How to Opt Out of the Facebook Mistake

Facebook’s privacy settings and the wave of controversy they caused have created a new level of user awareness when it comes to personal information on web-based technologies. The Palo Alto giant decided to roll out a new program where people were automatically opted in to share their personal information across the web that they had saved on Facebook. Facebook coupled this roll out with a poor explanation of what it was, who it was affecting, and how users could manage it. The convoluted privacy controls and constitutionality were hit hardest, but they were not the real problem in this case. The actual problems here lie in communication and choice. I agree with Mark Zucherburger that a more open Internet is a better Internet and that the more people share, the more social the Internet will become. Unfortunately, sharing ones personal information needs to be a choice and users need to understand how and why they are sharing their information. “Because it’s good for you” is not an acceptable answer for most people.

Arts organizations in the US need to take this Facebook quagmire and use it as a case study for their own e-marketing and e-mailing policies. Communication and choice will lead to stronger web based support and a happier constituency.

Things arts organizations should keep in mind:

1. E-mail and e-marketing should almost always be opt in for supporters
2. Organization should explain why and how they will be contacting people
3. If possible, users should be able to customize what they receive
4. Opting in and opting out should be very easy and take little effort
5. Safety measures on how the organization will protect a users personal information and contact information should be clearly stated on the website and reiterated in the first e-contact

Opt in policies are generally the most effective and considered to be best practice. This is where Facebook made their fatal mistake and where arts organizations need to ensure they are excelling.  Organizations only want people to receive information that want to receive it. By allowing people to opt in to programs, the organization is letting the individual take responsibility and targeting individuals who want more contact with the organization.

Once someone has opted in to e-marketing and/ joined the e-mail list for an organization, they should be able to choose what they want to receive information about. Maybe they only want information on ticket sales or a certain type of programming. Maybe they only want the annual report and education programming. Being able to customize what information they receive will help keep them more engaged with the organization and make them less likely to opt out or stop reading e-blasts.

Finally, people should feel safe giving an organization their e-mail address and personal information. With all of the information sharing, spamming and possibilities for profit, consumers are very wary of giving away any contact information these days. Post on your website and in the confirmation e-mail how you are protecting their identity and their personal information. These practices will help any organization build a strong e-mailing list and e-marketing campaign.

Dynamic Pricing: Making It Work?

The debate over dynamic pricing continues. Back in March, Gene Carr from Patron Technology wrote a great overview of dynamic pricing and voiced his support for the practice. Last week, Trisha Mead at 2am Theatre challenged the naysayers with a post about her own successful dynamic pricing experiment. And The Mission Paradox responded by cautioning readers about dynamic pricing’s potential to tarnish a non-profit’s image. While there has been plenty of discussion about audience impact, what I haven’t heard much about is the technology behind dynamic pricing. Many ticketing systems are not designed to handle fluctuating ticket prices. Work-arounds can be frustrating and confusing for the ticket seller. Particularly in outlet situations, where ticket sellers handle the sales for many different groups and venues, the seller’s level of comfort with your ticketing setup and policies can make a huge difference in the customer’s experience.

In addition, as Carr notes, there is no “magic computer program” determining the best prices for your tickets at any given time. Organizations and consultants may have their own formulas or schedules, yet for the most part such changes are not programmed to occur automatically. A dynamic pricing strategy may have an effect on an organization’s bottom line, but it will likely have some impact on your staff’s time as well. How to implement dynamic pricing may be as important a discussion as whether to implement it at all.

What is your experience with setting up dynamic pricing? Do you know of a ticketing system that makes dynamic pricing simple?

Giving Habits, Technology and the Millennial Misunderstanding

In a recent study focusing on the giving and technology habits of millennial donors from Achieve & Johnson Grossnickle Associates, researchers found that many people under 40 are willing to become donors but are not being approached in ways that lead to increased patronage and giving. The study found that Millennials prefer their primary contact with an organization to be Internet based, with e-mail being the preferred form of direct communication and Google searches, web pages and social media outlets ranking highest for researching organizations and building relationships. While this in itself is not shocking, the rest of the study revealed some much more interesting facts about younger donors.

• Millennial donors were over 91% likely to give a gift to an organization when asked face-to-face, as opposed to 51% likely when asked through e-platforms, and only 17% likely when asked through direct mail.
• When asked what type of information they wanted to see before they would give to an organization, over 53% of Millennial donors wanted financial documents and proof of stability, and 86% wanted documentation of current programs, services, and community impact.

These facts could easily represent the traditional donors of any arts organization in the United States; this similarity should be a red flag to non-profits about their misconceptions surrounding younger donors. Millennials are concerned with the health of the organization, Millennials do want to get involved, and Millennials require face-to-face personalized interactions to become donors. Studies like this help to show that Millennials are not that different from the traditional donors which arts organizations are already cultivating. The differences emerge in how Millennials prefer to gather information and communicate with organizations rather than in the information itself.

So how can arts organizations mix the technological communication preferences of Millennials with their need for face-to-face contact?

Some recommendations for communicating with Millennials:

• E-mail annual reports instead of direct mailing them or make them available as a downloadable pdf from the organization website
• Update projects and project outcomes on websites and blogs in real time
• Continuously post pictures, testimonials, press and videos to social media
• Create an interactive online environment that allows donors to feel involved with the organization even when they are not at the physical space
• Use events, parties, fundraisers, shows, and exhibitions to begin the personal face-to-face cultivation of the new donors

The objectives of these techniques mirror traditional forms of development, but the tactics have been updated for a fresher approach reflecting the technology based millennial lifestyle.

All of these online efforts support the face-to-face meetings and personalized mailings that are already in use by many organizations. Millennials can and will support organizations that take the time to reach out to them. The misconception that Millennials are not a target market willing to donate is simply leaving cash on the table and failing to connect arts organizations with their future funding base.

Is this thing on?? Important news for performance spaces that use wireless microphones

The FCC officially decided in January to clear the "white space" that exists at the 700 MHZ frequency for particularly designated usage. While the FCC fielded arguments from big cellular and broadcasters in determining white space authorization, "unauthorized users" of microphones operating on a 700 MHZ frequency were depicted as "squatters" and intruders, since many have, technically operated in this space illegally for years. Unfortunately, this may have a serious impact on venues that use wireless microphones. Theaters, concert halls, stadiums, and others, will no longer be able to use technology that uses the 700 MHZ frequency. The FCC is giving organizations that use mics on the 700 MHZ frequency until June 12 to transition to another frequency.

This means that you need to know if this is something you need to know. This could be hugely expensive to organizations that have equipment that operates at this frequency. If nobody in your organization knows this, or knows where the equipment manuals are, you can check the FCC's website.

If you find that your equipment will have to be replaced, try contacting the manufacturer and/or the retailer where it was purchased. Some companies are being very good about offering discounts on new equipment or switching out the old free of charge, according to sources at a conversation at Arts Advocacy Day.

For a complete story and many additional, helpful links, see The Future of Music Coalition's blog.

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.

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?

Why Flickr? Using photos to tell your story

"Wire + Minipegs = Polaroid Wall" by FionaMclaren

While discussing various uses of social media by arts organizations, a coworker mused, "But why Flickr?"

"Why Flickr?" indeed.  Or perhaps, more accurately, HOW Flickr?  After prowling around in search of arts organizations that are using Flickr in interesting and relevant ways, it seems pretty clear that the question should be addressed.

Since the internet can transmit exciting, attractive, visual media, rather tell you about what you can do with Flickr, I will let the photos save me a thousand words.

The Mattress Factory's photostream -Inviting front page -Colorful photos with good composition and interesting content -Current (there's this week's snowstorm!) -Clearly organized into sets [e.g. "Behind the Scenes" (something that I strongly believe in--because, as we know, "Everyone wants to feel like an insider."), "Exhibitions" or "Events"] -Flickr page is linked from the social media ("Friendship 2.0") page on the Mattress Factory's website.

Misnomer Dance Theatre's photostream -Inviting front page -Colorful, bright, energetic photos -Clearly labeled sets -Misnomer home page has a Flickr widget at the bottom

Steppenwolf Theatre Company's photostream -Clear differentiation among sets (e.g. rehearsal pics in black and white) -Behind-the-scenes and production shots -Some albums show interaction with audience -Linked from SteppenwolfTheatre.org

The American Conservatory Theater's photostream -Don't all look professionally-shot, but convey a spirit and energy -Show many aspects of the production -Show interaction with patrons -Linked from ACT homepage

The Whitney Museum's photostream -User-generated photos -Linked from "Get Involved" page on Whitney's website -Discussion forum (with some involvement)

I do want to say what I have seen that I haven't found effective. Too often organizations do a couple of things: they have an intern, or a staff member, who manages their photostream (that's their page on Flickr) from a personal profile. That doesn't make me want to engage. Instead, it makes me feel like I'm encroaching on a space to which I am not convinced I'm invited. Organizations that DO use Flickr, and have someone taking photos to PUT on Flickr, should have an organizational profile and should have a Flickr widget or link prominently placed on the homepage. (And, pet peeve, I think the best widget is one that actually SAYS "flickr" and doesn't just have the dot-logo).

Other huge turn-offs? (Apologies for immenent snarkiness.) I don't want to name names here, but organizations that essentially just do a mass-upload from their camera after an event: shudder.  Do your audience a favor and sift through them to find the ones that actually look interesting and lively.  I don't particularly care to see an entire album of a group of students all with their backs to the camera.  Having endless posed pictures of people standing and smiling together like the social pages looks like bragging, and not a lot like fun.  It's fine to include a few, but thirty?

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

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.

Is your organization in the cloud?

"Towering Clouds" by James Jordan

Nine months ago, when I first began interning here at CAMT, I spent a lot of my first couple of weeks filling in gaps in my knowledge, reading other blogs, trolling the web for information, making sure I was up to speed. On these forays I encountered much discussion of mystical-sounding "cloud computing."

Interestingly, for as little as this term tends to be understood, the concept is one that could cut costs and improve efficiency for organizations. Cloud computing, as Wikipedia will tell you, involves storing data offsite--no longer in a server room somewhere in your organization's building or on individual desktops, linked together by an intra-office network, but "out there," essentially in the clouds. If you want to get more in-depth, there are myriad resources online that delve into the subtleties of the definition of cloud computing. One example is that given by Ismael Ghalimi of the SociaMediaToday blog who writes that cloud computing is "predicated upon the sharing of a common infrastructure by multiple groups of users, often referred to as tenants. . . .Cloud Computing creates virtual slices of resources from clusters of servers and storage devices, perfectly sized to fit the specific needs of multiple users."

So...

If your organization stores publicity photos on Flickr so that the press and others can download high-resolution copies without you having to save them on your office computer or network and then send them, your are using cloud computing.

If you store and share documents in Google Docs so that you and others can access and edit them from anywhere, you are cloud computing.

If you upload videos to YouTube so that people can see your art in action, but don't post them on your website so that you don't use up too much bandwith, you're cloud computing.

If your website is hosted off-site, for example, by an organization like CAMT, you are cloud computing.

These are not the only examples of cloud computing, which is a concept that encompasses nearly every form of off-site data storage that you could imagine. Cloud computing may save your organization the (hefty) cost of purchasing its own server (and regular cost of replacing or maintaining that server), or free up space on the server it already uses.  Companies like ADrive.com offer free and fee-based storage plans that enable your organization to upload, access, edit, and share files without having to use its own server or bandwith to do so. DivShare, another online hosting site, makes it possible for you to store your media on their servers but embed it in your webpages.  This is all very cool, and it's easy to get swept up in the clamor for jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon.

With increased popularity of cloud computing, however, come reports of the dark lining to this silvery concept. Security is always of utmost concern when it comes to data--especially sensitive data--and when those files are being hosted off-site, on a server that is hosting hundreds of other users' data as well, there is a risk of security breach.  This may be because the contract that your organization entered into allowed the service provider rights to your information, or it may be because of a malfunction in the server's security. Google experienced this in March of 2009 when a software bug meant that some users were granted access to documents that were never intended to be shared with them--and theirs with others. Or, in the case of last summer's Twitter hack, the company's usage of cloud storage meant that a hacker was able to easily and remotely access a plethora of sensitive documents.

A security breach is not the only risk that comes with cloud computing. As with any server, there is the chance of crashing, which can lead to inconvenience at best and irretrievable data loss at worst. For a recent example, see autumn's Sidekick phone crash, which affected all users of T-Mobile Sidekick phones and completely wiped out any information stored in their phones. The counter to this fear about the cloud is that, no matter where your organization stores its data, the data should always be backed up. This may mean that your organization has two cloud-based copies of all data, one for regular usage and one to back up the first cloud. Or perhaps your organization operates out of a cloud, but has all of that data backed up in the office. Conversely, your organization may have its own server, but use the cloud as a backup in the event of a malfunction.

Cloud computing is a powerful development in the way we can store and share data, and organizations would do well to examine the ways that utilizing the cloud may help cut costs. But this is not an experiment that should be taken lightly. Definitely ensure that your organization fully understands any contracts that are involved and who retains ownership of any data being stored offsite. And, it bears repeating, regardless of where you store it, regularly back up your organization's data.