What is an Arts Organization's "Online Voice"?

On April 29th, Technology in the Arts will present the webinar  "Finding Your Online Voice" featuring renown arts consultant Maryann Devine from smArts & Culture.  We caught up with Maryann to talk about the idea of an arts organization's "online voice" and why it matters. What is an organization or individual’s “online voice”, and why is it important? By "online voice," I mean the tone and style of your encounters with people online. It should be an extension of the organizational voice you use elsewhere -- in your brochures, in your fundraising letters, in your advertising ... Unfortunately, most arts organizations use a bland, impersonal voice for their offline communications that's impossible to tell from their competitor down the street or across town. They mix in a little hype for the marketing writing, but so does everyone else, so everyone ends up sounding alike. How do you stand out?

Why is your online voice important? Because whether it's your web site, or your Facebook Fan Page, we're talking about spaces that have their own social norms and user behavior. It's like taking your board meeting voice into the cocktail party and then to the kitchen table at your neighbor's house. If you don't adjust your tone, people are going to look at you funny! You're not going to connect with people. And that's why you're online in the first place, isn't it?

How can we take stock of our online voice? You can take an inventory of all the places where your organization has an online presence.  For example:

• your web site
• your email newsletter
• your blog
• your Twitter account(s)
• your Facebook Fan Page
• your custom social network
• forum spaces where your staff or volunteers participate in an official capacity
• blogs where your staff comments, on behalf of the organization

Then ask yourself:

• How do your online interactions sound next to your offline communications?
• Do they all sound like they're coming from the same organization, or do they seem wildly different?
• How do people online respond to them?

In the webinar, we'll talk about how to sound like YOU (the organization) and still strike the right tone for the online space.

How will this upcoming webinar help artists and arts managers to refine their online voice to better meet their goals? Getting closer with the people who love what you do -- that's a strategy that supports fundraising, ticket sales, awareness building -- just about any goal I can think of that might be on an artist or arts manager's agenda. A distinct and -- dare I say it? -- authentic online voice helps people find YOU and listen to you instead of tuning you out, like they do with most of the other organizations and businesses that are vying for their attention. When they know it's YOU, they'll WANT to pay attention.

April 29 -- 2:00pm-3:30pm Eastern -- "Finding Your Online Voice" -- Register today for $25

SEOoooo....what? Improving your organization's search engine optimization.

As promised too-long ago, here is a quick-and-dirty guide to improving your website's search engine optimization.

I certainly couldn't have made sense of this all on my own; I had the great fortune to be able to pick the brain of David Hejduk of River City Studios. He is the man behind the website-optimization curtain for many companies and organizations.

While the various search engines in creation all claim slightly different methods of operating, according to Hejduk there are some hard-and-fast rules that you can follow to make your site as discoverable as possible.

Make it easy

The 'bots that crawl the web, searching for the words that somebody wants to find, are very smart for non-sentient beings. But as people, according to Hejduk, they are like second graders. They can do a surprising amount on their own, but the easier that you make it for them, the better the results that they will return on your behalf.

As with any marketing plan, SEO requires that you think like your audience (or the audience you hope to attract). What would people type (and usually this is a couple-word phrase, as opposed to one single word) if they were looking for your organization? What would people type if they were looking for something that your organization provides?  These are the phrases and words that  should continuously appear from page to page, in title tags, headers, copy, internal and external linking.

From the literal top down, your page should make it easy to figure out what you are about. Your address should include words that are pertinent to your organization--like its name, for example. Your banner should highlight words that are relevant and interesting--the more cryptic your titles (do you call the link where you can buy tickets "buy tickets" or "box office," or do you use a clever and obtuse moniker?) the more difficult it will be to directly access the information that a person seeks when they Google you.

So take a look at your homepage. How clean is it? Where is information placed? The more important stuff should be on the top, should be in bold, should be headings. Do you have captions for your visual and audio content, are you social media sites up to date (and linked from your homepage), and do you link to news articles that are relevant? And what are the keywords that appear throughout your site, indicating to the 'bots and your potential audience what you are about?

Don't assume

Don't assume that you know what your site's keywords actually are:  check here to see what the 'bots consider your site's keywords. Does that list best describe your purpose and mission? Will they attract the audience you WANT to visit your site?

Image originally found here.

If not, it is time to take a moment (or multiple long moments) to work out how you want your organization to be identified online. If the words you think are most relevant are highly competitive (i.e. other websites that naturally generate more traffic use the same keywords), your site still may wind up buried deep in the results pages of a search.  So think about word combinations that may be less popular but more representative of your organization, and which may bring visitors and audience that will be most interested in what you offer.  A more comprehensive keyword  instructional can be found here or here. When you are ready to start placing keywords strategically, check out this reference.

Get analytical

Before you tackle your very own homepage, there are a number of tangential tools that are free and require only that you insert a little code onto your pages. The first is Google Analytics. We've said it before and I am here to say it again: USE THIS TOOL. It is free. It is incredibly useful. Register your website with Google Analytics and copy the code into your page (Analytics gives you a really basic how-to when you sign up).

Analytics tracks how people find you. Do they click on a direct link that they found on someone else's page (did you even know that someone else has linked to you?) or did they find you from a google search or did they track you down from your Facebook page? If your response is, "How could I possibly know where they came from?" my answer to you is "Google Analytics!"

I don't work for Google, Google doesn't give me any kind of incentive for talking about their products (I'm so over Google Chrome, by the way), and yes, they are approaching world wide web domination, BUT...they make great free tools. And you should learn how to take advantage of what they offer.

Over the summer I gave a shout-out to the Google Business Center, and I'm here to do a follow-up cheer. Like Google Analytics, the Local Business Center is free, and provides insight into how people are finding your organization. It can give you diagnoses and provide feedback on your website's traffic.  It also places your organization's physical location on a map that makes your location in real-space clearly apparent for someone who is searching. This means that somebody searching in Boston for information on the Artspace Gallery will be much less likely to get top results of Artspace Gallery on South Ridgefield Rd. in Edison, NV and Artspace Gallery and Coffeeshop in Madison, California, than your Artspace Gallery right there in Beantown.

Keep your site current

A search engine, when it crawls the web, isn't really looking at what is out there RIGHT NOW. It's actually searching the input phrase against pages that were cached in the past--sometimes a month or so ago or longer. (You can find out the last time the 'bot stopped by your site: in the list of search results there is a hyperlink below your site that says "cached" and will tell you when the page was indexed last.)  This means that you want to keep a consistent presence--and it also means that you cannot guarantee that your calendar will be indexed in time for your events, so be sure there are other places that information appears that may register more readily.

Keeping your site current is important, because when you update, the bot notices the next time its crawling out there, looking for sites that are active. You don't want somebody to search for your company and have the top five results be reviews from a play you produced in 2007. You want them to find YOU.  The challenge is that when your local paper is receiving a lot of traffic on a daily basis, even its archived pages are getting more action than your website. So does Facebook, incidentally.

(You say, "If Facebook receives a lot of traffic and therefore scores more highly in the bot's mind, does this mean that I should have a page on Facebook for my organization that also includes information and links to my homepage?"  I say, "YES! (Caveat: don't just use Facebook to say you use Facebook, have a social media plan.)  So, have some pages that have fresh, regularly updated content (this may be a blog, or perhaps a newsletter that you publish on your page once a month).

NOTE: This does not mean your entire site should get a face lift every month. There should be stable pages, with easily identifiable URLS (like www.yourgallery.com/directions  and www.yourgallery.com/home and www.yourgallery.com/artists) that stay consistent.  You may have links from those pages to other pages that do change frequently (your artist page may be about artists that have shown in the past, but have a link to "current show" that takes the visitor to a new page, www.yourgallery.com/lcorwinchristie), but you should have a core of reliable, recognizable pages that your visitors and Google recognize as solid.

Get listed

Alright, good work. The next thing I want you to do is sit down and think about the other search tools that people use that are NOT search engines. I'm talking about sites like Citysearch,Yelp, Yellowpages, ask.com, epinion. You may not be using them to find out something fun to do on a Saturday night, but I have news for you: a LOT of other people are. These are free directories that list businesses and allow users to write reviews and comments about experiences.

The great thing about this resource is that, because these web directories get so much traffic all the time, search engines check them. If your organization is listed with full contact information (THIS INCLUDES YOUR URL--I could rant for hours about how obnoxious it is to find a listing for someone ONLINE without a way to ACCESS THEIR WEBSITE. But I digress.), this gives a search engine more to go from. "Ohhh," it "thinks" in its little second-grade "brain," "The person searching for XYZ company is in Atlanta, and here is a listing on Yelp.com for an XYZ company that has an address in Atlanta!" Voila! A match made in Georgia!

Get linked

Another tip? Links are huge.  Links to both internal and external content will improve your rating when a search engine is looking for you.  As always, however, do not simply compile a list of links for the sake of having them. A search engine will notice if you have a "links" page that is little more than a list of everyone you have met and their blogs (recent or outdated).

It's much wiser, and more interesting, to integrate links into your web design. This can be in blog posts, or side bars on specific pages, definitely in artists' profiles.  The more you link out to places that are both relevant and potentially interested in what you are producing, the more likely they are to link back to you.  What does this mean?  Well, if Google sees that you have a certain amount of popularity, that is, that there are people who think that you are saying things that are worth sharing, it will consider you more important as it indexes your site.  (Yes, it's true--Google judges you.)

So, to sum it up:

• Your headline, header tag, bold text or text that is a larger font, should be IMPORTANT and RELEVANT (and will thereby improve your searchability).  They should be placed higher on the page and centered whenever possible. There should be a continuity of keywords across your pages.

• You should have a core of a few pages that have consistent content, and from those pages link to others that are updated and altered regularly.  Your homepage can be current without being overloaded with new content on a monthly basis.  Having the pages link to each other ("artists" from "home," "location" from "artists" and "home") is also crucial for giving the search engines a sense of the overall picture of your site and the information therein.

• Plan ahead:  If you have an artist who you will be featuring in a few months, publish a page about that artists in advance.  That way the 'bot can find the information before it is outdated. The 'bots only stop by every month or so (and if you were cached long before that, you have some updating to do!)

• Plug your page in sites where it is kosher to do so: Yelp, Yellowpages, Citysearch, and so forth.  And remember, this also gives people a forum for discussing your work, and this will give you a sense of what the word of mouth is about what your organization is doing.

Anonymous input, please!

We're putting together a webinar on digitizing art, and want to know what YOU want to know.  Please help us make this an experience that benefits you by filling out this 3-question survey. I promise you--it will take less time than it took you to fill out the Census. Even if you are the only person living in your household.

Thanks!

Upcoming Webinar - Putting Social Media Strategy Into Action

March 23, 2010The Arts & Social Media, Part II: Turning Strategy Into Results 2:00pm-3:30pm Eastern Presenter: Rebecca Krause-Hardie Registration: $25.00

You've dabbled with social media; you've got a general sense of how to think strategically; now what? In this session, we'll go beyond the jargon into the nitty-gritty and practical details of executing a successful social media plan. This is a highly interactive session. As the starting point, we'll explore your goals, questions and your projects and clarify the steps needed to turn them into reality.

In this engaging 90-minute session, you will:

Learn how to create a step by step action plan to get you going

Look at some great case studies from other arts organizations

Identify and define 5 practical steps you can take now to have your project soar

Rebecca Krause-Hardie is a project manager, facilitator/trainer, social media strategist, & arts blogger, helping arts and non-profits use the web and social media effectively. Rebecca has over 20 yrs experience in new media, business, marketing, finance and project management. She developed and has been the Executive Producer of the award winning New York Philharmonic's Kidzone website, now in its 10th year. Representative clients include the Boston Symphony, NY Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, MAPP International, Canadian Museum of Nature, NYS/Arts, Caring.com and the Paul Taylor Dance Company and Dance/USA.

Please Note: While this session builds upon ideas discussed in The Arts & Social Media, Part I: From Experiment to Strategy, this webinar is a stand-alone session appropriate for all artists and arts administrators.

Building Audience Diversity Through Social Media, Part Three

Watercolor style theater renovation by Gordon Tarpley (from flickr)

In part 2 of this 3-part entry, I interviewed social media managers from different regions, artistic disciplines, and mission focuses about how diversity drives their social media strategy. I found that, for most, online community-building came first and diversity factored in minimally, except in terms of age. When I first came up with the idea for this blog series, my first instinct was to do a quick search of the niche social networking site BlackPlanet.com. It showed groups for black actors, a very large poet group, a few artist groups, etc. Lots of jazz fans. Lots of fans of activities that researchers are constantly associating with arts attendance. But not one LORT theatre is on the site. Not many theatres period, except the stray comedy club.

In analyzing the responses of the social media managers and the notable absence of non-profit arts organizations on these niche social networks, I was puzzled. Then I thought, “Am I asking the wrong question here?”

Would most American theatres (most of which produce, on average, about one play by a black playwright a year) have a place on these networks that exist to connect black people to one another and to black culture? Maintaining a profile on one of these sites while you’re promoting Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit could be a bit of a stretch.

But even maintaining a tenuous connection to this community, such as an ad, could get a whole new community of people looking at your org, right? I decided to talk to an expert. Gerry Eadens is a media buyer who has worked in advertising for nearly 20 years and now works at Kansas City Repertory Theatre. She specializes in Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and other online media. She did a cursory search and found at least 100 sites through the Google ad network that are meant to serve a specific cultural or ethnic group.

Research shows, however, that advertising is not a replacement for a social networking presence and vice-versa. Eadens cautioned me, “Typical display ads are not recommended for the best response from social network users since they are often ignored. Research has shown that advertisers garner greater results from more engaging activity with their audience such as posts that appear within news feeds.” Add to that the difficulties that online marketers often have in knowing how to focus an ad toward their intended audience. There’s no ethnicity category on the Facebook ad set-up interface, and I’m guessing that the company probably won’t add one in the near future.

So what can we do and more importantly, what’s worth our time to do?

At long last, the diversity question has come around to the classic “old vs. new” debate: When faced with declining arts attendance, is it better to “pick the low-hanging fruit” and focus on maintaining and growing our existing audience demographics ("the more return on investment for less energy" approach) or make a long-term investment in trying to attract new groups of people to our performances?

In a recent cultural policy article I read, I came across the question, “In our art, we place great value on experimentation and innovation—why not in our management practices?” I thought this was a great question, and I also bought into it, at first. Innovation seems to be the hot buzzword these days, and I think that generally, it’s a great value to have. However, from listening to the reasoning of the social media managers in the previous entry, I would argue it may not always be the most important one, especially from a user’s perspective (as opposed to a developer’s). They have tailored their social media presence to be purpose driven, tailored to their mission statement and aimed toward staying connected with their current audience while gaining new audiences, although not specifically diverse ones. Timothy Platt of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society writes about purpose-driven marketing on his blog Platt Perspective:

Good online social networking means sharing value and even paying it forward and taking the initiative in starting that process. But true online communities always carry this greater, synergistic value and are bound together by the cohesion and momentum that it brings. It is in the communities of members and supporters that good nonprofits gain their strength…

When I interviewed Thomas Cott of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, he spoke about his org’s purpose-driven strategy. “Since social media works best when you don’t try and push sales too directly, we’ve been using Facebook as an outlet to expand our ‘brand awareness’ and we’ve succeeded in attracting fans from many countries.”  For an organization with an international presence, the brand awareness angle is especially valuable.

More local or regional orgs, on the other hand, value building community locally. Brian Hinrichs of Madison Opera commented, “Our Facebook page very much feels like a community–fans comment and interact, they want more blog posts and photos, etc. Twitter doesn’t yet feel so cohesive: I’m interacting mostly with local media and other opera companies and nurturing those relationships. If our local paper re-tweets a ticket link or production photos, that is extremely valuable, but this is not where most of our fans are…yet.”

No matter your geographic focus, social networks are fundamentally about forming a community and having conversations. Therefore, having a clear purpose in mind when you choose your networks is essential. We’ve all heard the adage “the medium is the message.” It means that the method by which your audience receives your message becomes an inextricable part of the message itself. The phrase was coined in the 1960’s before the advent of the social media frenzy. But think about what it says to us today. Your show is its logo. Your season is the email blast that announces it. Your theatre is your Facebook fan page. But there’s more to it than that. With social media, the audience becomes both medium and message. Your audience is your identity. Who your fans are says something about who your organization is. If someone chooses to invest themselves in your product or purpose by becoming a fan or making a comment, then they become part of your organization in a way that’s visible. They become a message that your organization is worth following.

Think about the last think you received a postcard from an arts org. Chances are, they wanted a private, one-way, and perhaps institutionalized response from you (like buying a ticket, perhaps?).  Outside of social media your level of engagement with the organization is determined by those ticket purchases and other statistics available exclusively to the organization. Not so in the world of social media.  Think about how different the message is between a postcard (Buy a ticket!) and a Facebook page (Interact with us!). There are many ways to interact, and many messages a fan can send you. By creating a presence on a specific social networking site, you are signaling that you are open to communication with the people on that network. So what does it say if your organization is not present?

Building Audience Diversity Through Social Networking – Part Two

In part 1 of this 3-part entry, I left you with the burning question: What are arts groups doing to build audience diversity through social networking? I decided to ask arts organizations around the country two questions that are relevant to any arts organization with a social networking strategy (and not just during Black History Month):

1. How is your org are selecting which social networking sites are worthwhile?
2. Are you taking diversity into account when forming these strategies?

"St Petersburg - Alexandrinsky Theater" by thisisbossi / CC BY-SA 2.0

This can be a very sensitive issue and I am very grateful to the orgs that chose to take on this question. I contacted organizations of different sizes and different artistic disciplines. The answers I got were very in line with conventional wisdom of creating and streamlining a social media presence. Brian Hinrichs of Madison Opera says that he tries to focus on the two websites with both the most users and the most relevant users to his organization, Facebook and Twitter.

Facebook has the most users. We do have a MySpace page, which I understand has a more diverse user base, but that was not intentional. MySpace proved to have a large singer community, but I was not finding Madison Opera fans… Most of our MySpace friends, which is very few, also have Facebook accounts. Anecdotally, I find that to be the case in Madison and so for convenience of updating I am focusing most of my efforts to Facebook.

Thomas Cott of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (and the daily arts newsletter You’ve Cott Mail) also advocates focusing on a few sites rather than less coverage on more networks. Ailey boasts the largest Facebook Fan base of any nonprofit arts organization, at over 32,000, and is planning on rolling out pages for other programs like Ailey II and the Ailey School.

Ailey has focused its attention primarily on Facebook and YouTube (we’re phasing out our MySpace presence), because we feel it’s too hard to be everywhere at once… Of course, maintaining a robust presence on a social media site like Facebook requires a lot of staff time, and even for a big company like Ailey, we don’t have an endless reservoir of staff time to devote to this.  That’s the main reason why we haven’t pursued Twitter or some of the newer outlets like Foursquare.  It’s also why we haven’t put our attention to more ‘niche’ websites like blackplanet.com.  We feel we are reaching a diverse audience on Facebook and YouTube, and since they are the biggest sites out there right now, we felt that was the best place for us to devote our attention.

Paul Montenegro maintains the social networking sites of GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington D.C. He chooses to focus on Facebook and Twitter said that he focuses on the website’s functionality in his choice of networks.

I personally find the sites to be more user friendly when it comes to making events or sharing information. If there are sites out there are can do a better job or similar one, I would be looking into it to ensure that we can contact patrons via the web.

I contacted several other arts organizations who, like GALA, had mission statements which specifically focused on sharing the artist achievements or preserving the heritage of one ethnic or cultural group. I had hoped that they might be able to tell me how they decided which social networks to create a presence on, but they declined to comment. However, groups who did not have a mission statement that focused on one culture or missions to serve the community-at-large, were willing to talk about their choice of social media sites in the context of diversity.

Like many of these social media managers, Courtney Perez of Two River Theater Company in New Jersey cited universality of the social networks in her choices.

In regards to diversity, I must say that was not a direct factor in choosing these sites. I guess you can say these sites were appealing because they seem to be used by all ages & races therefore allowing us to reach a very broad audience. The formats of these sites are also quite uniform so the information we put up isn’t too targeted.

None of the respondents directly cited diversity as a factor for choosing to advertise or have a social network presence, except in terms of age diversity. Catherine Guarino, Director of Communications & Ticket Sales with Lansing Symphony Orchestra cited ease of use as a reason for her choice of Facebook and, recently, Twitter. But the purpose of social networking, for the symphony, was to find a younger audience.

I chose the two most popular social networking sites in hopes of reaching a younger, hipper audience. We didn't factor race into the mix at all, and I'm not sure we really ever do. Our goal with social marketing is just to stay in people's brains - to show up on their screen and remind them that we're here… What I found is that more and more older (for Facebook - say, the 50-60's) people were finding us and becoming Fans. We do have a decent college following, but the Fans that interact most with the page (comment, RSVP to events, write on our wall) are older.

More to come in part 3 of 3 of this article! We'll talk more about how arts orgs choose social media site, I'll chat with a media buyer, and more. Stay tuned...

St Petersburg - Alexandrinsky Theater

Shouting it from the grassroots rooftops: Wolf Trap Opera and the digital season launch

Midnight Launch by Temari 09 (from flickr)

For arts organizations, February brings with it the final throes of determining next year’s season. Some have renewals out already; others are still mired in scuffles with artistic, production or finance offices over which productions and dates will make next season the best it can be. Regardless of where you are in the process, if you are in marketing or PR, your thoughts have probably turned to how you will get the word out about the new season.  You may have perfected publicizing your season through renewal mailings and paper season brochures, but how do you “shout your season from the rooftops” online? Kim Witman, director Wolf Trap Opera Company (WTOC), has embarked upon an innovative new campaign to launch the company’s season this year. Located just outside of Washington, D.C., Wolf Trap bills itself as the "future of opera", a slogan that the organization seems to have taken to heart both in its programming and in its marketing efforts. As a researcher of how non-profit arts orgs use technology, I have been continually impressed by Wolf Trap’s leadership in online social media, particularly in their creation of a ning (a customized social networking site)—one of the first performing arts orgs to do so.

This season, Kim aims to get the word out to existing fans and potential audience members with a "digital season launch", combining elements of technology, grassroots campaigns, and social networking. She will celebrate today’s announcement of the WTOC 2010 season by doing guest blog posts and interviews in a few places across the blogosphere (see a complete listing at the WTOC blog).

I caught up with Kim about a week ago--a busy week for her, as she was returning from the classical Grammys. Wolf Trap was nominated for Best Opera Recording for their 2009 recording of John Musto’s Volpone. As she prepared to launch the season today, February 9, she took the time to answer some questions about launching a season digitally.

Q. In previous blog entries on Technology in the Arts, we’ve talked about digital season brochures (such as the London Symphony Orchestra) and other ways to publicize your season using technology platforms. What exactly is Wolf Trap’s concept of a digital season launch?

Kim: Wolf Trap Opera’s season announcement is only a small part of a large kick-off for the entire 2010 season of the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, and within that context we don’t have the chance to provide a whole lot of detail and texture for the opera performances. My guest posts and interviews on colleagues’ blog sites give me a chance to tell many sides of our story while creating a bit of a buzz on our little corner of the web.

Q. So today is the big day of your season launch online. What is rolling out today and what are you doing today to “shout your season from the rooftops”?

Kim: The WTOC blog is a spot from which readers and fans can fan out to dig deeper into the parts of our season and the aspects of our company that are of particular interest to them.  In addition to linking to posts on the other blogs participating in today’s effort, we’ve cranked out the news via our Facebook fan page (become a fan!), our Twitter feeds (www.twitter.com/WolfTrapOpera and www.twitter.com/kimpwitman) and the WTOC Hotspot.  Phew.

Q. You drew inspiration for this campaign from marketing guru Seth Godin, who is publicizing his latest book not through newspapers, TV or any so-called “traditional” means, but instead through blogs and other online outlets. How did you modify this idea to fit Wolf Trap Opera Company’s specific needs for the digital season launch concept?

Kim: I kept the guts of Seth’s approach intact. (I wrote him before embarking on this project, in the spirit of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery.  He wished me luck.)  I contacted the writers of a few blogs that I read regularly, and I offered to write guest posts or engage in interviews that target the area(s) of interest between my readership and theirs.  My effort isn’t nearly as massive as Seth’s was, but the goal is to focus a critical mass of attention on WTOC for a day!

Q. I have heard of surprisingly few arts organizations engaging in a digital season launch. Which aspects of your organization and its marketing channels made a digital season launch a good idea? Do you think this sort of effort will become commonplace in the future?

Kim: Our small company doesn’t typically have a lot of traction with traditional media anyway, so this isn’t a huge shift.    For the last 10 years, our main vehicle has been the website, along with the two direct mail pieces that go out later in the spring (calendar with entire Wolf Trap season, and WTOC brochure mailed to a smaller target audience).  We will continue with those traditional efforts.

The nerve center of this season announcement is the WTOC blog and its readership. The daily interchange between bloggers and their readers is vital, interactive, dynamic, messy and wonderful – and that’s the kind of energy we need to tap into.  Clearly, I could’ve compiled all of the guest posts and Q&A’s and put them on a web page, but there would be something too clinical and linear about that.

These types of initiatives are becoming more common, and the trend will undoubtedly continue.  Digital media make it possible to tell your story, no matter your budget.  The challenge is to do it wisely and in a targeted fashion.  All of the social networking initiatives are tremendously time-intensive, and they can rob a small organization of its precious human resources.  We’ve chosen to ride this wave, but we’re constantly weighing its assets and liabilities.

Q. You mentioned the time-intensive nature of investing in social media and also touched on how different platforms serve your followers differently. WTOC currently has a blog, ning site, and Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts. How do you manage which content goes on which site?

Kim: It’s an ever-moving target, but this is how we’ve been focusing our various initiatives:

• Facebook: By becoming a fan, you can get our updates (including my blog posts) through your Facebook feed.  We look at this site as a way to deliver WTOC highlights to FB users without them having to go to a separate site.
• Hotspot (ning platform): The content is pretty much a clone of Facebook, with the added attraction of a comprehensive calendar.  It exists primarily to inform fans and patrons of our non-ticketed events (artist panel discussions, free concerts, etc) and to provide one-click clearinghouse for non-Facebook-users.
• The WTOC Blog gives us a distinctive and informal voice.  It allows me to speak in detail (and when appropriate, in industry jargon) to aspiring singers and other opera geeks.  And it allows me to speak more frankly and conversationally than a traditional web page.  (I love that the words “traditional” and “web page” can now exist next to one another!)
• Twitter still serves a niche audience.  Although (when we’re not in season), both of our Twitter accounts often run the same updates, they are differentiated in the summer.  I view mine as a conversation between me and my arts industry colleagues.  And the WTOC twitter feed is intended to allow us to communicate with fans and patrons.
• The YouTube account isn’t terribly active because we are still struggling with artist rights and releases in order to be able to post content, and because we don’t have media staff in house to spend the time needed to do the pre-production work on video clips.

Q. How are you spotlighting the Season Launch through these networks?

Kim: We’ll simply be putting the WTOC blog link front and center, encouraging folks to link through and start exploring!

Q. Anything else you would like to tell us in closing?

Kim: My son is a software programmer, and I get most of my geek fix through him.  He is quick to remind me that all of our technological tools are not effective until they disappear into the fabric of the task at hand.  It takes some energy to ride the wave of the technological flavor of the day, but our goal is to conquer the learning curve and allow the technology not to be an end in itself, but a tool through which our real message is conveyed.

Kim Witman of the Wolf Trap Opera Company is celebrating today’s announcement of the WTOC 2010 season by doing guest blog posts and interviews in a few places across the blogosphere.

Link back to Kim’s blog entry at www.wolftrapopera.blogspot.com for a complete list – all of the links should be active by midday on Tuesday, February 9.

Kim Witman assumed directorship of the Wolf Trap Opera Company in 1997 after having served the Company since 1985 in a variety of roles:  principal coach, assistant conductor, music administrator and chief of music staff.  A graduate of The Catholic University of America (M.M.) and Elizabethtown College (B.S. Music Therapy), she has also been a visiting faculty member in the opera departments of the Peabody Conservatory of Music and the University of Maryland.  In addition, she has been music administrator, chorusmaster and assistant conductor for The Washington Opera, adjudicator for the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and assistant conductor for Washington Concert Opera. Ms. Witman has been active as an opera coach and recitalist in the Washington, D.C. area since 1981.  She has performed at the Kennedy Center, the Philips Collection, the White House, and at New York’s Merkin Hall.  Committed to de-mystifying the opera business for fans and aspiring professional singers, she writes at www.wolftrapopera.blogspot.com.

Why you want to know what SEO means.

Last summer I, like much of television-watching America, was bombarded with commercials touting a "decision" engine that promised to cut down on irrelevant and off-the-mark responses to search queries.

According to the ad, I am not, in my overwhelming frustration at irrelevant search results, as unique as I thought. Evidently, many (most?) of us are accustomed to having to type and refine searches until we actually encounter what we sought. If I am to believe the ad, others also find it irritating to scroll through a list of links that are loosely (or perhaps, completely un-) related to the desired result. So it isn't just me who loathes being forced to navigate unrelated blog entries or archived reviews or the site of a similarly-named beer distributor in Wisconsin!

My point is: what do you know about SEO?

SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization," and it essentially means that if I were to search for your organization you would be one of the top results--ideally THE top result--that appeared on the results page.

Don't know if your website makes the cut?  Check it out.

Seriously.  Right now.  Google, Bing, or Yahoo! your organization name.  (Or try all three!)   Now search for the name of your latest show.  What about your organization and the word "gives" or "donate" or "fundraising"?  What about your organization name and "buy tickets"? What about if you search for the name of an artist currently working with or featured by your organization?  Now try "(your city name) (type of venue, e.g. gallery, theater, dance)."

If your website, and even more specifically, the pages within your site that contain the most relevant information, do not top the list of search results, take note.  SEO is an easily-overlooked element of your organization's presence that should be considered as important as the other steps that you take to stay visible.

What must you do to accomplish this goal?

Next week I'll demystify the process of optimizing your website for the search -engine crawler.  I will delve into the nitty-gritty about SEO and what you must do and be aware of to command some of the search engine spotlight.

Building Audience Diversity Through Social Networking - Part One

When I was working in the trenches of a theatre company in the Midwest about a year and a half ago, the arts orgs in town got together to have a round-table discussion about social networking. At the time, I had grown my theatre’s social networking from mere presence to full-blown strategy and was seeing our friend numbers grow exponentially. I was proud of my Facebook page and our (at that time) fledgling Twitter site, but the MySpace page was the real shining star of the bunch, with almost twice as many friends as the Facebook page and three times as many as Twitter. Most intriguingly the people on MySpace didn’t feel like the people on the other networks at the time. They were much more diverse in terms of race and age. They didn’t have a professional feel like Linked-In or Twitter (in some cases). It was a network open to everyone, one that didn’t start as a “gated community” catering exclusively to historically white colleges and universities like Facebook. Best of all, they were asking questions through private messages that indicated that they hadn’t heard of the theatre or weren’t sure how to get information on shows.

At the meeting we went over the popular social networking sites and discussed how MySpace was losing its market share and how some of the orgs had abandoned it. I raised the question "But is MySpace really and truly dead?" to which about five people in unison responded "YES!" and someone said "let's move on". Ok, then...

Now around the same time, I read that MySpace was still growing, just at a slower pace than Facebook and Twitter, but that it was the social network of choice for African-Americans and other ethnic minorities. (This is referenced in Hispanic Trending and in the below video.) Interesting, huh? But I didn’t speak up again. I figured, the people have spoken. I became disenchanted with the MySpace page, still checking it, but not putting in much effort. Since that time, the very thing that made MySpace a great social network—its openness to all users—also led to its demise in popularity. (Although a study from FSU from July 2009 showed that the ill-favored network was still quite popular with English-preferring Hispanics, preferred more than 2:1 to Facebook.) However, the fact still remains that I gave up on something that at the time, for our org, had brought us close to those elusive “interested, but unaware” prospects that could be tomorrow’s patrons.

Video from Black Web 2.0

I didn’t put the two incidents together until Martin Luther King Day last week when I was thinking about diversity in the theatre. We shouldn’t just be thinking about audience diversity on MLK Day, or Hispanic Heritage Month, or when our grant proposal is coming due, but some organizations do. For most orgs, audience diversity is something we might value, but it often isn’t a part of our social media strategy or even a part of the marketing strategy. It’s easy to write off, because it is very difficult to track based on race or ethnicity. Maybe we don’t have the time or staff. Maybe we’re not completely sure how to do it effectively. But, the fact is, the world in which arts orgs operate is changing and not just because of the technology that has revolutionized that way we entertain ourselves or engage with the world.

The make-up of U.S. culture is changing. The census bureau projects that, by 2050, the Asian and Hispanic populations in the U.S. will have tripled. The percentage of African-Americans in the U.S. population will also continue to rise, at the same time they grow more affluent. Perhaps because of this, the for-profit business community has begun to recognize African-Americans as the hot emerging niche market, even profiling behaviors to help advertisers reach this audience. And, as Dr. Eszter Hargittai prophesied in the video above, the playing field for minorities in social networking is getting more level.

The past few years have seen the rise of niche social networking sites for African-Americans as well as Hispanic Americans. Additionally, the 2009 study at Florida State University referenced above found that equal percentages of English-preferring Hispanics, Asians, and non-Hispanic whites under the age of 35 now access social media sites 2-3 times a month. The study concludes with the following paragraph:

"Few marketers are proactively targeting ethnic minorities online and even fewer are leveraging social media to do so. A first mover advantage is available for those that devote the time and resources to engage these critical audiences in ways that they find meaningful. The fact is that we now have an unprecedented ability to reach and interact with ethnic minorities; and companies that deliver value to this segment today will be rewarded with the long term loyalty of this market."

So what are arts groups doing to build audience diversity in this market? In Part Two, I’ll "take to the streets" and chat with marketing directors (including Thomas Cott of Cott Mail), a media buyer, and more. Stay tuned!

---

There's been a vibrant debate going on in the arts blogosphere about diversity, how to best reach new audiences and the relevance of American theatre. Here are a few of the posts:

'Outrageous Fortune': Playwright book full of whine and din, Chris Jones of  Theatre Loop (Chicago Trib)

What if we are all wrong?, J. Holtham of 99 Seats

More on diversity, Greg Sandow (Arts Journal)

Lyn Gardner: "We Need to Act Now to Save Theatre", Scott Walters of Theatre Ideas

No history?, Rob Weinert-Kendt of The Wicked Stage (American Theatre)

Mobile apps and the arts: where we are and where we're going

Expressway at night by The Pug Father (from flickr.)

2009 saw many new technologies first start up (like Google Wave), slowly emerge (mobile apps), or explode with popularity (Twitter). In the past year, we at Technology in the Arts have been writing a lot about the emergence of mobile technologies in the performing arts, particularly the emergence of mobile apps. We’ve highlighted disagreements between artistic and administration staff about the role of phones in the audience, as well as the new and unique ways orgs are promoting the arts through apps. We featured a short video of mobile marketing guru Ron Evans of Groupofminds demonstrating new apps as part of a webinar hosted by the Center for Arts Management and Technology on “Mobile Applications for the Arts: Where Are We” (more on webinars at the freshly made-over CAMT site.) I caught up with Ron again around New Year's to discuss where mobile technology is now and how we might expect it to develop in 2010 and beyond. Amelia: What do you think arts patrons want in a cell phone app? What are the most successful examples that you’ve seen at giving the intended audience what they want?

Ron Evans: In a study I recently completed for the Artsopolis Network (who is considering building a mobile application to allow patrons to access their arts calendaring portal), of patrons aged 48-64, surprisingly one of the top results to your question is "Parking." People really want to know what parking options are available to them before the event, how much the parking costs, etc. This is a perfect example of some of the answers one might overlook when focusing on the arts organization's presentation of "the art" and is really very practical and useful information to know. Other responses that score high include restaurant information for pre/post show activities, availability of events near the users location (and the event start times), getting directions to the event, and being able to purchase tickets through the app (hopefully with discounts). These are all practical responses, and that's ok right now -- we're in a phase of early adoption, and outside of these functions that they are already familiar with (using Yelp to find restaurants, or using the iPhone's maps to get directions to a location) people don't really know what they want yet. They will be attracted to new phone technologies/capabilities that are cool as they develop.

iPhone Transparent Screen by edans (from flickr.)

A: In the current marketplace, what are these apps useful for? Is it simply audience engagement and a connection with the organization? Is it selling tickets? Or do you think that at this point they serve more as publicity devices—the organization that comes up with a cool app gets written up in papers, and gets a reputation for being forward-thinking?

RE: I feel that it is all of the above. If your arts organization creates a mobile app, it still feels like magic. Since many groups are local or regional and not national in scope, it doesn't really matter if an arts group in Boston creates an app similar to the one you just created in San Diego -- to your local community, you're cool. You're looked at as a forward-thinking organization with resources to spend on research and development, and I've seen several funders interested in funding new technology like this. Now, there aren't many examples of financial return on investment for the creation of an app. But similar to social networking, there are many examples of a visibility return on investment, and that's of course quite useful in many cases. But some people have to be the pioneers, who build things because they are fun and cool and give a new spin on the experience -- those people are the ones that eventually find the ROI. But to finish your question, apps can be designed to serve a variety of purposes, from deepening audience engagement to simply helping people find events to attend in the first place.

A: Back in the 90’s, there was a big “everyone needs a website” push for all commercial and non-profit orgs. Now everyone wants their website to be mobile-accessible. Is the next step that everyone needs a mobile app for their organization? In short, are apps right for everyone?

RE: Let's draw a quick distinction between mobile accessibility and mobile apps. The former is simply having a website that looks good when viewed in a mobile browser, and this is an absolute must-have. The latter is the creation of a new software program that people can download from places like the Apple AppStore, and is not a requirement, but is certainly cool. For a mobile-accessible site, your web designer should create a mobile-friendly version of your site, and you should try it out on various phones. If you use a content management system such as Wordpress or Drupal, there are free plugins that will do this for you automatically -- it's quite easy, and has the advantage of working for any phone with web-browsing capability. Mobile applications however, only work on the phone they were designed for, so you need different applications for the iPhone, the Droid, Blackberrys, Nokia's, etc. New tools are looking to make this a bit easier: for example, there are software coding environments that allow you to code your app in a general way, and then spit out "flavors" of apps that work on different phones. New technologies like this should bring down the cost of creating apps significantly.

iPhone sunset in the Andes by Gonzalo Baeza Hernández (from flickr.)

A: What type of organization could benefit the most from creating a mobile app? How do you suggest an organization research and decide if a mobile app is right for them?

RE: I don't think the use of an app would be better or worse for a specific arts genre. If you're doing interesting things, an app would offer a new medium to communicate that information. Before deciding to move forward on any development, I'd do two things. 1. Research what's out there already -- do some searches in the app store of your smartphone for organizations like yours, and see if apps exist already, what they do, and how you might use them if you were to contact the org that made them. 2. Ask your patrons -- send them a survey and tell them you're considering creating mobile access to the arts experience, and ask them what they would like to see, with an open-ended comment option. I've taken arts organizations through this process and answer analysis, and the information received is fantastic in focusing your development, saving you money, and ultimately increasing your chance of "success" in however you define it for your creation.

A: I’ve been researching streaming video in arts organizations and I have been finding there are many performing arts organizations that are having trouble obtaining the rights to stream video. Similarly, there are many modern museums and galleries that cannot obtain permission from artists to put a photograph of their art on their website, much less a mobile app. Do you see this as a significant barrier to arts organizations developing apps?

RE: Yes, it is a huge barrier. People that own the rights need to lighten up and realize that capturing the likeness of a piece or an event to share the act of participation isn't the same as being there in person and participating. But this is really only a barrier to apps that are designed to display this sort of content. There millions of other ways an app could augment my arts-attending experience, and many organizations are focusing on those ideas right now.

Samsung mobile phone by Milica Sekulic (from flickr.)

A: Do you foresee a huge demand for on-demand video on smartphones? How do you think the market reconciles the hi-def video craze with viewing performances on a low-def platform (i.e. tiny screen, tinny sound quality)? What sort of apps do you see emerging in the future, based on current trends?

RE: Actually, on-demand video, no. You can do it already and that will just become easier. The next big thing is going to be live streaming video -- sharing the experience you're at right now, with yo friends who aren't there with you. The iphone already has this capability (although you can't use it unless you break your contract with Apple and "jailbreak" your phone). AT&T also doesn't want you to have this capability right now, as it will be a huge drain on their mobile network resources. But as 4G speed and more becomes standard in the next couple of years, you're going to see this capability emerge, and instead of asking people not to take pictures, many arts groups will be asking people to not stream capture the entire event on their phones. This is going to be a big battle. But again, I point out that watching a show through a cell phone camera is not the same thing as attending the show in person in all its glory. One should be a "taste" of the other, intended to drive interest and participation. But many rights holders and arts organizations aren't going to see it like that for a long time.

I also think there will be more and more location-based apps, that know where you are in relation to everybody else, and your friends. For example, it is going to be easy and precise for you to be able to find your friends in a crowded 1800 seat concert hall -- you'll be able to point your phone like a compass to find them, as well as see them represented on a map that includes the walls etc. of the physical space you're in. There are already apps being worked on that help you find friends to attend with, identifying people of similar interests and tastes. And apps will start asking you for permission to do the things you do most -- do you usually go out to dinner before shows? Your phone will know that, and ask you "should I make a reservation at X restaurant for you?" You just give the ok -- the default will be that the phone asks for your approval, not the other way around with you hunting for a restaurant and trying to tell the phone you want to make a reservation. Sound like the stuff from science fiction movies? It's closer than you think, and it will all be based on the continued constant recording of your preferences and actions, in order to try to predict your future behavior. Getting your DNA examined to know your physical traits is pretty commonplace today -- getting your behavioral preferences mapped will be the goal of tomorrow. Sounds potentially Orwellian, I know. But if you can get beyond that, it's pretty exciting stuff, and we are just starting to play around with ways to enhance the arts experience itself using these technologies -- interesting stuff to come!

Ron Evans is the founder of Groupofminds.com Arts Consultants, and is a leading developer and researcher of arts marketing and audience development using technology. His firm assists arts groups to explore emerging technologies and measure their impact on patron behavior in expanding arts audiences. He can be reached at http://groupofminds.com/contact-us