Confirmed by Nonprofit Quarterly: Generating online content is NOT optional

Just when you thought your nonprofit’s résumé was updated and accurate, it is time to add another job responsibility: publisher.

As recently reported by Joe Waters with Nonprofit Quarterly, “Nonprofit employees have always had to wear a lot of hats: fundraiser, marketer, grant writer, etc. Here’s one more you need to get used to wearing: publisher. Fortunately, this additional job has a real benefit, as it engages current and potential supporters with useful, interesting and credible information that directly drives donor support.”

The key to generating and publishing online content is to be timely, stay relevant, and to “inform, educate and inspire.” Unlike an advertisement, online content allows followers to interact with the information, contribute and hear/see/participate in the organization’s story.

While many of our followers have already identified and addressed the publishing aspect of their nonprofit work, Nonprofit Quarterly offers three reasons why generating and publishing online content is no longer an option for small nonprofit organizations.

1) “It’s part of being a top nonprofit brand”

Build community around your brand and cause by publishing engaging, inspiring, visually compelling and relevant content (and just to clarify, that is NOT your monthly newsletter).

2) “You need to stand out”

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there. We are all on Facebook, we all have Twitter accounts for our organizations, many organizations maintain blogs—it’s time to step up your online content, videos, podcasts, links, downloadable and free content, etc. Simply having an online presence is no longer enough. Though we prefer to think we are not competing with other nonprofit organizations, the truth of the matter is, we are.

“With more and more nonprofits coming online each year, content is a key tool in separating your nonprofit from the pack. This is especially important as people search for your nonprofit on Google, Bing and Yahoo. Several factors are important in how search engines rank and deliver search results, but one thing is clear: if you don’t produce high quality content and links, online searchers won’t find you. Period.”

3) “You can’t just do good work anymore”

Nonprofit to nonprofit, many of us share similar, philanthropic visions for our organizations. Because of this, the general public has its pick of relevant, benevolent, and noble organizations to support and fund. So now that you can’t claim your work is MORE important or MORE charitable than the next nonprofit’s, how do you get that donor’s attention and dollar? Answer: tell your story in a compelling way, manipulating the resources the web provides. Facebook photo albums, Twitter contests, IncenTix by ShowClix, Pinterest, podcasts, infographics – these and the resources we feature here on Technology in the Arts can help you do just that.

Am I suggesting all nonprofits abandon the newsletter and print medium in this competitive, nonprofit landscape? Of course not. YouTube channels and 140-character-Twitter-contests are wasted on my parents. They look for the newsletter in the mail every month (but continue to impress me when they sign up to receive them by e-mail…way to go, Mom and Dad, makin' me proud).

Publishing online has become increasingly dynamic, visual, and allows for a voice in 3-D; a voice that speaks louder, in more colors, and more emotionally than the traditional newsletter printed and mailed for years and years. Storytelling has moved online with a worldwide audience waiting to feel emotionally compelled, connected, and stimulated by the content your organization generates and publishes.

Six Ways Arts Organizations Can Improve their Facebook Advertising

Guest blogger Erik Gensler is the President of Capacity Interactive, a digital marketing consulting firm for arts organizations. This fall Capacity Interactive is hosting Digital Marketing Boot Camp for Arts Marketers, a 2-day conference October 25-26 in NYC. Conference topics include: Marketing the Arts with Video, Mobile Marketing, Writing for the Web, Online Fundraising, and the topic of this blog post: Facebook Marketing. More information at http://www.dmbootcamp4arts.com

I'm calling for a moratorium on boring Facebook ads for the arts. As arts marketers, we have amazing products to sell -- live arts that provide moving experiences to audiences every night. We have beautiful sets and costumes, sexy dancers, and attractive actors. But what do most performing arts Facebook ads look like?

Headline: Show I've Never Heard of

Stock Production Photo

Come see <Show I've never heard of> at< theater I like>.

Starts April 5th. Tickets start at $25.

Snooze. We could do much better. Here are six tips to improve your Facebook advertising.

1.) Set goals. Before you begin, set goals for your campaigns. These can include things native to Facebook like: drive sharing, build fan base, drive event RSVPs, drive video views, etc. or drive visits to our website. One campaign can’t do everything to pick two to three goals and focus. I tend to think you can be most successful driving the native Facebook functions such as sharing, video views, RSVPs, etc. These are the easiest to track on Facebook and what the new ad formats are designed to do. I've also ran many campaigns that take users off of Facebook to a website. As Facebook builds more advertising options to keep users on Facebook and track their interactions, I think there are more benefits to running those types of ads.

Then review your advertising reports often. You can see what is working and what is not. Pause and replace the duds. Also make sure to closely watch for frequency. If your average frequency for any ad approaches 10 then you need to replace it to fight fatigue.

2.) Highlight benefits, not features. I see far too many Facebook ads laden with features and with zero benefits. Features are much less interesting. Features would include: At xxx theater, performances begin 4/25, comfortable seats. They are useful, but benefits make far more compelling ad copy. Strong quotes provide great benefits. "The most brilliant ballerina of her generation" or "You don’t just see an Ailey performance, you feel it." Tell a story. Build excitement.

3.) Use imagery that captures attention and change it frequently. As I mentioned earlier, we have the benefits of beautiful sets, costumes, sexy dancers, and attractive actors. For our dance clients, the Facebook posts that get the most interaction are ones with shirtless men and dancers in super-human poses.

Have your designer alter the images so they capture attention. Try adding borders or bright background colors. Or try to crop out the image and put it on a white background so it pops.

Also, if you ever ran a good ad on Facebook, you know your click-through rate (CTR) lasts only a couple of days. The only way to keep your CTR high is to keep your images fresh. So create lots of ads and rotate them often.

4.) Tighten your language. Is the language as tight as can be and under 90 characters? If not, cut nonessential words. Keep sentences short. Use active voice. Posts with fewer than 250 characters see about 60% more engagement

5.) Micro Target. Facebook allows you to slice and dice your audience in many different ways. Say, for example, that you are promoting the musical White Christmas. Determine all of the potential audience groups: people who like classic movies, people with kids, people who like Irving Berlin or his contemporaries, people interested in musicals, people who like tap dancing, etc. Then create unique ads for each interest with headlines that will grab their attention. For people with kids the headline should be "Family Holiday Entertainment" for those who like tap dancing "A Tap Dancing Delight," etc. It is best to create at least two headlines for each interest group to start. The more versions the better.

6.) Take advantage of the new ad types. There are many types of ads you can run on Facebook. The two types of ads I think are most useful in selling performances are:

• Stories to build up your likes. This just shows the name of your organization and the name of a friend who likes it. Social ads, ones with the names of friends attached, get far more clicks than non social ads. Target these ads to friends of your current fans. Make sure to add the demographic targeting on top of these ads to target the type of audience you are after. For one client we only target college educated women over 30 since we know they purchase 80% of tickets.
• Page Post ads. These allow you to select a recent post and promote it as an ad. This is the only way to get videos into your ads without purchasing a premium sponsorship (which starts at $25,000). Just save your video on Facebook and create a post about it. Then go to the ad interface and select your organization as the target, choose "a specific post on your organization," then choose the story you want to promote from the dropdown. Voila, a video ad. The other advantage of these types of ads is that users can like, comment, and share the ad. When a user “shares” your ad, you get thousands of endorsed impressions. Also consider RSVP ads where you build an event on Facebook and the call to action is for users to RSVP.

Want to learn more about Facebook advertising? Don’t miss the half day session on Facebook Marketing at Digital Marketing Boot Camp for Arts Marketers, October 25-26 in NYC. More information at http://www.dmbootcamp4arts.com.

Cash Mobs

According to Public Radio International, the first Cash Mob was started by a writer and engineer from Buffalo called Chris Smith to counter the growing culture of discounting (couponing and deals from Living Social as well as other deal sites).  Now in over a dozen cities in the United States and Canada Cash Mobs are getting significant media attention.  Organized online, the suggested rules are relatively simple and are centered around the concept that the business must be a local one and that a non-discounted product must be purchased for $20 or more by each member of the cash mob.

Cash mobs are most frequently organized through social media and can be found under the Twitter hashtag #cashmob  or on Facebook under cashmob and your city.  As of the international cash mob day last March 24th, 2012 Cash Mobs have been organized in 32 states and two Canadian provinces.  Growth of this movement has been swift with new cities joining cash mob lists every week and is sometimes linked with a buy local campaign.

The goals of many of these cash mobs are to save a local business who's sales have been low.  By all indications there has not yet been a cash mob for a theater or museum but it is only a matter of time.  As cash mobs are supposed to be social activities they would be well suited for many arts settings.  The social media context for these activities have made them extremely easy to measure metrics on as each cash mob elicits numerous check ins and photo posts.  The incentive for participation in these activities is a sense of community support.  Non-profit arts organizations are fundamentally community organizations ergo the arts should be obvious beneficiaries of this movement.  If anyone knows of a successful cash mob for an arts organization, please comment with the results and links if possible!

5 best practices to keep your email marketing relevant

Guest blogger Amelia Northrup is the Strategic Communications Specialist at TRG Arts, the data-driven arts consulting firm. She previously blogged for TITA from 2009-2011 as she completed her Master of Arts Management from Carnegie Mellon. This post is cross-posted on Analysis from TRG Arts.

We’re not buying the bad rap email marketing is getting these days. You’ve heard it all before. Open rates are down. Users often filter emails by sender and ignore unwanted or low priority communications. Sophisticated spam filters are plucking out and putting in quarantine anything resembling a sales message. And sophisticated users, especially those in the Millennial generation, prefer other media.

The offsetting fact is that access to email is greater than ever. Users of all ages have smartphones and tablets that make on-to-go communication easy, convenient, and ubiquitous. And, those worrisome open rates for email? They actually reached a two-year high in the third quarter of 2011.

So, when our clients ask whether it is worth it to continue to use e-mail in marketing and fundraising campaigns, our reply is: Absolutely.

Why? 

Email is cost-effective. In TRG’s two decades of experience, the most effective way to reach (and sell to) arts and entertainment patrons is via direct marketing. Simply put, direct communications get the right message in front of the right patron at the right time whether the message goes out by snail mail, telemarketing, or email. (Read a case study on this.) Of all direct channels, email marketing is often the cheapest weapon in your arsenal. Social media and other new media channels can help a campaign, but, like radio, TV and other “broadcast” media, it’s far less likely to reach the intended target and make the same sort of impact as a direct, targeted message.

Email plays a crucial role in today’s multi-channel campaigns.  We advise a 2-1 punch of direct snail mail with some sort of follow-up by email.  That second “touch”  via email acts as a “booster shot” to a campaign already in motion—reminding patrons of a deal or deadline and keeping your organization top-of-mind.

So, what makes email marketing effective?

1. Keep complete, clean patron records.  In all direct marketing, cleanliness is next to godliness--regardless of the channel you’re using, but especially with email marketing. A patron may move from their home and keep their email address and vice versa. Best practice is to keep each patron’s contact information up-to-date and tied to their home address and to their transaction history with your organization.

2. Update patron records regularly.  As a rule of thumb, you should always plan to import fresh lists at the end of each phase of a subscription, membership, and donor campaigns.  Also, refresh your records and email lists after each event or program has finished its run.  That’s how new patrons and their most recent transactions get added to your lists.

3. Make sure that those who opt out stay out. If your email system is worth its salt, it should automatically take people off your lists who opt out—and keep them out if you inadvertently add them again.  But what about patrons who have opted out of all communication with you in your ticketing or CRM system only? You must make sure that your email lists include those opt-outs too.

4. Reserve your right to a one-time email. Opting out from email communication is governed by separate, different standards than are “do not mail” and “do not call” designations. A patron’s presence on one of those mail or call suppression lists need not stop you from emailing. Once there is a business transaction--a ticket sale, donation, purchase of an event--you may email both a confirmation of the transaction and one follow-up communication. Best practice dictates that your one follow-up communication include, prominently, the ability to opt-out from future emails. So, we advise that your follow-up be well-crafted to keep patrons coming back and wanting to hear more from you. (Here are some good examples of follow-up emails from Convio.)

5. Invest time in email data hygiene.  It’s a lot of effort to pull lists correctly and import those lists into your email system--not to mention tracking which are current and who is on which lists.  (That’s why we love systems that integrate all transactions with email addresses!) The rewards of time you invest in your email data are great: higher open rates, greater response to offer, more engaged patrons.  A tool like email, which is direct, cheap and nearly universal, is worth every bit of time you invest, and will be relevant for years to come.

Speaker Series' Spotlight: Chad M. Bauman, Director of Communications for Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater

On February 10th, the Master of Arts Management program at Carnegie Mellon University will welcome Mr. Chad Bauman, Director of Communications for Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater to speak as part of our Speaker Series. His presentation, Confessions from an Arts Marketer – Learning from the Past, Looking Toward the Future, will highlight the worst practices in the field, what can be learned from them, and how to move beyond them. I recently chatted with Chad and talked Tweet Seats, fire in the belly, and what he wished he had known about the field from the very beginning…

Elizabeth @ Technology in the Arts: You’ve held top, senior positions as the previous Director of Marketing and Communications for Americans for the Arts and now as Director of Communications for Arena Stage. You’ve clearly figured it out. But even so, what’s the one piece of advice you wish you had received before entering the field?

Chad Bauman: I am very thankful for my education from CalArts in Producing and Theater Management. But I would have to say…I wish I had learned how to get stuff for free. When you are first starting out, it’s how good are you at convincing people to give you stuff for free- advertising space, promotional opportunities…it’s absolutely critical for smaller companies; you have to do it really well.

E: Now, with all the social media networks out there, it must be easier to get recognized and make connections with those who CAN give you stuff for free.

C: Earlier on, it was super controversial for arts organizations to be on social media; they didn’t understand what the value would be. It also used to be a smaller company could distinguish itself on social media, but now there is a lot more clutter. Being on social media is an exceptional way to get free promotion, but now you have to compete with everyone else out there.

E: So I have to ask, in your opinion, which is the better platform to get a message out and to get attention, Twitter or Facebook?

C: I’m liking Twitter more and more. It’s the most efficient platform. It began with Friendster, then MySpace, then Facebook. I think Facebook use is on the decline and Twitter is on the incline. It’s more of a conversational tool.

E: How about audience members Tweeting during a show? Tweet Seats?

C: You have to be careful; you have to find a balance with Tweet Seats. There was a case where a theater established Tweet Seats for a show, but the resident writers of the production were never consulted and they were not on board with it.

E: What are you more in favor of then, Tweet Seats or post-experience Tweeting?

C: I am more in favor of post-experience Tweeting. You can’t get the full experience if you are on your phone, you’ll miss something. You can miss the most crucial detail, especially in a very nuanced performance. There are many other ways to invite conversation about a production.

E: For those of us logging in hours on online job boards and stalking career services on an daily basis, what are the qualities you look for as Director in a potential employee or intern?

C: Fire in the belly. By that I mean, a person who is internally motivated. I’m not sure you can teach it. They want to do a great job and are motivated by wanting to do a great job. You can teach skills, but you can’t teach internal motivation.

E: In particular to marketing?

C: I look for people who are not afraid to take risks, calculated risks, but risks nonetheless. You have to be willing to take a risk in an entrepreneurial spirit.

E: We, my fellow job and internship seekers, thank you for that advice! I don’t want to take up too much more of your time, so one last question. In a recent blog, I looked at the changing face of America over the next four or five decades and its shift to a minority-majority population. How can visual arts or performing arts organizations expand their audience to reflect this change?

C: First, it’s about programming and community outreach. At Arena Stage, we go out into the community, to churches, to schools, to make personal relationships. You can communicate to younger demographics about your organization’s activity and productions using technology tools. But it’s about programming. Marketers are very good at targeting a specific demographic and figuring out what tools to use. But regardless of the tool, there has to be an interest in the production or the organization’s mission.

You can read more about this Speaker Series event on the Master of Arts Management Speaker Series' website, discuss arts marketing with Chad on his blog, and find further information about the Master in Arts Management (MAM) program on the Heinz College webpage.

Interview with Chad Bauman conducted and condensed by Technology in the Arts contributor, Elizabeth Quaglieri.

TechSoup launches Annual Digital Storytelling contest!

Whether they know it or not, every organization has a story to tell. But sometimes, it just so happens that this story is lost amid the frenetic activities of day-to-day work, and soon finds itself sitting quietly in the old forgotten folder of organizational history. Well, the month of February is the time to retrieve that story and subject it to some digital editing. This is because TechSoup, an organization that enables non profits to achieve their mission through technological solutions, has decided that some stories are best told digitally!

Recently, TechSoup launched its Annual Digital Storytelling contest which, “combines professional instruction and friendly competition into a hands-on media-making project.” Over the month of February,“TechSoup Global will host a series of interactive events including Twitter Chats, live webinars, and trainings designed to help nonprofits produce a one-minute video or five-picture Flickr slideshow that tells the story of its organization.” Yes, a minute or five pictures is all you have!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccCwQeAo4l4

TechSoup will accept submissions through February 29th, and in March, a panel of judges will select the organizations with the very best videos and “take their digital storytelling to the next level.” Another interesting and fun aspect is the Audience Choice Award, where “winning and notable submissions will be screened in San Francisco and live-streamed online through SecondLife as a special “red carpet” event on March 28, 2012.”

TechSoup’s competition is beneficial to not-for-profit organizations because stories are one of the most engaging ways to raise awareness and gather support. If an organization has a compelling story, people will listen. Better yet, if an organization can narrate it digitally, people will not only listen but they will also share it! And if the vast and ever expanding YouTube community is pleased, it might just go viral!

So non profits, make haste! You have a month and at most, a minute!

The Rise of Online Philanthropic Contests

Over the past couple of years or so there has been a steady rise in the phenomena of competitive voting contests for not for profit organizations to receive grants for projects or operations.  These contests are run by large corporations as well as not for profit groups.  Examples of corporate contests take different shapes such as Pepsi's with the Pepsi Refresh Project which gives grants ranging from $5k to $50k based on competitive community voting toChase Community Giving which touts donations over $600 million dollars through Facebook contests.  The National Trust for Historic Preservation has similarly put contests into place by granting to various historic restoration projects based on the number of votes they receive online.

Whether these contests sit well with critic's ethical concerns or not, the volume of web traffic generated for the recipients, the donor organizations, and the organizations who compete but do not win is remarkable.  According to Pepsi, the most recent contest in the fall of 2011 garnered more than half a million distinct registrations with over 3.5 million votes counted on the Pepsi site alone.  If you aggregate this number with all of the site visits, social network hits, and emails then you have a truly noteworthy phenomena.

Why are people so invigorated by these contests?  There are less time intensive ways to earn money in aggregate.  One can point to the idea that the contest is a game and the competition itself is what people are engaging in more than the philanthropic cause.  It could also be argued that the community effort of building a team to go online and vote for the cause for multiple days has an intrinsic value as well and that by the simple act of building this team you are building and drawing constituents deeper into the arts community.

As these online contest continue even more organizations are starting to do them. The Humane Society recently used a online photo contest to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Case Foundation has been running a voter based contest for years, and American Express has also run contests in the past.

The following are some tips that have been gleaned from articles and criticism of various contests mentioned previously:

1)  Make sure that the contest aligns with your mission.  By diverting resources for a potential pie in the sky pot of money you can detract from your organization's true work.

2)  Ask what your organization can gain from competing for these pots of money?  Set forward goals of community building and identify volunteers to assist with these aims.

3)  If you are going to market this to your patrons identify your budget for staff time and delegate a reasonably proportional amount of money to pursue getting the word out.

4)  Don't start mid-steam.  Almost all winners of these contests have strong starts and once you are behind in the voting it is hard to keep up.  If you see a contest in progress that you would have liked to take part in simply put it on your calendar for an effort next year as your opportunity may all ready have passed.

Performing Arts Legacies Online

Recently the Merce Cunningham Dance Company shut down following the death of Merce Cunningham.  The action taken by the founder are somewhat unique in the world of the arts and there have been observations of what this means.  Meanwhile the content of the Merce Cunningham Company, at least in part can still be found online through various video projects and the archive left by the company through the Living Legacy Plan and maintained by the Merce Cunningham Trust.  The continued availability of this content is carrying on the legacy in the true spirit of its founder who frequently wrote of the transitory nature of his performance and was a student of Buddhist philosophy.

Further performances have resided online for years through projects like On The Boards TV which is currently celebrating its two year anniversary with a sale of online content.  The content can be accessed through one time rental, purchase, and through subscription and is high quality, having been shot on 4-5 hi-definition cameras.  Through content providers like On The Boards TV  and do it yourself online venues such as YouTube and Vimeo the amount of online performing arts content has grown significantly.  Artists are gradually recognizing that real content online is critical for accessing new audiences and maximizing market penetration.

Innovation in the field of dance and theater can go deeper than this.   Critics have noticed a trend at fringe festivals of micro-performances and intimate theater.    While artists seem to be taking advantage of physical spaces for the time being, the possibilities for using digital spaces are increasing everyday.  The idea of doing live performances online has certainly received attention.  The growth of services such as Skype make interfacing virtually and therefore using these same services as a performance venue more likely every year.

Pinterest, Instagram, and Percolate: The Latest in Social Media

Today’s social media networks are engaging in covert retrospection. Even as the world preoccupies itself with its future, social media platforms are becoming uncannily reminiscent of the past. Twitter is the modern day telegram, Facebook the diary that is no longer hidden, and recently, there has been a flurry of activity on Pinterest and Instagram, both of which are equally retro savvy.

A board where you can pin up your favorite ideas and images. A lens that lets you transport your photos back to 1977. Yes, Pinterest and Instagram are definitely retrograde in their outlook, and more importantly, incredibly popular. In fact, so many have taken an interest in Pinterest that last year it was “one of the top ten most visited social networks.” Hence, a host of organizations have begun to use these networks to visually engage with their readers, customers, or audiences.

Pinterest is a virtual pin board where you can “organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web.” Users can categorize their interests into boards and subsequently build on that interest through pinning up images that inspire or appeal to them. Moreover, each pin can be re-pinned, liked, and commented on, leading to the creation of a social dialogue.

Recently, there was an informative article in Outspoken Media about how to effectively use Pinterest.  In her article, the author mentioned that while it is against the Pinterest’s etiquette to use the site for self-promotion, brands could nevertheless use it to narrate their own story, rather than the story of what they sell.

“Pinterest works best when brands show customers what’s going on below the surface. When they allow consumers to see the spirit of their brand by showing them not what they do, but why they do it – what inspires them, what moves them, what the company culture is based on. They do that all through topic-specific boards.”

Given the entirely visual motivations of Pinterest, it’s striking that not many arts organizations are on the site. There is even a whole category of pins under Art! If your organization’s mission, vision, passions, and inspirations can be conveyed visually, then you may want to check whether Pinterest is hiding behind more significant pins (Facebook, Twitter) on your social media brown board.

While Pinterest is teeming with inspiring and beautiful pictures, the social media app Instagram, may just be the source of those pictures. Instagram is an app that lets you filter your images in a variety of styles, which can then be uploaded to the Instagram site and shared with other users. The filters, which are remarkably, aesthetically attuned, have probably redeemed many a picture from the depths of Dante’s photographic inferno, (if one were to exist).

And for an app that is used, even by the President of America, for politically strategic if not aesthetic reasons, Instagram has certainly gained a lot of momentum. Arts organizations can use the app for sprucing up images they’d like to share and publish them on a wide variety of sites, including Instagram itself. The app can also work as a marketing tool and was recently employed by Tiffany & Co in their ad campaign titled What Makes Love True.

Finally, if the muse of social media content generation has marooned you on the island of blankness, Percolate is here to help. Percolate helps brands generate content through the process of online curation.  As stated on their website, “Percolate bubbles up interesting content from around the web and presents it back to a brand editor to add a comment and publish back out to social channels and websites.” As of now, the site is invite only, but brands can get in touch and learn more about the dissipation of social media content on their website.

So before you despair at the idea of building yet another social media platform, wait a while. Let the possibilities that these sites open up... percolate.

Social Media Analytics are totally.awe.sm

Its not often that one comes across a company named awesome. Perhaps, companies fear the mighty implications of cool contained in those two syllables. Yet, one San Francisco based start-up has accepted the challenge of living up to those expectations by putting forth an awe-some value proposition. “awe.sm is the leading platform for companies to harness social data. We measure how social marketing like Facebook posts and Twitter updates leads to meaningful outcomes, like signups, purchases, and other business goals.”

Space

True to their URL address, their work is totally.awe.sm because they are helping developers, marketers, and organizations effectively monitor and measure their social media and marketing campaigns. While awe.sm has been around for the past two and a half years, the company recently made headlines because it received $4 million dollars in funding from the Foundry Group, and it plans to use the money for further development and expansion of its social data monitoring platform.

SPa

Besides its additional services that are tailored towards marketing professionals and developers, awe.sm helps an organization in two ways; through optimizing their sharing and understanding their fans.

Space

Firstly, awe.sm can help further an organization’s social media strategy through individually tracking each post that uses awe.sm’s url shortening code. By tracking each tweet or post individually, an organization can learn about the type of posts that attract web traffic, the optimal time for posts, and the actual monetary returns on social media campaigns. It is this last measure on returns that really differentiates awe.sm from other social media tracking tools because awe.sm lets “publishers analyze just how much a Like is worth to them.”

While Awe.sm’s tracking tools have been Facebook centric in the past, they have recently “evolved to include other social networks like Twitter and developed a more sophisticated set of APIs that allows content publishers more insight into who is Liking and Sharing their posts on Facebook, and who among those converts to paying customers for the content publisher.” Hence, organizations can now use awe.sm to track their posts on Twitter as well as Google+ along with gauging the monetary value of their social media campaigns on each of those sites.

Secondly, awe.sm enables an organization to visualize its social media sharing pattern through some very nifty graphics, which can help an organization identify its influencers, the people who can sway public interest towards a particular product or cause. An example of these graphical and interactive interfaces can be found at VIPLi.st, which is “a fun visualization of the data awe.sm tracks for Plancast.”

                                   

While awe.sm is geared towards for-profit organizations, not-for profit organizations can still gain some valuable insight into social media analytics. Awe.sm’s capabilities could be used for fundraising, where organizations could track the kind of posts that are leading to the highest ROIs, shares, signups, and clicks. Moreover, awe.sm would also be very useful  in determining which social media channel (Facebook vs Twitter vs Google+) is most effective in connecting and conversing with followers or fans.

And for those interested in learning more about social media analysis, the awe.sm team runs an interesting blog, in which they provide valuable insights into the world of social media along with some great advice on social media strategies, industry predictions, and best practices. Awe.sm also holds webinars for those interested in learning more about the application of their social media platform.

The world has become a sociable place, at least as far as online sharing, liking, and conversing is concerned. And organizations should be careful not to overlook social media analytics because, in essence, they provide insight into people’s emotions, which is a very powerful and influential piece of information for any organization in any field.

Earlier this year, Technology in the Arts wrote a three part series on The Art of Social Media Analytics and with companies such as awe.sm, these analytics truly become an art form because awe.sm’s tools are able to create a compelling and powerful visual story around a set of clicks, retweets, plus ones, and likes.