feeds. This means any blog posts, essays, cookbooks, and anything as long as it is text and available as via RSS. According to Plagiarism Today's Jonathan Bailey, FairShare Developer Attributor is also gauging interest in a FairShare for photos and videos as a possibility for a future service that would allow users to track the use of images and other media beyond just text content.
FairShare begins by asking you to choose from a list of available Creative Commons Licenses.
Once you've registered your blog or other RSS feed, FairShare searches to find instances of your content on other sites, and then displays the different pages that have reused your work and how that reuse of your content compares to your license conditions. The sites using your content are displayed in your FairShare feed that can then be accessed through a feed reader such as Google Reader, or any number of other RSS readers.
This is an amazing new tool that will allow anyone who is concerned about how their intellectual property is being used to track and influence how that content is being shared.
As we go into the weekend, I leave you with this awesome Video Mashup, "The Mother of all Funk Chords" that was created entirely from clips available on Youtube.
I've stated on our blog and podcast many times that you can offer your content for free without devaluing that content.
Frequent followers will recall two interviews with independent musician Jonathan Coulton (podcasts #38 and #55), who has given most of his music away and still manages to make a decent living. (I cannot define "decent" exactly, but I imagine he does quite well for himself.)
Well, thanks to Amazon's 2008 best-selling albums list, I have even more proof that free does not equal worthless. According to ReadWriteWeb, the best-selling album in Amazon's MP3 store for 2008 was Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails. Interestingly, that same album was available for free (and legally!) in March via BitTorrent under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.
This means that either: A) People ignored the fact that the album was available for free and opted to pay, or B) people downloaded the album for free and paid after listening because they felt it was worth the money. A third option, of course, is that people were just too dumb or lazy to figure out how to use BitTorrent. This, however, is unlikely. After all, this is the fan base for Nine Inch Nails we're talking about here... not Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
This is not to say that opera companies should start giving away tickets. I'm simply saying that arts organizations might consider lightening up a bit when it comes to offering content online.
("Free LSD" photo courtesy of corypina's Flickr stream.)
How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice... or win a YouTube contest! (Insert rimshot here.) In what might be described as American Idol for the classical music crowd, YouTube yesterday announced YouTube Symphony Orchestra, a collaboration with several classical music organizations.
The London Symphony Orchestra plays the Internet Symphony No. 1 "Eroica" - for YouTube, conducted by Tan Dun.
Through January 28, 2009, musicians of any skill level can submit a video performance of a work by composer Tan Dun (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). The performances will be rated by judges and YouTube users, and the finalists will be invited to participate in April's YouTube Symphony Orchestra summit and perform at Carnegie Hall with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.
YouTube Symphony Orchestra also offers a collection of online tools for learning and rehearsing the new Dun piece.
Rosin your bow, head on over to YouTube Symphony Orchestra and start practicing.
While the holidays can sometimes seem very busy (especially if you're a dance company producing 'The Nutcracker'), there is typically a great deal of office downtime. Therefore, I'm issuing a challenge this holiday season: Pick one tech-related skill you'd like to learn and use any downtime to get cracking.
It doesn't have to be anything particularly difficult. Maybe you work with Excel for budgeting, and you'd like to know more about advanced filtering options. Perhaps you'd like to learn some basic HTML so you can tackle your own Web updates rather than passing them off to sit in a queue.
Whatever the skill you'd like to learn or refine, I'm here to help. Contact me with your holiday tech education wishes, and I'll send you some information and links to steer you in the right direction.
Don't just sit around drinking eggnog and making garland hats this holiday season. Brush up on your tech skills!
(Photo Credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid)
