7 Steps to a Successful Facebook Ad Campaign

Finding new sources of traffic for a website or social media profile can be a challenging task for both novice and experienced web marketers.  Facebook Ads are powerful, yet often-overlooked, tools for internet marketing campaigns. Here is a quick overview of Facebook Ads' benefits:

• Increased Exposure: Facebook continues to be the #2 ranked website in the world for web traffic according to Alexa.com.  Of the top 5 highest-traffic websites in the world, users spend more time on Facebook than any of the others.
• Increased ROI: Facebook Ads are 25-50% of the cost of running a Google Adwords campaign.  A Google Pay-Per-Click campaign can sometimes cost $1 per click.  A typical conversion rate (from clicking to taking action) would be 2%.  Spending $3,000 for 3,000 clicks therefore, may only result in 60 people taking action (opting in for your email list, purchasing tickets to a show, making a donation, etc).  A similar campaign on Facebook Ads would cost around $10 for 1,000 clicks. You can also choose to run a CPM campaign which calculates a cost based on how many 'impressions' you want to make on users. Impressions are geared more for marketers who want to raise awareness about their brand. The Search Engine Journal provides more insight into this topic. Here's a great visual from their article.

Note: Geo= Geographical Segmentation and Keywords= the word or phrase a user types directly into a search engine. Facebook Ads can only target what someone has already indicated they are interested in (theatre, live music, art galleries, etc).

• Targeted Demographics:Facebook Ads provides a precise way to segment your market. From musical interests to relationship status, there are an endless amount of ways to run a market segmentation. Here is a detailed listing of your targeting options.
• Less Competition: Facebook also has an advantage when it comes to your levels of competition. Facebook has an estimated 1/20th of the advertisers that Google has. Here are some other fascinating statistics from the internet marketing blog HubSpot.

If you're considering running a Facebook Ad campaign or are struggling with your current campaign, here are seven steps to help you make the most of your efforts:

1. Run More Than One Ad: As Robert Gore discussed in our latest podcast, it's a great idea to run 5 or more ads for each market segment you choose. Test each ad's performance to see which one has the highest success rate.

2.Choose a Compelling Image: Keep in mind that, unlike Google, the Facebook audience generally isn't logging on to shop for products or services. You must engage a user from the start. This process begins with your headline and image. Here's a great image from an ad run by the Pittsburgh Public Theater. The image conveys high energy and enthusiasm and raises curiosity about the show.

3. Direct Traffic to a Relevant Landing Page: Make sure that the landing page users are directed to after clicking through on your ad is relevant to what was being advertised. Consistency is key. It's up to you to select the most appropriate landing page. It could direct traffic to an outside website or to your Facebook Fan Page. Landing Tabs on your Facebook page can be particularly effective. For more information on creating a Landing Tab, you can refer to Facebook's Help Section or listen to our webinar recording on making the most out of your Facebook page.

4. Optimize Headlines: Marketing Experiments blog author, Hunter Boyle, suggests that the objective of your headline is "not to sell but to connect with your reader." Here's a great article that expands on this principle. One of the best ways to engage your reader is to pose a question in the headline.

5. Consider Your Targets Carefully: In the first tip, we recommended running more than one ad. It's a great idea to test your ads on different market segments too.

6. Make a Compelling Offer: If you are more concerned about click-through rates as opposed to impression levels, then you should consider making a compelling offer in the body of your ad. Just be sure that the landing page follows up on this offer.

7.Track Your Results: Some internet marketing experts, like Ryan Deiss, suggest you should delete any ad with a  click-through rate below 2% after a week of running it. This may not apply if you're more concerned with making an impression. Always be mindful of your campaign's goals and re-calibrate your strategy accordingly. Small business expert and author, John Jantsch, suggests using Google Analytics and Google's URL builder tool to monitor the effectiveness of any ads that direct people to a link outside of Facebook.

Update: 

For a step-by-step video on making a Facebook Ad, check out our mini-nar: Making Facebook Ads and Diving into Analytics.

Exhibiting Online with Open Source Software

Has your organization been giving some thought to creating online components for its upcoming exhibitions? The demand for having exhibition-related content available online is not only increasing, it has grown into an expectation. Web publishing can be a costly process for many arts organizations, especially if a web developer and designer is required for each exhibition.  A more cost-friendly alternative is to consider using open-source, publishing software for creating collections and exhibitions online. Here are two currently available, free downloadable options designed specifically with cultural institutions in mind:

Omeka – Launched this past year, Omeka was designed by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. Omeka features a variety of themes and plugins while offering a management system similar to that of the blogging site Wordpress. Here is a great video tour of the software.

Collective Access – Also utilizing a management system similar to many blogging platforms, Collective Access was developed by software firm Whirl-i-Gig in 2007. Click here to demo the software.

Both sites offer links to exhibition sites built with their software, which are worth checking out to see what’s possible using these open source systems.

So what is open-source software, anyway? A software is considered open source when the firm who created the software makes the source code available to the public and opts out of certain other copyrights that are normally reserved.  This means that any user can alter, customize and develop for that software as they sit fit to meet their project’s needs. An important thing to keep in mind is that in the tradition of open source software, the user must share this new, modified code with the public as well.

Before your organization goes forward with publishing an exhibition or collection online with this kind of software, there are some questions you should consider:

What is the user experience like?

No two web publishing software systems are exactly alike, so make sure to take a detailed tour before committing to one.  A clean and simple user interface will drastically shorten training time for your staff and save a lot of future headaches if you pursue more complex projects. Omeka and Collective Access are both strong examples since each offers a blog-like user-interface specifically designed with cultural institutions in mind.

Omeka offers services that cover a wide range of needs for cultural institutions

An example of how Collective Access allows you to build relationships between items in your online collection.

How much storage will you need?

What kind of content and media will your project involve? What kind of storage and back-up will be needed? Remember that server space is essential, whether it’s your organization’s internal server, a web-hosting service’s server, or buying some space from a server provider online. In addition to their software, Omeka offers a web-hosting service with different plans priced according to number of sites and the amount of storage needed.

How easy is it to customize?

This goes back to the importance of taking a detailed demo of the software. Many of the platforms have multiple themes available to make the task of designing your organization’s site a lot easier. However, you should test the platform to determine how difficult it will be to change those themes and customize them to fit your organization’s unique brand image without requiring the help of a web designer.

What kind of support is there for the software?

When an open source software is downloaded and installed on your server, all of the support and maintenance responsibilities for that software rests with your organization. A server provider will be able to fix bugs and issues specific to your server, but maintaining the software is up to you. Omeka and Collective access offer extensive documentation and guides as well as online forums, but support and troubleshooting are left to you. This is one of the advantages to Omeka’s hosted option; they will provide service support for both server and software issues.

How is the software upgraded?

When the system you use comes out with a new version, who installs the upgrade? How easily can an upgrade in the software be installed and configured? With both Omeka and Collective Access, the users have to manually perform the upgrades, but extensive documentation and guides are provided. This is another benefit of a hosted service option like Omeka.net; they will install and configure software upgrades for you.

So while these open-source, publishing software systems are free, there are some costs to consider.  Be sure to do your research in order to determine if these open source tools will meet your budgetary and technical constraints for experimenting with online collections and exhibitions.

Google URL Builder - Deeper Tracking for Your Analytics

Google Analytics has emerged as the industry's leading tool when it comes to web analytics.  The platform's easy installation process, in-depth reporting features  and user-friendly interface make it a marketer's best friend.  Among the many reporting features in Google Analytics is the ability to chart where your website's traffic is coming from. Google URL Builder is an often overlooked platform in the Google toolbox that can help organizations measure the effectiveness of their web presence. URL Builder is primarily tailored for tracking internet campaigns that fall outside of the pay-per-click or Adwords realm.

Here's a quick overview of URL Builder:

• Works in conjunction with Google Analytics to provide advanced metrics for measuring the performance of a specific URL that you will “build”.
• Allows you to  chart the traffic for particular pages within your website and determine which communications channels provide stronger traffic per page.
• Allows you to enter tags for detailed tracking, particularly Campaign Source, Campaign Medium, and Campaign Name.
  • Campaign Source indicates the originating source of the traffic.  Does it come from your organization?  Is another organization promoting a web link on your behalf?
  • Campaign Medium is useful for charting how much of the campaign's traffic comes from different locations.  Did the traffic come from e-mail, web ad, Facebook, Twitter, etc.?
  • Campaign Name is a short description for the campaign - often one to three words and often a distillation of the link's page title.
  • Google processes this information and provides you with information about the performance of your unique URL including its bounce rate and conversion

For example, here's the information that we will assign to a URL campaign for the article you are currently reading:

• Campaign Source: tita -- We use "tita" to indicate when Technology in the Arts is the originating source of the traffic.
• Campaign Medium: twitter -- The medium area is where we indicate if a link will be shared on Twitter, in an e-mail, on our Facebook page, etc.
• Campaign Name: GoogleURLBuilder -- Typically, we use a shortened version of our article titles as campaign names for analytics.

Let’s consider some practical applications:

Web Content: It could be very helpful to see how fans and followers on your social media profiles compare and contrast in terms of their interaction with your blog posts, event listings, etc. Simply build a URL for each campaign medium to which you distribute your web content links (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and see how your links perform across various sites.

Email Announcements and Newsletter Campaigns: Another useful application could be for tracking the performance of URLs in your email announcements and newsletter campaigns. You would simply enter ‘newsletter’ into the campaign source option. For smaller organizations or independent artists who do not utilize broadcast email service providers (like Constant Contact), Google URL builder could prove to be a viable alternative for tracking traffic deriving from e-mail communication.

Helping Others: When conducting an interview or mentioning another link on your blog or website, consider contacting that person and asking them if there is a specific URL you should use in your post (in case they have a campaign name established for that page). This will make it easier for them to track how much exposure their blog, website or the interview received based on your posting it.

If they do not have a customized URL for you to use, it is still a great idea to create your own.  Because the web page is being tracked within their Google Analytics data, the campaign data (source, medium, name, traffic information) will appear in their reports.  If you share multiple links from the same website, then using URL Builder for each link you share will allow the organization to see if particular links were more interesting to your communication recipients and site visitors.

Google URL Builder Best Practices

• Always take time prior to setting up a campaign to consider your ultimate goals. Which sources and media will you need to track?
• Reach out to other organizations and bloggers prior to posting a link to their information in your post.  They may provide you with a customized URL designed for their Google Analytics campaign reports.
• Consider if any adjustments should be made in your email, social media and overall web campaigns as a result of the data you collect.
• Spread the word! Share URL Builder with your colleagues to make sure that everyone on staff uses the correct URLs when sharing links.

Want to learn more? Check out our mini-nar:

Using Google URL Builder to Track Your Website's Traffic

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An Easier Way to Text-to-Pay

Recently, Obopay Inc., an online mobile payment company, and Benevity Social Ventures Inc., a company focusing on the social practices and giving habits of corporate America, partnered to create a new text-to-donate platform for non-profits.  This new easy-to-setup, easy-to-manage platform takes away many of the problems that have been associated with text-to-give in the past.

The new platform:

• Is FREE for all registered organizations with active 501(c)3 status
• Takes less than 24 hours to setup
• Pays organizations within 30 days
• E-mails tax receipts to donors immediately

Prior to this texting platform, setting up a text-to-give campaign took months and the providers that were available focused mainly on larger high profile clients (the Obama campaign and the Haitian relief effort are just two examples). Payment often took 60-90 days and there were a multitude of fees and charges associated with the products.

In an earlier post, I discussed the merits and benefits of micro-donation campaigns and ways they can best be implemented. Unfortunately, I did not have many suggestions on available products at that time. Many local non-profits and arts organizations simply did not have the budgets or profile to take on such campaigns.

This new text-to-give platform (which currently has no specific name) allows for easy setup and processing of text-to-give donations. A non-profit organization goes to the Obopay website, registers for a key word and the Benevity Corporation, in partnership with the American Endowment Foundation (AEF), creates the account and sets up the service on behalf of the non-profit. No extra work, no forms, no hassle.

When using this service:

• Tax receipts are provided directly to the donor from Benevity via e-mail
• Donations are received by the non-profit every 30 days
• A 7% processing fee is collected from the donation by Benevity and AEF to process the transactions
• The non-profit only receives 93% of the total donated amount
• 100% of the donation is tax deductable (Benevity & AEF are also non-profits)

Overall, this simplistic process combines Obopay’s easy text-to-pay platform with Benevity’s non-profit database and backend billing system, allowing for an easy-to-setup, easy-to-manage platform. A patron texts the organization's keyword to a short code (usually 5 numbers long) and immediately receives an SMS text in response. Potential donors are then prompted to enter a phone number and pin code to donate or they can use the mobile donation website which, on average, takes less than 90 seconds to complete.

Future expansion of this service will include corporate matching and a customizable database with a recommendation function. Benevity already has all registered US non-profits in their searchable database. Soon, the non-profits themselves will be able to be personalize their profiles, and a recommendation function for donors will be added.

Donors prefer push button solutions, mobile applications and ease of use. This new text-to-give solution by Benevity and Obopay opens the doors for arts organizations and other non-profits to provide cutting edge solutions to this problem.

Arts organizations across the country should be looking at this as a huge opportunity to expand micro-donation campaigns and reach new audiences. Patrons are most likely to give directly after or during an experience involving a non-profit. This quick and easy solution for instant giving provides a way for people to support organizations they care about while the experience is still fresh in their minds. Both companies recommend event based marketing for text-to-give donation campaigns.

Arts organizations should advertise how to donate via SMS text during intermissions, around galleries or surrounding specific events. It is a quick way for people to show their support and generally has little effect on their other giving habits. More importantly, the platform can provide a  new revenue stream that opens up giving to a wider range of people and secures multiple gifts from long time donors.

Social Media Spotlight: The Guggenheim and YouTube Play

Welcome to the third installment of the Social Media Spotlight, our monthly feature focusing on arts organizations’ social media strategies.

This month’s spotlight is the Guggenheim Museum’s strategy with YouTube Play, the recently debuted biennial celebrating creative talent in the realm of online video. The response leading up to Youtube play was massive, with over 23,000 video submissions and over 46,000 subscribers to the YouTube Play channel. The channel, to date, has been viewed over 23 million times. 25 videos were selected by an esteemed jury and celebrated on October 21^st with an event at the Guggenheim in New York that was live streamed worldwide.

I recently had a chance to chat with Associate Curator Hanne Mugaas about YouTube Play:

Where did the idea originate for the Guggenheim to team up with a social media site like YouTube?

The Guggenheim had already collaborated with Google on Design It: A Shelter Competition, where on the occasion of the exhibitions Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward and Learning By Doing, the Guggenheim and Google SketchUp invited amateur and professional designers from around the world to submit a 3-D shelter for any location in the world using Google SketchUp and Google Earth. Ideas for new collaborations originated from this project, and a celebration of online video became the next step.

Instead of using their existing YouTube channel, the Guggenheim decided to create an entirely new channel for YouTube Play. What drove that decision? Did it have a positive effect on your original channel?

Since the project is a collaboration between YouTube and the Guggenheim, we wanted a channel for Play content exclusively. The fact that it is a biennial (the project will continue every second year) is another reason why we wanted a separate platform. The project has certainly had a positive effect on the Guggenheim YouTube channel, and it has made it possible for us to reach new audiences.

Since its creation last May, the YouTube Play channel has gained over 46,000 subscribers. How did the Guggenheim cultivate such a large number of fans?

The project is unique in its global scope, which has generated extensive interest. We got 23,358 submissions, which is unheard of in a traditional art context. The pairing of YouTube and Guggenheim made people curious about the outcome. Most importantly, the shortlist and the top 25 videos have a diverse range of high quality works; videos that make you want to spend time on and revisit the channel.

In addition to YouTube, the Guggenheim also has a major presence on other social networks and social media sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, & Flickr. What roles did these other sites play in your social media strategy with YouTube Play? Did the fact that YouTube Play culminated with a specific event affect your overall social media strategy?

The social media sites were important in getting the word out, and to drive submissions. We also started a blog, The Take, which contextualizes the project through writing by art, film, and Internet experts. We did frequent YouTube Play updates on Facebook and Twitter to keep people informed about the progression of the project. These were certainly important tools for the event, especially to make people aware of the live stream, and the external projections on the Guggenheim building in New York.

Speaking of events, the Guggenheim took full advantage of YouTube's new streaming service to live stream the YouTube Play event from the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.  How was your experience with streaming video?

The live stream was a very important element given the global scope of the biennial; this way, anyone anywhere could watch the event live. It was a successful experience for us, and the feedback has been very good.

What advice would you give to other, smaller arts organizations that want to experiment with live streaming their own events?

Streaming video is a great way to make your content available to a global audience, either it’s an event, a panel or a talk. To watch a live stream is special, and as a cultural producer, it is a great asset to know that people around the globe are watching.

Thanks again to Hanne Mugaas and the Guggenheim Museum. Visit the YouTube Play channel to check out the 25 selected videos from the exhibition and view selected clips from the live streamed event.

Is your organization doing exciting work in social media? Leave us a comment and let us know. We may feature you in an upcoming spotlight!

Internet Revived the Music Video Star

On August 1, 1981, America was introduced to the cultural phenomenon of Music Television. The television network revolutionized the world of music programming and would forever change the landscape of the music industry. In addition to promoting music through traditional radio, live performances and albums, musicians began to utilize the medium of television to promote their singles. Independent and underground musicians also took advantage of this new technology by shooting lower budget videos to distribute on local cable access shows that were similar to MTV. The cultural innovation of music videos has since evolved along with the rest of the music industry. One of the most interesting trends is the advent of interactive music videos on the internet. An increasing number of artists and arts organizations have begun examining the ways in which they can engage and connect with potential audience members and fans online. The dynamic, fast-paced nature of smart phones, social media and other technology has prompted this shift to interactivity and collaboration.

Here's a look at three of the most innovative videos on the web.

1:Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown”

One of the most ambitious projects comes from the indie rock band sensation, Arcade Fire. The band designed a video that uses Google Chrome, Google Maps and HTML5 standard to immerse users into a unique, interactive experience. The music video (designed to work best with the Google Chrome browser) prompts users to enter the street address of their childhood homes and creates a custom video based on images taken from Google Maps’ Street View of your childhood home.

Wilderness Downtown Screenshot

Director, Chris Milk (who just produced another collaborative video for Johnny Cash's final studio recording ), has also worked on videos for Kanye West and Gnarls Barkley and is at the forefront of this revolution in music video production.

For more behind-the-scenes information on the shoot, check out Creativity Online's  article.

2. Andy Grammer’s “Keep Your Head Up”

Choose Your Own Adventure...

A slight variation on this theme comes from pop artist, Andy Grammer. The video for Grammer's song 'Keep Your Head Up' is a real life example of a 'Choose Your Own Adventure' story and users can choose what actions they want Andy to take in the video. In November, the most popular choices will be compiled into one video  and the result will be uploaded to Vevo.

While shooting the video scenes for each choice did not require any specialized equipment,  the process of stringing the different choices today required some cutting edge technology. So cutting edge, in fact, that Grammer's label has taken an equity stake in the company that developed it, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article.

Watch (and interact) with the full video, here.

3. The Cold War Kids’ “I’ve Seen Enough”

'I've Seen Enough' was directed by Sam Jones, who also directed a documentary about the band, Wilco. The video, developed in Flash 10, was nicely compressed to cut down on loading times. The interactive bars at the top allow users to mix and match different styles of the same song, from reggae to acoustic. Users can also click on individual band members to mute or unmute them.

Interactive Videos and the Arts...

While some of the technology utilized in the above experiments can be classified as cutting edge, artists and arts organizations shouldn't be deterred from dabbling in creating their own interactive video experiments. One of the most popular ways musicians have interacted with fans is by streaming concerts, informal jam sessions and interviews online via Ustream. Once logged into Ustream, users can interact with the artist and other fans in real-time. Musicians have also encouraged fans to create slideshows set to their music and upload them to sites like YouTube and Vimeo. As open source software and user collaboration becomes more popular, there's no doubt that more and more artists will be producing this type of content.

Focus on the data: LSO's Digital Season Brochure

A page from the 10/11 LSO brochure. Click image to see the whole brochure.

Last year I wrote about the London Symphony Orchestra’s digital season brochure. As technology and environmental concerns cause more printed pieces to go online, the arts industry will see more season brochures go digital. According to a recent Technology in the Arts poll, 56% of arts organizations already have their season brochure online in some form (PDF or interactive).

Last season was the first that they made the brochure, launching it in February of 2009 with their season announcement. Based on its success, they have released another brochure this year with plans to distribute it more widely. Today I have a follow-up with Digital Marketing Manager Jo Johnson about the success of last year’s brochure.

The marketing team at the London Symphony Orchestra chose to make last year’s season brochure after deciding to plan the online and offline elements of our season campaign together.  Jo said, “we had produced films to illustrate the season's themes, but it was a few months after the season had first gone on sale, and so felt rather like an afterthought. Also we had decided that we were going to put our season on sale online before we opened to telephone booking, so turning to online channels (email, web and social networks) to send info out to the bookers felt natural. A digital brochure was the obvious choice.”

The first page of the brochure created by Ceros includes an instruction window for newcomers.

For newcomers to the digital brochure, it may be hard to know where to get the technology to make the brochure, as well as how much lead time to allow for it. This year symphony again used interactive publication platform Ceros to create their season brochure, complete with audio and video. Other platforms that were suggested in our poll included Issuu and Yudu.

According to Jo, after the art and copy was approved for the print brochure, the digital brochure only took about two additional weeks. “[The print version] needs to be made suitable for online readers (adding some buttons, changing some bits of text to make it obvious that their links, making the images 16:9 ratio so that you can embed a video over it). That's about a week. Then because I don't have Flash skills, the digital brochure company did all the Flash work for me. They were pretty quick, but leave time for changes, testing and sign off. That was about another week.”

Jo found that the brochure was driving traffic primarily to concert pages (where tickets can be purchased). “The top 20 clicked links are all to concerts, with the season opening concert on 20 September being the most clicked.” Using Google Analytics, Jo determined that roughly 1 in 5 viewers played a video, and viewing figures correspond to page numbers (i.e. the least viewed video is last in the brochure). Viewers stayed on the digital season brochure an average of about four minutes.  Overall, the 2009/10 digital brochure was viewed 10,870 times. Based on the data she pulled she concluded that the amount of revenue directly from the brochure covered its costs, but that the brochure “played a more of a role in decision making than direct purchasing." She said:

On the financial side, I could see purchases made on our website that had come directly from the digital brochure. Added up, the income was just over the figure it cost to make the brochure. But as with all marketing, I'm also interested in the purchases that were made as a result of someone having the digital brochure, but not directly. At the LSO we talk about multi-channel marketing and CRM, whereby we allow the customer to make his own decision on which method to use to make the final purchase. So although the brochure had embedded links back to the LSO website where tickets can be bought, a customer may have browsed the brochure, seen a concert they like, gone away to chat to a friend about going together, made a decision a week later, and then gone back directly to the website to make the purchase, or called the box office on the phone. In this case I would not have seen the income from his ticket in the analysis I did on the brochure; and this is what I meant when I said 'It's likely it plays more of a role in decision making than direct purchasing.'

When taking on these technological innovations, it’s difficult to know how to measure success. As Jo said in our conversation, “This is the challenge marketers face every day--how to track customers as they hop through our available channels.” Your outreach program or social media site may have paid for itself in tickets, but how do we measure things like brand recognition? Social marketing experts like Charlene Li and David Berkowitz have come out with suggestions, some of which go beyond mere revenue. Jo saw two huge benefits to producing the brochure, beyond its break-even point.

The very fact that we had produced one at all gave the LSO a huge amount of coverage. It was passed around as a 'novelty' item, which people enjoyed looking at, turning the pages, watching the videos, just to see what it did. This is the same kind of benefit as social media brings an organization--people talking about your group. They might be on the other side of the world, they might not come and buy a ticket, but the fact that you have come to their attention is almost as valuable as a ticket sale - in our case it may eventually assist in ticket sales when we go on tour, or on sales of our CDs (our own label). Unfortunately, the "buzz" isn't really trackable in any meaningful sense, other than clicks and views and Retweets. But it still counts.

Lastly, the digital brochure brought a small environmental benefit. We reduced the number of brochures we printed, since we sent it out to people on our database that had email addresses instead of the print in the post. We also used the digital brochure in the information we emailed out to journalists at the season launch, instead of posting them one. Our Managing Director likes to email the digital brochure to prospective festivals and venues abroad as our "flagship" publications, thus saving more paper and postage. I'm sure the effects are negligible in the bigger picture, but any boost to our green credentials helps!

So, is investing time and money worth it for your company? Here are Jo’s thoughts:

Probably the most useful thing I can offer is some thoughts into whether others should follow suit and produce a digital brochure. Here's some:

• A digital brochure should never replace your printed one, but should be complementary to it. A good marketing campaign should have all the online and offline elements planned in together at the same time.
• Personally I think the key to it is to have good content which makes it worthwhile - video content is the obvious one. There are plenty of free options for making a digital brochure out of your PDF, but mostly these don't offer the rich media content like embedded videos and soundclips.
• Make sure you have the mechanisms and a plan in place to market the digital brochure - which can only really be done online. Social networks are ideal, but don't ignore your own website! There's no point in having one if you don't market it - people will not stumble upon it randomly.
• Ideally the digital brochure should be designed with online usage in mind - and possibly independently from the print version. We weren't able to do this wholesale though because of the cost of the designers! We chose the route of adapting the printed version.

Future Focus: The Public Art Archive

Sharing information and digital media about public art has never been an easy task for arts administrators. The Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) seeks to change that when they launch the Public Art Archive - an online, searchable database for public art in the United States. A tool for both arts administrators and the general public, WESTAF’s vision is for the Archive to serve as an easy to use, central source of information about public art. I recently had a chance to speak with the creators of the Public Art Archive and take a guided tour through the site.

The Public Art Archive has a straightforward, user-friendly interface.  Entry to the Archive takes place through a simple search bar on the front page, powered by Solr, an open-source search platform from by the Apache Lucene project.  You may already be familiar with Solr, as it is the search engine used by both Etsy.com and FoodNetwork.com.

Solr allows you to refine simple searches on the Archive through multiple filters with a variety of search criteria such as artist, location, materials, collections and even nicknames. The search criteria and vocabulary for the site was built from the same standards as those used by reference websites like ARTstor and the digital library projects at Harvard.

Once they’ve found the artwork they are searching for, users are presented with a variety of information and media about the work. In addition to the artwork’s basic info, users can view pictures and video, download PDFs about the artwork, and listen to audio describing the piece.

While the capability for all this content is built in, individual administrators must submit all information and media for each artwork. The Archive has no limit on the amount of content that can be submitted for each work and submission of the content is free. At a minimum, the site requires a full description for each work, as well as its location, and one high quality image.

To enable use of the Archive when an individual is physically in front of a work of public art,  the Archive will be accessible from any web-enabled mobile device. No specific apps will be required, users just plug the main url for the Archive into their phone's web browser to access the full functionality of the site.

The Public Art Archive will also be fully integrated with Google Maps.  By clicking the site’s “Map This” icon, users will be able to view exactly where the artworks are located and build custom maps of artworks that can be shared with others or saved for later use.   Administrators can use the mapping function to create custom maps for use in tours of their collection, maintenance tasks, and advocacy initiatives.

The ability for organizations to create personalized pages so they can maintain their identity will be added as the Archive progresses. WESTAF also plans to have licenses available to give organizations access to the more administrative functions of the Archive.

The Public Art Archive will be launching in the near future, but until then visit westaf.org to check out some of WESTAF's other projects that offer technological solutions for arts administrators.

Social Media Spotlight: New York Theatre Network

Welcome to the second installment of the Social Media Spotlight, our monthly feature focusing on arts organizations’ social media strategies.

The global trend of participation in social networks and social media is one to which arts managers have been paying a great deal of attention. With over 500 million active Facebook users, 55 million tweets being sent per day and over 133 million active bloggers in the United States alone, arts organizations and arts managers are growing increasingly interested in identifying ways to engage their audiences and connect to new audiences via social media.

One of the more recent example of the intersection of social media and audience development is the creation of the New York Theatre Network (NYTN). Launched on September 28, NYTN seeks to be “your hub for what’s happening on New York City Stages”. The network focuses specifically on theatre events in New York City, and while any theatre fan can check out the latest happenings, only member theatres are able to upload content about their organization onto the website.

NYTN is unique in that it was designed to be an interactive social network as opposed to a static directory and listing of information. Its Facebook Connect feature enables users to find out what their friends are ‘liking’,  ‘attending’ and/or ‘recommending’ and also allows users to make their own recommendations.

Theatres are also encouraged to interact with audiences as they are able to upload YouTube videos, their Twitter stream, blog posts and an event calendar onto their pages. A gracious sponsorship from Flip Video’s Spotlight For Good Program made it possible for member theatres to record video and upload this content onto their page.

NYTN is the result of a cooperative effort between The Alliance of Resident Theatres/ New York and theatre industry website Theater Mania.  A.R.T. New York Executive Director Virginia Louloudes was inspired by a keynote speech delivered by Diane Ragsdale of the Andrew Mellon Foundation two years ago in which she addressed the decline in arts participation and examined possible solutions for this dilemma. One suggestion was for arts organizations to consider becoming “arts concierges” and help consumers find shows and performances based on their individual tastes.

Louloudes saw an opportunity to create a site that would serve as a “one stop shop” for theatre fans,  encourage a new level of interaction between theatres and audiences, and introduce fans to new theatres and upcoming shows they may not have been aware of.  The project was an extensive one and called for outside funding, workshops with member theatres, and a partnership with Theater Mania for technological support. While such an ambitious project may not be feasible for all arts organizations, Louloudes hopes that the creation of NYTN will encourage arts managers to develop their own social media strategies, especially since most platforms are free.

Those interested in further reading on NYTN's marketing efforts should also consult the following blog articles from Devon Smith, who served as project manager for NYTN and frequently blogs about social media:

Advertising ROI: a case for Facebook Ads

New York Theatre Network: it's launch day!

Online Group Discounts and the Arts

Online collective buying platforms Groupon and Living Social have taken the Internet and local markets by storm. Each day both companies feature deals on a wide variety of products and services across the country that consumers can opt-in to purchase. These daily deals are exclusive to certain areas and are not available in some local markets. Since both companies publicize their daily discounts and offers via extensive email lists, loyal Twitter followers, mobile phone apps and Facebook pages, there is an unprecedented opportunity for local businesses to reach and engage new audiences. Groupon and Living Social have made quite an impact in the arts and cultural sector, as a wide array of organizations across the country have run online discount campaigns. Chicago’s prestigious Joffrey Ballet, Arlington Arts Center, the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Port Discovery Children’s Museum in Baltimore and the Pittsburgh CLO are only a few examples of such organizations.

The rising popularity of Groupon and Living Social among arts and cultural organizations raises a number of questions about incorporating these services into arts marketing strategies.  While bloggers Chad Bauman and Drew McManus have both explored some of the benefits and drawbacks of using online discount services, I decided to pose a few questions to cultural organizations who have used these services.

• Can this service be useful for reaching new audience members?
• If so, how can organizations efficiently track these new customers?
• What if current subscribers and regular audience members decide to take advantage of these lower ticket prices?
• Or what if current subscribers resent that others purchased their subscriptions at a substantial discount?
• Could online discounting actually backfire and decrease revenue?

Most of the arts and cultural organizations I approached with these questions evaluated their online discount campaigns to be successful.  None reported a significant loss in revenue and most reported that the majority of their Groupon & Living Social customers were entirely new to their organizations.  Those that had a positive outcome tended to carefully track customers by collecting their information during the ticket redemption process and entering this information into their database.

Mairin Petrone at the Pittsburgh Irish Festival reports that their recent Groupon campaign resulted in almost 700 people purchasing tickets for the festival.

The Pittsburgh Irish Festival initially decided to use Groupon because of the PR we would receive and because we love to get tickets sold before our festival even starts.  When approached by Groupon, it seemed like we would be silly not to take advantage of an e-blast that would go out to almost 100,000 people in and around the city of Pittsburgh and cost us next to nothing.  Our hope was that we would reach people who wouldn't have otherwise heard of the festival.  I would evaluate our Groupon campaign as successful.

Similarly, Pittsburgh CLO's Cindy Opatick had positive feedback on using Groupon.

Since the CLO Cabaret only seats 250, it is hard to get word of mouth going on a new show and a title that may not be familiar in the marketplace.  The Groupon offer has allowed us to get a larger audience in the first week of a show, which in turn helps with word of mouth for the run of the show.

Although most of the organizations I contacted reported using Groupon to run online discount campaigns, Living Social is proving more viable for organizations who want more flexibility in their marketing.  Here is a quick comparison of both platforms:

Demographic Category

Groupon

Living Social

Gender

77%    Female

60%     Female

Age

68%    18-34

36%     18-34

Education

50%    Bachelor’s Degree               30%     Graduate Degree

44%    Bachelor's Degree                15%    Graduate Degree

Income

29%    $100,000+                          19%    $70K-$99K                          21%    $50K-$69K

32%    $100,000+                          36%    $60K-$100K

Groupon

Living Social

Exclusivity Clause

:

Can’t run any other deal on similar websites (Living Social) for 90 days

No exclusivity  clause

:

Organizations are free to use other services while  running a Living Social Campaign

Can’t change the  fine print

:

Groupon employs a staff of 70 writers to create the text of all  its group deals.

More Flexibility with ad content

:

Living Social is generally more flexible about what organizations can include  in the fine print and ad content

Lower Revenue?

Since tickets are offered at a steep discount, it’s quite possible to lose  money from people who might have paid full price.

Lower Revenue?

Generally the same drawbacks as using Groupon. Living Social typically only  offers deals that are a minimum of 50% off the current price for a company’s  services or products

Costly to  Businesses?

Groupon takes a cut of all products or services sold  although there are no upfront costs associated with running a campaign

Costly to Businesses?

Living Social also  takes a percentage of all products or services sold. Also no upfront costs  associated with running a campaign. Businesses receive a pre-paid check for all  customers who bought 10 days after the promotion is finished

Even though both platforms have their drawbacks, there is overwhelming evidence to indicate both do a stellar job of reaching the ideal arts consumer demographic and compelling them to action.  Jack Fishman, President and CEO at San Antonio Symphony, points out that traditional advertising channels like newspaper and radio are not nearly as effective as they once were in reaching and compelling arts consumers to action.  In fact, 86% of Groupon's clients believe the service to be more effective than print advertising, while 94% evaluate it as more effective than broadcasting advertising.

Since online collective buying platforms are relative newcomers to the scene, it will be interesting to see if more arts and cultural organizations adopt these tools into their evolving marketing strategies and online mass discounts will contribute to sustainable audience growth over time.

YAP Tracker: Organizing the Uncertain World of Auditions

For most people in the Northern Hemisphere, summer ended last week. But for those who run artist training programs in the summer months, next summer has already begun. In case you are not in the artistic department of your org, newsflash: It’s audition season, folks!

Today I have an interview with Julie Baron, General Manager and one of the founders of YAP Tracker. For those readers not familiar with the field of opera, a "YAP" (Young Artist Program) is a training program for young singers, usually with a large opera company which hires the singers for the season and provides them with small roles in the opera, coachings with staff pianists, and the opportunity to perform in educational outreach programs. The singers have usually graduated fairly recently from a Masters or Artist Diploma program and are trying to launch their singing career.

Having left a career in technology solutions consulting and training to pursue her passion for the arts, Julie Baron earned her Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance from the Manhattan School of Music in 2004. She enjoyed a career as a mezzo-soprano singing with many companies throughout the United States and abroad, but her unusual affinity for both technology and the arts ultimately guided her to create the popular website YAP Tracker.

YAP Tracker was created in 2005 and has quickly garnered tremendous acclaim for its comprehensive, worldwide list of opportunities and online application service. We've talked about online application and review tools in the past on the Technology in the Arts blog, but YAP Tracker is truly unique in its industry specificity and the fact that it provides organizational features for singers, teachers and company administrators alike.

"We’re so grateful for the support that we’ve gotten from both companies and singers alike and we hope to be around for many years to come to help people find auditions," Julie said. Julie is also a frequent guest speaker at schools, programs and conferences on the use of technology in the arts, including the 2010 Opera America Conference.

How did you come up with the idea for YAP Tracker?

The site began in 2005; I was singing with the Opera Colorado Outreach ensemble and I competed in a competition there locally, the Denver Lyric Opera Guild competition, and placed well. I was really excited about it and I wanted to find other opportunities to compete. I started looking and I couldn't believe how much was out there—so much that it was difficult to keep track. So, the site was designed with this in mind. It was originally designed for me actually to use and my friends were incredulous that such a thing existed and so I became willing to sell it to them. So, now we have about 8,000 members worldwide and we list 2,500 auditions a year. They come from everywhere—I think we even have some singers in Guam and Congo—places that I wouldn’t have even realized that there was a need for the service, but apparently there is.

What experiences that you’ve had personally as a singer informed how you created the interface and how you do business as a company? That’s an interesting question. My background is sort of unusual because I have both a technology and a musical background. Before I went back to school for singing, I actually worked as a technology solutions consultant for PriceWaterhouseCoopers. It was important to me that the site be very user-friendly because generally the use of technology is frightening for everyone, so it was important for the site to be able to cater to every level of singer no matter what their technology background. I think that having a higher level of technology background was a good place to start from—to go from the ground up.

So, say I’m a singer and I’m looking for an audition. I find one that’s perfect for me, on YAP Tracker. Where do I go from there? Generally you start a few steps before that. When you subscribe to YAP Tracker, you receive alerts to let you know about new and interesting opportunities that are coming up. They’re interesting because the site is designed in such a way that you filter before you ever receive opportunities that you know will not be of interest to you. So, anything with a particular age limit, if you know that you’re not interested in doing competitions or auditioning in Europe, those opportunities are filtered out for you automatically. If you see something in the alerts that you do like, you go to the site, you click an icon to say "put this in my queue and remind me of all the important details about this opportunity." As the deadline approaches for that opportunity, you’ll receive additional alerts through the site and through our email alert system to let you know that things are coming up. Once you’ve actually sent your application, you click another icon to say “I’ve sent it; stop bothering me” and it goes into another queue. At that point, once you receive notification that you have an opportunity for an audition or that you don’t have an opportunity for an audition, you enter that information and that enters your audition queue. It sort of helps you through every step of the process to make sure that it’s on your mind, that you’re remembering the information that you sent in, and that you’re not surprised when the next date approaches.

You said that you had over 2500 listings. Do you cull the listings yourself or do organizations and competitions enter them or send them to you? Both—there are a lot of opportunities that I find and I contact the organization to let them know that we’ll post it or there are plenty of opportunities where the organization will write to us to say, "could you post this for me?" and they’ll send us the information. Then there are also organizations that have accounts with us and list the information themselves.

Auditioning can be an intimidating and exhausting process. How does YAP Tracker streamline that and take the mystery out of the audition process? Well, we can’t. It’s the one thing that we can’t do. We cannot make auditions themselves any easier for singers. It’s a difficult process, the preparation for auditioning. I will never regret that I’m not doing that anymore because that is the hardest thing that we, as singers, do. And singers do it forever, unless they’ve attained a certain level--which God love them, those who do. The one thing that we can do is make the rest of the process easier. One of the things that we say is “you sing well and we’ll take care of the rest.” We try to take the incredible ordeal out of keeping track of applications, which for many singers is a tremendous organizational feat. I remember when I was doing it myself before the existence of YAP Tracker, I would have this elaborate Excel spreadsheet to make sure that everything was lined up in date order so that I would send things in on time. Now we actually also offer an online application service, which some companies use, which makes the process even easier, so singers can apply to things with the click of a button. I think that if singer have confidence going into an audition knowing that they know what songs they’re going to sing, since they’ve kept that information in the site materials. They can refer to what they sang for that organization last year, because we never remove anything from the site. That’s the best we can do. Singers have to do the rest.

You said that you have artistic staff at opera companies using the program. Tell me a little more about that. Some organizations like to send us their audition information, but others prefer to list the information themselves. Companies can sign up for a free company account, which gives them access to list their opportunities. Other companies use the online application service, which is a fee-based option. Most companies still use a paper-based system; this is frustrating for singers in that it takes a long time to compile and combine and send it off. It can be very expensive to reproduce materials or FedEx, if you’re the type of person who does things at the last minute. They’re also a pain for organizations, when you’re dealing with 800 packets, as companies do, if there’s one headshot missing or if there’s a singer who’s missing a material, etc. A couple of years ago, we developed an online solution to help streamline the process, both for companies and singers alike. And the people who use it have been extremely positive about it, because it helps reduce their workload significantly.

What's one of the most popular features you would like to highlight? There’s so many good features—one of the most popular features that singers like is the section of the site geared towards accompanists, that allows for accompanists to indicate their availability to play for auditions. So, if you’re going to Cincinnati and you don’t happen to know anyone and you’re required to bring your own accompanist, there may actually be a pianist who’s indicated that they’re available to play, so that’s something that a lot of singers and accompanists are happy about. We also offer audition swapping functionality, which is great if you happen to not be available during the time that you’ve been given or if you’re a not a morning person and you’ve been given a 9:05 audition timeslot, there’s a place that you can go to change that. We also have a lot of new features that we’re looking forward to releasing soon, so I’m not going to talk about them until they’re ready, but we’re hopeful to have a new release on the site for 2011.

New Poll: Which site does your organization use to promote discounts online?

With all of the buzz around Groupon lately and reports that Living Social is an up-and-coming alternative, we want to take a moment to find out which services our readers are using to promote discounts online for arts and cultural offerings?

October webinar - Making the Most of Your Facebook Page

How to Make the Most of Your Facebook PageTuesday, October 19, 2010 2:00pm-3:30pm Eastern Register today for $25 Presenters: Maryann Devine and Jacquelyn Kittredge

You've probably heard a lot about Facebook in the media this past year, and you may have a lot of unanswered questions. You may be hesitating taking the plunge, for a variety of reasons -- it takes too much time or loss of brand control, for example.

In this webinar, you'll learn:

Why you should consider creating a Facebook presence for your arts organization, even you've already got a great web site or blog, even if you're using other social media tools like Twitter.

Why it DOES make a difference whether you create a personal profile, a group, or a page on Facebook.

Why your organization may be invisible even to fans of your Facebook page, and what to do about it.

Why it's important to engage with your Facebook fans -- beyond the usual clichés about 'conversation' -- and how to do it.

What is a 'landing tab' and why it gives you an advantage.

How it's possible for even the smallest organizations to use Facebook applications like contests and advertising without breaking the bank.

Participants in this webinar will also receive $25 off registration for the online course "Facebook Contests for Arts Organizations."

Maryann Devine is a teacher, blogger, and consultant who helps arts people and connect with their biggest fans. She was director of marketing and public relations at The Academy of Vocal Arts before starting her own company, smArts & Culture. There she has worked with arts organizations large and small, as well as individual artists, and created classes and e-courses especially for people in the arts who have little time to spare, but a passion to learn. She has taught audience development and technology courses for Drexel University's graduate program in arts administration.

Facebook maven Jacquelyn Kittredge created her company, e-bakery, to help small businesses mix social media into their marketing strategies. A consultant with a checkered past, Jacquelyn has been a programmer, corporate trainer, user documentation specialist, middle school teacher, and fundraising organizer (as well as a gift-wrapper and surf-shop chick!). Her teaching and training experience helps her keep the technical information people-friendly and easy to learn. To that end, she recently created the online course, "Facebook Contests for Arts Organizations." Formerly the Director of Marketing and the Chief Evangelist for a healthcare start-up company, VoiceCode.net, Jacquelyn lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband, one dog and their three (wild) boys.

Social Media Spotlight: Vancouver Opera

Welcome to the first installment of the Social Media Spotlight, our monthly feature focusing on arts organizations’ social media strategies.

Vancouver Opera’s social media presence, headed by photography/fashion buff and technology maven Ling Chan, goes where few opera companies have gone before. In order to achieve their goal of increasing brand awareness and facilitating two way communications with their followers, the $9 million opera company has launched initiatives like manga (a traditionally Japanese style of comic) and an annual animation contest, for instance. Currently on the company’s blog is a serial feature written in the voice of the main character of their world premiere opera, Lillian Alling.

Vancouver Opera takes ideas that many non-profit arts companies might deem risky or unsustainable and, through a combination of sheer creativity, thorough execution and diligent tracking, have made the Vancouver Opera social media sites vibrant, interesting, and unique.

Social Media Manager Ling presented her work this summer at the Opera America Conference. I caught up with her to chat:

Everything in the Vancouver Opera social media presence looks so vibrant. When you first set out, what were your goals for your organization and your audience?

Thanks! Vancouver Opera is a vibrant and innovative company that loves to engage with our community. When we first started out with social media, our goal was to put a face on the organization as well as increase awareness of the art-form of opera through educating and entertaining our tech savvy, minimally to moderately engaged supporters. Vancouver Opera was one of the first arts organizations to really use social media tools. From the start, we were committed to reaching the next generation of opera lovers using the media of the times and integrating it into our marketing/PR mix.

Your summer blog features keep your readers captivated during Vancouver Opera's off-season. Tell me about Opera Mania 101 and the other summer blog features.

During the summer months, we needed to come up with ways to keep our followers engaged, so we came up with some regular features for the blog. • Operamania 101 is a feature I came up with and thought would be helpful for the opera-curious. It’s opera education from a pop culture perspective. Everyone’s heard snippets of opera in movies, TV shows, cartoons and commercials and yet people might think they don’t know opera. They are more familiar with opera than they think. Some other blog features have included: • Bizarre Opera Videos where we post odd, unusual, or notable performances of opera found on YouTube. • Tuesday Trivia where we come up with opera themed quizzes. • Top Ten Lists where we invite readers to vote for their #1 choice. For example: Top 10 Villains, Top 10 Opera Tearjerkers, Top 10 Fantasy Operas • Other features: 20 Questions with an Artist, Everyone’s a Critic, Lunchtime Poll, Opera Props

Lego Carmen, one of the "Bizarre Opera Videos" posted by Vancouver Opera to keep interest in opera during the summer months

You have a background in photography. Was this the impetus for Flickr Fashion at the Opera? What are the goals of the program and what inspired you to create it?

I love taking pictures and I have always had a passion for fashion. I went to fashion design school years ago and worked as an assistant stylist on a couple of magazine and music video shoots. While working down at the theatre during Eugene Onegin in November 2008, I couldn’t help but notice how many young people went all out, dressing themselves “to the nines” for our operas. It wasn’t all just formal wear either. Our audiences mixed dressing up with elements of street, punk and preppy fashion, bringing a whole new flava to the world of opera. The people who dressed up for our operas inspired me to come up with Fashion at the Opera, which you can find on our Flickr.

Describe Blogger Night at the Opera. How did it engage new audiences? Did it show an increase in sales?

Our very first Blogger Night at the Opera was in January 2009 for our Carmen opera. A prominent local blogger named Rebecca Bollwitt, aka Miss 604, came to our Eugene Onegin that previous fall and she ended up blogging about the experience on her own personal blog. We got to talking and she suggested we coordinate a blogger night, which we did and it has since became so wildly successful that other opera companies started calling us to find out how to set it up for themselves.

We invited bloggers who were opera newbies to join us, blogging pre-show and during intermission their thoughts on the opera and the whole experience of being at the opera. We gave them backstage tours and also invited them to mingle with cast, staff and guests at the post-show party on opening night.

We live streamed their web links on our VO blog, so that our readers can follow along in real time. This was great exposure for us and a way of getting the next generation interested in opera. Most of their readers have never been to the opera. But after reading about Blogger Night at the Opera, they became excited about our operas and what we’re doing with social media and bought tickets to the next performances. I had a few of them seek me out on the theatre floor to tell me they were here because of Blogger Night at the Opera.

What's Opera Ninja and how did you come up with the idea? How do other people in the organization feel about giving control of their communications over to (basically) a volunteer?

Opera Ninja evolved from Blogger Night at the Opera. We had blogger night on Opening Night. What should we do for dress rehearsal? We came up with Opera Ninja March 2009 for our Rigoletto dress rehearsal.

It was inspired by Welsh National Opera when they tweeted 12 hours in the life of the Welsh National Opera's The Marriage of Figaro, including a live relaying of the performance (also translated into Welsh).

On our dress rehearsal nights, the Opera Ninja would live tweet. Followers were engaged with seeing an event unfold and have an insider view of what was going on behind-the-scenes. The tone of Opera Ninja is cheeky, fun, irreverent. We didn’t necessarily want it to be a play-by-play of what was happening on the stage. Instead it could be the Opera Ninja’s reactions to what was going on. Our followers have found this entertaining and fun. They would add comments and also re-tweet our tweets to their own followers.

I was the original Opera Ninja but have since invited our bloggers to take on the character in their own voices. I give a lot of freedom to our Opera Ninjas in what they tweet because I trust them. They are high-profile and active Twitter users. They know the etiquette, the advantages and the drawbacks of Twitter. They understand that they can have fun as the Opera Ninja but as they’re also representing VO for the night, they have to be professional too.

Vancouver Opera has started publishing manga, a comic book based on the opera. Manga is sort of an unusual foray for an opera company to take. What inspired you to take the stories of operas to this new medium?

It may sound like a strange combination but the partnering of opera and manga has worked extremely well for us. We were approached by Vancouver artist & editor Roy Husada of Rival Schools four seasons ago with the idea of “manga-nizing” our operas. It started out in black & white and written in Japanese, but has evolved into colorful mangas in English. The mangas are eye-catching and it helps give readers an idea of what the opera is about, thus sparking their interest in coming to the opera. Our mangas have proven to be very popular with our followers.

By my count you have at least four Twitter accounts for Vancouver Opera. Why? What are the advantages to have many accounts? And how do you track and get a good picture of your audience?

We have 4 Twitter accounts: 1. Vancouver Opera which is our main Twitter account where I tweet daily. It's the one with the most followers and the most activity, so it’s this account where I keep track and measure all our questions, responses and re-tweets.

2. Operabot which was started for our Operabot contest, an animation contest for our Golden Anniversary season. Professional and student animators were challenged to create animated shorts of one of the four productions last year. The tweets posted to Operabot related to updates on the contest, the submissions received and any fun or wacky robots related links.

3. Opera Ninja – We wanted a dedicated Twitter account just for our exclusive “behind the scenes” tweeting during dress rehearsals.

4. Where’s Lillian – For our upcoming world premiere, we wanted to introduce our Twitter followers to Lillian Alling as she makes her epic North American journey from Ellis Island to the wilds of British Columbia. She travels on foot in search of a man named Josef. We have someone taking on the persona of Lillian Alling and tweeting in their own voice the adventures and hardships that the real Lillian Alling might have encountered. From these tweets, we hope that followers will become intrigued with Lillian Alling and want to come to the opera.

Each Twitter account serves a different purpose and we wanted to have a dedicated account for the audience who wanted just Operabot updates or just Opera Ninja updates. Also it frees up our main VO Twitter stream by not bombarding our followers with too many tweets or random-sounding trains of thoughts.

What have been the results of all of these programs for Vancouver Opera? Many times it is difficult to track the effects of social media programs. How have you been tracking your initiatives at Vancouver Opera?

Our social media initiatives have garnered a lot of positive attention from newcomers to opera, opera lovers, our peers in the industry and the media.

I track and report data to measure the impact of our social media efforts in various ways: • Blogger – Google analytics, Like This / Tweet This buttons • Facebook – analytics • I use the Bit.ly shortener for our tweets to see how many people click on our links • Through promo codes in our Tessitura software, I can find out how many tickets were purchased whenever a sales offer was put forth on our social media channels.

Any initiatives for the 2010-2011 season that you'd like to preview for us?

I have some exciting things planned but it’s a surprise. Everyone will just have to stay tuned to Vancouver Opera.

Help Us Help You

Last year around this time, we launched our Technology in the Arts webinar series.  To keep this service relevant to the needs of our online community in the coming year, please share with us the topics and types of webinars you would like for us to offer. Type your ideas directly into the box below and click on "Finish Survey" - it's that easy. Thank you in advance for your thoughtful responses!

Kickstarter: funding for (and by) the masses

Crowdfunding websites are a simple way for artists to solicit and accept donations online.  One of the best-known sites is Kickstarter, which hosted the record-breaking crowdfunding of Diaspora. With Kickstarter, you set a fundraising goal and have three months to achieve it. If you reach your goal within three months, you keep the cash. If you don’t, the funds are returned to your backers.  You design a menu of rewards to motivate backers to give.  And, you keep 100% of ownership over your project -- an important consideration for artists dealing with copyright and distribution issues.

Helen DeMichiel, who funded a series of webisodes with Kickstarter, says the all-or-nothing structure is a great motivator. “You have to hustle,” she explains, and your backers get caught up in the excitement.

A previous project backer and current project starter, Tirzah DeCaria points out that most projects are funded largely by backers within the artist's existing network. She advises artists to look at Kickstarter as an opportunity to consolidate and mobilize your network rather than as a tool for reaching large groups of new fans. Of course, Kickstarter isn’t for everyone. The site is curated, and in addition to an application process, projects must have a U.S. address and a U.S. bank account. And there are the guidelines.

In a quick scroll through Kickstarter’s current projects, I came across many projects posted by individual artists or small groups, as well as projects by a design studio, a non-profit performance company, and a video game developer.  Kickstarter clearly doesn't exclude businesses, but established organizations aren't the primary users.  If your organization is considering a project, Joe's post on micro-donations has some good thoughts and advice.  And, again, consult Kickstarter's guidelines.

Other crowdfunding sites for artists:

• Projects on IndieGoGo can be based anywhere in the world. Unlike Kickstarter, the site isn’t curated, so projects cover a broad spectrum -- creative endeavors, causes, and entrepreneurial work.  And, IndieGoGo is not an “all-or-nothing” enterprise.  You can keep any funds you raise along the way.  IndieGoGo also has several innovative partnerships, including a fiscal sponsorship program through Fractured Atlas and the San Francisco Film Society.

• RocketHub is another “all-or-nothing” crowdfunding site geared toward artistic and creative projects.  RocketHub is not curated, though projects must be legal and “in good taste.”   You must have a PayPal account to start a project.

What is your experience with crowdfunding art?  Should established organizations stay out of it or join in the fun?

Animoto: Create videos without a video camera

Many arts organizations have experimented with using “trailers” to promote upcoming performances or exhibitions. But what if you don’t have the time, equipment, or expertise to film and edit a video?  What if all you have are photos? Enter Animoto, a free tool that lets you quickly create short videos using a combination of photos, text, and/or video clips of up to five seconds in length.  You can choose background music from Animoto’s library or upload your own.

To try it out, I created this 30-second promotion for Misnomer Dance Theater's performance back at our 2008 conference.   It took about 20 minutes, including the time I spent actually finding the photos on our Flickr account.

The process is a pretty straightforward drag-and-drop design. You can add text and choose particular images to “spotlight” with extra screen time. Once your elements are arranged, one click mixes them together into a flashy 30-second video.

Other than changing the order of your elements, though, you don’t have a lot of control over the final product. Because Animoto automatically mixes the elements together for you, there’s no opportunity to fine-tune individual transitions. This is great if you’re looking for something quick and easy, but it can be a real downside for the more detail-oriented user.

Throughout the process, there is a strong push to upgrade your account, which can get a little annoying. If you’re with a 501(c)3 organization, you can request a free Pro account (normally $250/year), which allows you to make full-length, high resolution videos that are downloadable. The Pro account also includes a commercial-use license.

What have you created with Animoto? Do you have other favorite video tools?

Digital Art Has A New Home With Adobe. Virtually.

No guards. Always open. And I assume you won't have any alarm surprises. Welcome to the latest frontier in arts meet technology: Adobe Museum of Digital Media, the world’s first virtual museum.

What is a virtual museum? This is not simply a museum website where you can view the collections by clicking an index. Nor is this a museum placed in a virtual world such as Second Life (which interestingly enough has a thriving art scene).

The mission of the AMDM is to “Showcase and preserve digital work and illustrate how digital media shapes and impacts society.”  Adobe "has changed the world...and we wanted to celebrate that,” says Rich Silverstein, Museum Director.

Keith Anderson, Creative Director, says the main question asked when developing the idea was, "how would this work in the real world?" Architects and designers were hired to create a museum that could theoretically be placed in any city in the world. There is an outside atrium, gallery space, and towers where the archives will be housed.

So how do you walk through this virtual space? There are no avatars. Instead, a sea-jelly-meets-futuristic floating machine eyeball is your guide to the space (complete with cute old-school-computer-takes-an-underwater-journey sound effects).

One of the greatest aspects of this new space is the freedom to create work that would be impossible to show in a traditional museum. Often, digital pieces are printed out on paper, or projected, and depending on the artist, a lot of the meaning behind the piece is lost (not to mention quality). It's like taking a Polaroid of The Birth of Venus. Sure, the photograph might turn out amazing and some people could like it better than the original because it has a neat 1960's quality to it... but I doubt that was the image Sandro Botticelli had in mind in 1486.

I’m excited and a bit hesitant at the prospect of this museum. Yes, I think a virtual museum will have enormous potential for artists who work in digital media. Images of many artists’ work do no justice to their pieces. However, I am someone who likes to be physically immersed in a museum. It is an escape from the real world into another universe: sometimes confusing, sometimes controversial, sometimes just beautiful, but always refreshing. It’s the same comfort as getting lost in a good book. I worry that, personally, I will not get the same satisfaction exploring the very cool looking structure from the 15-inch screen of my MacBook. But then again, I am also one of those people who refuse to use a Kindle because I like to physically hold a book. So who knows, it might be a heavenly solution to dealing with crowds and the hassle of checking your coat. And the fact that you never have to worry about hours or off days is pretty great.

What do you think? Is this where we are headed? Will virtual museums help create demand for the arts by allowing everyone to have access from the comfort of their homes?

The first show is entitled, "The Valley," and is curated by Tom Eccles. It will feature work by Tony Oursler, an amazing video artist who has already been pushing the boundaries of what digital media should look like and how it can be displayed (Did anyone catch his recent show at the Mattress Factory?).  Oursler tends to highlight the strangeness of humanity in his work, and the medium of the internet and how it reflects society will obviously play a role in this new show.

Other upcoming exhibits will feature John Maeda and Mariko Mori.

Membership is free and just takes an email address. I am curious to see where the Adobe Virtual Museum goes from here. Will there be any social aspect to the museum? Will they ever partner with real life spaces for exhibits? Will they try to place a version of the museum in Second Life?

Opening night is August 2, 2010! I expect to see all of your sea-jelly-machine-eyeballs there so we can crack open a bottle of cyber wine and toast to the latest in technology meets museums!

Want to Save Your Online Data? There's an app for that...

In May, I participated in a webinar hosted by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies that focused on creative technology strategies for state arts agencies.  One of the issues that came up during the Q & A was backing up communications from social media platforms.  As entities within state government, many state arts agencies are required by law to retain copies of their communications.  But how do you archive communications that take place on social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook? Over the past two months, I have been using a potential solution.  Backupify provides daily online backup for your social media and software-as-a-service data.  They are the only online backup and storage provider to seamlessly back user data to the Amazon S3 cloud with its strong security and data duplication policy.

So here are the pros and cons of my experience with Backupify...

PROS

1. Backupify provides a centralized backup location for a number of online services, including:  Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, WordPress, Basecamp, Gmail, and many more.
2. Businesses utilizing Google Apps can back up all of their data at relatively low cost.
3. Quick and easy setup.
4. With the free account, you are able to backup one account per online service.  The premium account level backs up an unlimited number of accounts per service for just under $60/year.
5. Users are able to choose whether their accounts are backed up daily or weekly.
6. Users are also able to opt for a daily email notification of backups, weekly email notification, or no email notification.
7. The system maintains a backup history identifying when accounts were backed up, whether or not the backups were successful, and how many files were backed up per online service account.

CONS

1. There is no standardized format for backups because the backup file type is determined by the service providers.  For example:
   • Facebook photos are backed up on the site as photo files, but other Facebook elements (friends, statuses, links, notes, and events) are stored as an XML (Extensible Markup Language) file - which I view using Microsoft Excel.
   • For Twitter accounts, users can download a PDF workbook containing the following data:  profile, updates, received direct messages, sent direct messages, favorites, and mentions.  Users may also download XML files for each of those individual data pieces as well as an XML file containing information about the user's Twitter followers.
   • WordPress blogs and websites are backed up as a MySQL database in the sql.gz format.
2. Currently, users may backup their personal Facebook profiles but not fan pages.  I asked Backupify CEO Rob May if there are plans to add backing up Facebook fan pages to the service's offerings.  He informed me that they are working with Facebook on this functionality over the next two weeks, so this option should be available in the very near future.

My personal experience with Backupify over the past two months has been a very positive one.  Once the service adds the capacity to backup Facebook fan pages, it will be even more useful for arts organizations and governmental agencies using social media.

Guggenheim + YouTube = Awesome Biennial

Video may have killed the radio star, but it has done wonders in shifting the paradigm of visual art.

Since the 1960s, video art has been challenging preconceived notions about how art was supposed to look. At the time, these video artists had to fight to be recognized as worthy enough to be hanging in the same space as Monet or Picasso. And nowadays, you cannot walk into a contemporary art museum without some type of video art installation. Barriers were successfully broken down. Hooray!

Let’s take a quick look at the opposite end of the art world spectrum. A magical little land on the internet where hours (and probably days) at a time can be spent: YouTube.

With the dawn of YouTube, absolutely anyone can have his or her two minutes of fame.  There is everything from a rapping weatherman to the music of Windows XP, Daft Hands and the post-it Mona Lisa… and seriously? Can you even imagine life before this guy? I know I can’t.

So we have the art world, which is harder to crack than a walnut frozen inside a glacier, and then YouTube, which could not be easier.

What happens when these two worlds join forces? YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video

The premise is to receive video art submissions from around the globe by people who may or may NOT consider themselves artists.

New. Exciting. Different. Weird. Animated. Confusing. Anything.

“We’re looking for things we haven’t seen before,” says Nancy Spector, deputy director and chief curator of the Guggenheim Foundation.

No pressure.

So what happens after videos are submitted? A panel will review all of the videos and narrow it down to 200. From those 200, 20 will be selected to show in the first Biennial of Creative Video at the Guggenheim Museums. Yes, museums. The show will be simultaneously running at the Guggenheim in New York City, Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice. All 200 finalists will have their videos shown on the YouTube Play Channel.

Partnering with the Guggenheim and YouTube, is Hewlett-Packard, who will be providing all the equipment at the museums to display the videos, as well as online tutorials about video basics such as editing and lighting.

So even if you know absolutely nothing about videos or video art, your work could be shown in one of the most renowned museums in the world. Interesting. And exciting. I think.

What are your thoughts? Will this produce great art worthy of showing in Guggenheim museums around the world? Is that even the point?

Now there is a question worth exploring… In this rapidly changing world where absolutely anyone with a camera, phone, or computer can create “art,” how do you define what is museum worthy anymore?

I think there are two schools of thought on the matter. On the one hand there are the purists who think the art world should remain an elusive and elite club that few artists ever manage to penetrate. Unfortunately, these limitations of access are crippling to the sustainability of our field. Which is what the focus should be, according to the second group. Yes, the art world must educate, question, and preserve beautiful and interesting things, but if you can’t get people to walk through the doors then what is the point? Keeping today’s audience engaged with art, regardless of the means, has become a focus for both visual and performing arts organizations. Technology is a great entry point, because everyone understands it and uses it on a daily basis. The same holds true for artists. Almost every artist I am friends with uses technology in some fashion to produce their work. They are creating amazing things, but the likelihood of top curators and critics ever hearing about them is slim to none. Which is why YouTube Play is such a great concept.

Obviously, there will be no way of creating installation style pieces similar to Bill Viola’s piece for the 2007 Venice Biennale, Ocean Without a Shore. But in this case, that is ok. Unknown artists get to show their work, interesting pieces will be created, and the museum doors will be as convenient as your computer screen.

The other day, we talked about crossing into different genres of art than you are used to… well here is your chance! Everyone is an artist.

Interested? Absolutely anyone in the world can apply by uploading your video (less than 10 minutes and created in the last 2 years) to the YouTube Play Channel. The deadline is July 31, 2010, so start creating!