Planning for Engagement: Tech Strategy & the Visitor Experience

Earlier this week, the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum hosted a talk by Nina K. Simon, author of The Participatory Museum and the Museum 2.0 blog. Simon works with museums throughout the country to develop programs for improving visitor engagement.

Simon brought up some great ideas about the ways in which museums could use programming to increase engagement and create meaningful experiences between visitors.  Might arts organizations be able to apply her ideas about museums when designing their own strategies with technology and social media?

Here are a few of her ideas from the talk and how I think they might be applied:

Museums should be seen as places for everyday use

Simon argued that many museums are seen as tourist destinations that have a long-standing stereotype of being a place to be visited maybe only once a year. This is also true for many other types of arts organizations.  Many of us would like to see that change and for arts organizations to become places that people consider frequenting practically everyday. Social media could be a strong tool for stimulating this impression. Offering frequent, engaging content online and creating a personal connection with our organizations’ constituents can help counter the idea that arts organizations are aloof and impersonal tourist destinations.  Social media offers an opportunity to communicate the frequent, sometimes daily offerings of your organization.

Museums should be trusted hosts for social experiences

Simon spoke last night about the success some museums have had with programs that involve voting, encourage competition, and prioritize face-to-face interaction between visitors.  Arts organizations could apply this idea towards utilizing social event sites like meetup.com, where the end result is a real-life, social interaction. Or this idea could be applied towards using such tools as real time tagging of artworks from any discipline or mobile device voting systems as a way to create conversation and interaction between visitors. The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra went the mobile voting route when they had audience members vote, via text, to choose which encore the symphony performed.

Museums should be places for seeing and exploring as well as sharing and making

Another great way to engage visitors in a meaningful way is to encourage them to share their experiences of the organization with their friends and to create their own content. Social networking sites are centered on this idea of sharing experiences online and many organizations have taken advantage of this by encouraging their visitors to share photos and stories on the organizations’ social networks. The Vancouver Opera has a flickr fashion page that gives visitors who have “dressed to the nines” a place to shine online. The Mattress Factory’s iConfess is a confessional booth for visitors to express their ideas about the museum and publish those ideas directly to YouTube. Photos and personal experiences are definitely visitor-created content, but current technology can push this idea of participation even further. The success the Guggenheim had with YouTube Play, an online exhibition of user-created videos, and online projects like The Johnny Cash Project, where users re-interpret a Johnny Cash video by drawing over each frame, are two great examples.

As technology and social networks continue to expand and grow at a rapid rate, it’s hard to know which to develop programming for. These ideas presented at Ms. Simon’s talk can serve as great starting points to that conversation. As your organization moves forward developing technological programming, some questions should be asked, such as: Is the technology serving the end goal of bringing people to our institution? Is it helping to create a worthwhile experience for visitors, or is it just tech for tech’s sake? How varied of an audience can a particular technology or social network reach? Are there better, low-tech solutions to visitor engagement? New technology and advances in web 2.0 can offer powerful tools that can help expand audiences and increase visitor engagement, but remember to step back and look at which strategy best serves your organization's visitors and creates a meaningful experience.

Fill in the ________: A New, Social Entertainment Website

MySpace, the original social networking site, has relaunched and re-branded itself as My_______ ,the world's first “Social entertainment” website.  The purpose of the website has shifted from a social networking site motivated by the slogan “a place for friends” to a site intent on “becoming the leading entertainment destination that is socially powered by the passions of fans and curators.” Essentially, the new My_______ focuses less on people and more on media and digital content sharing. The sleek new site combines the most popular features of Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Youtube into a single media focused platform. Users can now follow artists and organizations on topic pages, similar to Facebook fan pages, while receiving real time updates on the music, videos and content being heard, viewed, or uploaded by them (very reminiscent of Twitter).

In this way, members will be able to see what music their favorite opera company is listening to as well as what they are posting. Users will be shown the media that their friends are consuming, not just the media that their friends and topics are posting. It opens a new opportunity for media recommendations, community building, viral marketing, and content sharing.

These updates appear on the new homepage now referred to as the dashboard which can be viewed in three modes: list, grid, or full screen.

The list mode looks almost exactly like a Facebook news feed.  The grid view integrates watchable videos, playable songs, pictures, and micro-blogs in a chronological collage of media tiles, and the full screen mode allows users to experience their media updates in an interface similar to iTunes coverflow.

My_______ has combined multiple features from across the web  that have never been offered in tandem before - creating a unique media viewing and sharing experience.  Some of the other new features include: interactive games, karaoke (Opera?), free music playlists creation (competing with Pandora?), and media trending.

The new interface and combination of features could prove very useful to cultural institutions and arts managers if the user base is willing to readopt a floundering platform.

The largest obstacle for the new My______ is the old MySpace.  The relaunch comes after one of the worst years in the company's history.  MySpace lost 50% of its user base between 2009 and 2010, a critical hit for the organization and a terrible loss for its functional use as a communications tool and social network.  The new My________ is much more in line with Internet usage interests and behaviors of Millenials, but it is not yet clear if they will return to the site.

In order to make the transition smoother and help regain customers, My______ has paired with Facebook to create what they are calling a mashup, in which My_______ takes all of a user’s profile information, friends, and likes from Facebook and imports them into a My_______ page; making the process of setting up a new functioning account much quicker and helping users grasp the changes and full functionality of the site much faster.  This partnership bodes well for My_______ and provides a clear focus away from social networking and onto new media and digital content sharing.

For arts organizations and non-profits that are currently tweeting links to content on Twitter, uploading videos to YouTube, and sharing pictures and events on Facebook, the new My_______ offers a single platform that will combine all three. A one-stop shop for all of your social entertainment and digital media needs. The ability for pictures and videos to appear directly in a news feed like Twitter but with a usable interface like Facebook is very desirable and something that I believe has huge potential.  Pairing the interface with the content and media focus allows for a more streamlined experience that is not diluted by the social aspect of Facebook and Twitter.  The New My_______ is definitely trying to steer away from content that does not surround music, media or artists in some way.

The ability to create opera karaoke, post audio excerpts from a concert, or share video from a stage production or event that are instantly previewable and clickable in a media focused feed that is more graphic than Twitter, less convoluted than a YouTube subscription, and easier to deliver than Facebook is very enticing.  If users begin to adopt the new My_______, it seems only natural for organizations to follow. Only time will tell if this snazzy new facelift will take off, but the potential is definitely real.

NAMP 2010 - Day Two - Recap Discussions

David, Corwin and Amelia report out on Day Two of the 2010 National Arts Marketing Project Conference. Items discussed: disembodied panelists, Vimeo analytics, the Audience Engagement Platform, the value of quantifying intrinsic impact, and more.

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!

Are You Getting the Most Out of Twitter? - November Webinar

Getting the Most Out of Twitter

Thursday, November 18, 2010 2:00pm-3:30pm Eastern Register today for $25 Presenter: David Dombrosky

As the ninth most popular website in the world, Twitter has quickly grown into a formidable communications platform. But what can you really do with 140 characters or less? How can arts managers make the most of this increasingly useful tool?

In this webinar, you'll learn:

• Who uses Twitter, and why they want to engage your organization.
• What aspects of Twitter distinguish it from other social sites, how your organization can use these aspects to communicate more effectively.
• The 70-20-10 rule for engagement, and how you can use it to your advantage.
• Best practices for arts organizations using Twitter
• What third party applications can arts managers use to share media, expand your reach, and much more.
• What analytic tools exist to help you chart your Twitter success

David Dombrosky is the Executive Director of the Center for Arts Management and Technology (CAMT), an applied research center at Carnegie Mellon University investigating ways in which arts organizations can use online technology to more effectively meet their goals. He frequently presents technology and social media workshops for arts conferences – most recently for The Association of American Cultures, Performing Arts Exchange, Chorus America, Opera America, College Art Association, and Grantmakers in the Arts.

Older Adults and Social Media, Part II: Talking with the Experts

In my last post, I asked you to think about the ways in which your organization’s social media strategies might be affected by the growing number of users over age 50.  While age diversity is just one of many factors to consider when thinking about your organization’s online audience, it can be used as a point of departure in order to examine broader ideas about how to foster audience engagement through social media. To learn more, I asked three experts to answer five questions about what the rise of older adults using social media might mean for arts organizations.  Below, you'll find insight from Ron Evans, Principal of Groupofminds.com Arts Marketing Consultants, Brian Reich, Managing Director of little m media and editor of thinkingaboutmedia.com, and Maryann Devine, founder of smArts & Culture and a host of tomorrow's webinar, "How to Make the Most of Your Facebook Page".

When you first began advising arts organizations in their social media strategies, how strong was the tendency to appeal to specifically younger audiences?  How did that translate into the content and tone of an organization’s social media identity?

MARYANN DEVINE: At that time, the desire to reach a younger, new audience was usually the primary reason for branching out into social media.  Most groups assumed that their older, traditional audience wasn't online, much less using social media, and that belief is still prevalent today.  However, most groups didn't get that social media spaces demand a different voice -- more personal, more human -- than the marketing and advertising materials they were used to producing.  They were reaching for a fun, hip tone; but in most cases, like your parents trying to be cool, they weren't very convincing.

RON EVANS:  Reaching younger audiences has always been the initial main focus for the arts organizations I've come in contact with.  I can't say that organizations were specifically writing content in a style to reach a younger audience (although that would be interesting).  For the most part, the content I see today is not age-specific at all.  And oftentimes the tone is still very institutional, where it should be conversational.  David Dombrosky just had a great quote over at the arts marketing blog salon that I agree with:  “When social media sites are used with a motivation for engagement rather than self-promotion, they often lead to those desired marketing outcomes of increased sales and brand awareness.”

BRIAN REICH:  The age of the audience has never mattered as much to me, and the people I advise.  Everyone's lives are influenced by technology -- and now the Internet.  Adoption was consistent across different age groups, but the usage patterns were very different, and that was where my focus has always been trained.  Rather than look at younger audiences and their willingness to do certain things online, I wanted to identify what opportunities were available in terms of engaging any audience and then advise organizations on what that means to their work, online and offline.

Do you find that organizations are beginning to understand the implications of strong social media engagement across demographics, or does it continue to be largely seen as a way to reach younger audiences?

B.R.: Yes and no.  I think there is significantly more willingness to experiment and explore what is possible online, and through social media, but most organizations still lack a deep commitment to what is required to fully engage and fully leverage what is possible.  Using the tools is not enough -- its how you use them that's important.  Most organizations still don't share enough.  More organizations still don't listen enough, or well enough.  Most organizations don't engage enough.  We have seen organizations integrate social media into their marketing and communications mix without changing the way they operate, organize, their staffing, etc.  I would argue that we need to shift and reset the way we do everything to make the kind of advances that are possible.

R.E.: Only now am I seeing that they are realizing that there are other segments who are using Facebook. The often-quoted statistic is that the fastest-growing segment on Facebook is women over 60. That's probably true -- Facebook is where all the photos from the grandkids and such are located now. But that may be all the people are doing -- they may not be playing Facebook games, writing on the walls of arts organizations, or even updating their own status. The statistics are still being gathered about their true activity, but since that age range has traditionally been great at supporting the arts, it makes sense for arts organizations to start talking to them too.

M.D.: My experience has been that most arts organizations, whose traditional audience skews older, still assume that they're not using social media. We haven't been effective in communicating to them research findings to the contrary. The Pew Internet & American Life project found that social media use by U.S. seniors doubled last year, and 13% of people 65 and older log onto a social networking site on a typical day.

Do you find that different age groups have different needs and wants from social media?

R.E.:  If you take email as the main form of communication as the base, you can look outside of that to see what people are doing. Email is still the primary way of communicating for business purposes. Some folks are just using it for that (sending an occasional email) and are mainly using Facebook for all peer-to-peer communications. Some people use Twitter for that as well, but of course, your messages tend to be much shorter.

M.D.: I think the one desire that unites people of all ages using social media is connection. Younger people are more likely to be creating and publishing original content online, and that likelihood goes down with age. Across the board, the people Forrester Research calls joiners -- those who join social networks, for example -- and spectators -- people who read blogs but don't comment, for instance -- are most prevalent.

B.R.: I think different people have different wants and needs from media generally, online and more traditional forms -- but it goes beyond age.  When looking at different audience groups there are four things that help to determine, from my perspective, what people want and need.  Demographics (which includes age), psychographics (what people read, watch on TV, the car they drive, etc.), technographics (their comfort with different types of technology or expectations when using a particular platform or channel) and behavioral info -- specifically what they have done in a certain context before.  Yes, age does impact how people get/share information and what they expect, but there are other factors that help to create a more complete and more interesting profile of an audience that we can use to consider how an organization might communicate.

Have you found that certain social media techniques are more effective for users of different ages?

M.D.:  Sure. As I said, different age groups use social media in different ways, so, for instance, it might be effective to connect to your boomer audience through Facebook or get them to join a private social network because they're likely to be joiners. But getting them to post comments, photos, or come up with a creative entry to a contest might be a stretch because on the whole, they're not big on creating and publishing original content.

R.E.: Currently, I know of no arts organization that segments to different age groups, because Facebook and Twitter do not make it easy to do this. You could set up multiple accounts of course, but that's pretty cumbersome to manage. I think this capability will be coming though...

B.R.:  I don't think it’s about the technique, but rather how the target audience gets/shares information, what their expectations are in a particular situation, etc. The same techniques will work, or not work, on the same audience depending on what the conversation is about, or the time of day or location of the interaction.  Its common for organizations to look to the tactics, or the tools, as the solution to a communications challenge - but that is a mistake.  The tools and tactics are what facilitates the engagement - and they are flexible enough to adapt to any situation.  What organizations need to really understand are their goals (and how to measure their desired outcomes/impact) and the strategy for meeting those goals -- how they need to approach the challenge.  What we do know is that every audience, in every situation, is fundamentally looking for the same thing: little m media... which I define as timely, relevant, compelling INFORMATION, meaningful EXPERIENCES that they want to share, talk to people about and similar, and/or STUFF that people value and want to have as a part of their lives.  If you can provide good information, experiences and stuff, the mediums and tactics can always vary and you'll still find success.

Are there any tools or methods that can help us target our various demographic bases effectively?  Any tips on how we can tailor our communication to specific audience segments while still maintaining brand consistency?

B.R.:  Again, you have to look beyond just demographics and really start to appreciate the psychographic, technographic and behavioral information.  There are lots of studies available, lots of free data that you can look at... and if you take different pieces and parts and mash it up you will find a pretty compelling profile of your audience form which will help you to make some choices about your communications efforts.  Pay attention to how people act.  Consider what people want.  Ask questions. Build deeper profiles of your targets, and members and supporters, and everyone else, by collecting information and determining WHY someone took a certain action or favored a particular opportunity.  If you can do that the rest will turn out to be much easier.

R.E.: Perhaps I can answer this best by telling you what's missing from Facebook. Facebook needs to offer a way to segment messages based on whatever grouping of people you want. As a patron, I should be able to be a part of different "clubs" that are connected to an organization's Facebook page, so I can segment myself into a club of my choosing. That club would have it's own status updates and leaders who would help the communication to happen around a shared sub-interest, such as "Opening Night Singles Club" or the "Matinee and Coffee" club. Right now, the one-size fits all of Facebook pages doesn't allow a whole lot of flexibility. I think this will get here eventually, and I think the capabilities to manage a social media presence inside an organization will also grow to be able to accommodate this new capability.

M.D.: Forrester Research makes a number of tools free and available on their site, including the Social Technographics Profile tool.  I think that, in tailoring your communications to specific audience segments, you should picture yourself personally talking to real people in each of those segments in different situations. For instance, you'd use a different tone in talking to your grandmother than you would in talking to your daughter's college roommate, but you'd still sound like yourself. It's the same with the voice you use as an organization -- you can adjust for the context of the conversation while still sounding authentically like you.

Are You Making the 5 Biggest Facebook Mistakes?

In preparation for next week's webinar How to Make the Most of Your Facebook Page, I asked Maryann Devine from smArts & Culture and Jacquelyn Kittredge from e-bakery social media to share with us the 5 biggest mistakes that arts organizations make on Facebook.  Here is their reply: 1. Using Facebook as a broadcast channel rather than interacting with your fans. If your aim is to become invisible to your fans, this is the way to go. Facebook determines where you show up in your fans' default Top News stream based on the interactions of the fans and their friends with your page, and the kind of content you put up. Less interaction means your page is less visible to your fans -- the very people you want to reach.

2. Using the same voice on Facebook (and other social media) as you do in your traditional marketing. Many arts managers have trouble making that leap, and it's understandable. They're used to communicating with their patrons in a particular style -- it's hard to shake that off. The reality is that using the same voice on Facebook as you do in your ad copy is just not going to work, and you'll likely be ignored. Social media spaces are more personal, like a backyard barbeque or the kitchen table, and you need to adjust your tone accordingly.

3. Forgetting that the page is for your fans, not for your organization. As Jacquelyn often points out, fan pages harken back to fan clubs. Fan clubs were all about giving special access and fan-club-only perks to the most loyal enthusiasts. Research shows that most people 'like' Facebook pages for discounts and special offers. Keep that in mind as your interacting with your group's fans.

4. Creating a personal profile or group for your arts organization rather than a fan page. Fan pages allow you to analyze stats on how people interact with your page AND the demographics of your fans. Personal profiles and groups can't do that. Fan pages can have an unlimited number of fans. Personal profiles are limited to 5,000 friends. Most importantly, Facebook is indexed by Google and your page can improve your Google ranking -- it may be easier to find your fan page through Google than your own web site.

5. Not having a Facebook Page at all because you already have a website. People are spending more time on social networks and less time on static websites, so Facebook allows you to meet your fans where they are already are.

In addition to addressing these common mistakes, Maryann and Jacquelyn's webinar will discuss:

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.

The webinar is on Tuesday, October 19th from 2pm-3:30pm EST.  Registration is $25. Click here to register today.

Cultivating Citizen Critics

This post originally also appears as part of the Arts Marketing Blog Salon hosted by Americans for the Arts.

For years, I have heard the lament for the rise of “citizen critics” –individuals who use blogs, social networks and other social media tools to share their reviews of performances, exhibitions, films, etc. I have listened to a number of artists, directors, curators, and other arts managers bemoan the replacement of “true” cultural critics in traditional media with these self-published citizen critics. The complaints typically revolve around a perceived lack of credentials and lack of understanding for the discipline.

While I, too, bemoan the loss of criticism in much of today’s traditional media, I must point out that citizen critics are not new. In fact, they have been around for as long as there has been art about which to have an opinion. To be blunt, we are all citizen critics. Have you ever told someone your opinion about a work of art, a concert, a performance, etc.? Of course, you have. We all have. And more of us are sharing our opinions with each other (and the world) thanks to rise of the social Web.

In August, a brouhaha erupted online between two bloggers and an actor from Canada’s Teatro la Quindicina in Edmonton, Alberta after one of the bloggers wrote a critical review of a play in which the actor appeared. Aside from serving as a case study in how NOT to deal with citizen critics, this online fracas brought to the surface a disdain held by many artists and administrators.

The reality is that citizen critics are not going away. So rather than lash out at them or quietly complain about them, why don’t we identify ways in which our organizations can cultivate them?

Consider this perspective from *ahem* blogger Corinne at Blogging by the Numbers:

Theatre blogging is a niche pursuit. But then going to sit in a darkened auditorium and watch people speak – or in the case of opera, sing – someone else’s words multiple times a month (or some times a week) is also a niche pursuit. The internet, in all its multifaceted joy, allows a niche to flourish. Like attracts like (or compels like). It not only cements tendencies (that of reading about theatre, of continuing going, of knowing more than you could ever keep in your head), it also allows tendencies to grow. Knowing there is a community of people out there doing the same thing – theatre-going is a tribe as much as anyone else. Of course not all repeat theatre goers blog but, in 2010 with the ease of Google, I’d be surprised to find a repeat theatre-goer (who wasn’t directly involved in the industry*) who had never read a theatre blog. These people – the people whose names might otherwise be simply one in a marketing database – should be hugely valued (and respected).

How can you embrace citizen critics? Here are a few initial ideas to consider:

1. Send press releases optimized for social media to citizen critics whom you’ve identified in your community.
2. Host “meet-ups” for local online critics, where they can interact with each other as well as directors, performers, writers, curators, etc. There are proponents of hosting these “meet-ups” prior to the artistic experience and others who prefer to host them as follow-up events.
3. Draw inspiration from programs like the Broward Center for the Performing Arts’ Teen Ambassadors and encourage young audience members in your community to write reviews and share them with their peers through online social networks?
4. During intermission, encourage the audience to pull out their mobile phones and send status updates or tweets with their impressions of the performance.
5. Consider using tools like Talkbackr to actively encourage your audience to provide you with feedback.

That’s enough out of me. What ideas do YOU have?

Where we are different, we are the same

This post also appears as part of the Arts Marketing Blog Salon hosted by Americans for the Arts.

Silos belong on farms, not in arts organizations.

As a writer for the Technology in the Arts blog, I am constantly thinking about which topics will appeal to which artistic disciplines, which specialty, which skill level… and on and on. But the more I have to think about the segmentation of the arts management audience, the more I realize how broad many of the issues we discuss are.

A few months ago, I interviewed Alan Cooke of the e-fundraising company Convio, and we talked at length about the problem of organizational silos. In arts organizations, as in any company, conflicts often arise between different departments and may develop into an “us against them” mentality. As arts organizations become more prevalent in the social media space, it becomes easier to see which organizations have truly good internal communication between marketing, communications, box office and development departments.

We also tend to think that orchestra problems are unique to orchestras, theatre problems unique to theatres, and so on. For example, a few months ago I was at an opera conference listening to a presenter from another artistic discipline, when a colleague leaned over and whispered, “Ok, but what does this have to do with opera?” Unsure how to respond, I sort of nodded in agreement, but later, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. True, it didn’t have much to do with opera, but, I would argue, the point of the conference was to learn new things, not to be told about things we already know.

Working in the non-profit world, we usually don’t pay attention to discussions and proposed solutions going on in the corporate world.  We don’t think that their solutions will work for us. I’m in a class right now entitled Social Media Analytics, where the students are split up into teams and assigned a major corporation as a client. At first, I expected that the corporations would have a pretty good handle on their social media presence, in terms of who they were reaching, who they were converting and how they were making money from their social media sites. What I found, however, was that the for-profit companies involved in the project are asking a lot of the same questions that I see posted by non-profit arts companies all the time. How do we track audience engagement? How do we convert brand awareness to sales?

Technology, especially social media, is an industry in high flux. It’s easy to think that there’s someone out there with all of the answers, but the truth is we’ve only begun to understand, let alone master the seismic shift in online behavior and the potential of these new tools. We still struggle to find tools that will accurately “read” sentiment from user comments and accurately extract what people are really saying about our brand. We question whether our tracking of sales due to social media is accurate. We wonder how much effort, which platforms, and which campaigns are really worth our time.

One of the things I am looking forward to most at the NAMP Conference is getting this broad perspective across artistic disciplines. Learning from each other is one of the most important things we can do, and I’m looking forward to seeing how arts marketing, as a specialty, has developed in the past year.

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.

Building “Real World” Relationships Online: Alan Cooke of Convio

Alan Cooke of Convio

Alan Cooke knows arts donors. This opera-lover also happens to be a master marketer (formerly with Hewlett Packard) and he puts his passion and his skills to good use at fundraising software company Convio, specializing in systems for non-profit organizations across the spectrum.

Convio’s most visible campaign is likely the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure team fundraising efforts. (They have also done a fantastic job with Pittsburgh’s own Carnegie Museum.) However, Convio provides a range of different tools—at the core is Convio online marketing, which is a collection of tools—email marketing, website design, platforms for peer-to-peer fundraising, etc.

I recently interviewed Alan after seeing his presentation on online fundraising at the Opera America Conference in June.

Arts organizations, more often than other non-profits, have two messages that they’re getting out there. They’re asking people to buy tickets and on the other hand, they’re asking for a donations. How do you find that different from your other non-profit clients when you’re working with performing arts organizations?

The ticket-selling organizations are a little bit different from the majority of our organizations which only have contributed income. I think that, in terms of opera companies, many people really don’t understand the economic model of an opera company very well. I certainly did not understand that when I was an occasional single ticket buyer for the opera.

Perhaps one of the things that needs to happen is that organizations need to do a much better job, first of all, of making the case that simply selling tickets is not going to cover the cost of the productions. A lot of that is just education. You can make that case pretty well on your website and also through your communications with people, but you do need to make that case. Secondly, there’s the question of where you want to start. In the case of ticket-selling organizations, it’s logical to optimize your website for ticket purchases. There are things that you can do after someone has actually purchased a ticket where you can start to move them down a path and start to make your case--really simple things, like when they buy a ticket give them the option of making a small donation or trying to get people on a monthly plan where they’re giving a relatively small contributions every month. It’s automatic, you don’t have to worry about it and typically the lifetime value of those donors is very, very high.

One of the things that I have seen with digital communications in arts organizations is that you have the marketing department… And then you have the development department. Sometimes they play together very well, but sometimes, you’ll see accounts that are very obviously controlled by one or the other, and not a lot of overall relationship building. Your thoughts?

This problem of silos is a very common problem throughout the whole non-profit world. I think we have marketing departments that have their own agenda and their own tools and then you have a development department that has their own separate tools and they don’t talk about it to each other very much, which causes all kinds of confusion. Breaking down those organizational silos is easier said than done. Often smaller organizations have an easier time because they have fewer people, but as organizations get large, those walls sometimes can become very, very strong. It’s true that there is a lot of marketing chatter, which often doesn’t have very much to do with relationships. I think we’re starting to figure out how to build relationships the way that the development people have always done—you can do those same things online.

A lot of organizations are getting people’s email addresses after they’ve attended one performance and then they get an email asking for, for example, a $150 donation. Marc Van Bree has made the point that that’s like asking someone to marry you after the first date.

That’s right. It’s all about relationships. The online world is not dramatically different from the real world. You need to ask permission and you need to build a relationship with somebody before you start hitting them up for money. That’s a simple thing to do but there’s a surprising number of people who don’t do that.

Then how do you build that relationship and making the case for support to new pools of donors? In your Opera America session, you mentioned the concept of a welcome series.

So, the idea of a welcome series is that when somebody takes that step of raising their hand and saying, “I am interested in what it is that you have to offer” by giving you their email address, at that point you can’t just ignore them. You can’t just take it for granted and then immediately start asking them for money. Just like you would in a normal face-to-face relationship, you need to welcome that person to your community and you do that by seeking out some spaced email communications thanking the people for getting to know your organization and giving them some background information. Gradually, as you move down what we refer to as the relationship pathway, you give them more and more ways to become involved and to get more deeply embedded in the culture of the organization.

One of the very good things about using a technology platform is that you can automate all that, so you don’t have to write these things every time. It can be completely built out beforehand and automated. And we have found that by doing that, by making sure that as soon as someone joins your list, they get put into that communication stream. Not only are the open rates higher, but the conversion rates are much higher. And once they actually convert and donate, becoming a financial supporter of the organization, you can take them out of that stream and put them in a different stream. All of that can be automated and set up quite easily.

One of the ways that you mentioned non-profit arts organizations could combat the current economic climate is to reposition themselves as a community resource. How can an organization do that via digital means?

This came out of a conversation that I had with the general manager of my local opera company in Austin and I think that what they had said was fascinating. The difficulty that they encounter, especially in a medium-sized market like Austin, Texas, is that it’s not easy to sell opera. There is a relatively small audience for opera in that kind of a city and particularly in times of recession, it’s difficult to make the case. So this was an enormous struggle for the opera company in Austin, as I feel it is for many opera companies.

What they decided to do, which I thought was very clever of them, was they built an excellent music school on the premises right next to the concert hall and they started to garner quite a bit of attention in the city because of the quality of the music education that they offered to children. They had promoted that pretty heavily on their website and they have started to build a whole new pool of supporters for the opera who are people who would have never been on their list before—parents of children who now go to the school at the opera. It’s a completely new donor pool for them and it’s a donor pool that is amenable to different techniques, so they have started to do a fair amount of online fundraising to that audience, and that’s been pretty effective. They are obviously younger people and people who are not perhaps as familiar with the opera as the traditional audience. It’s basically given them a new pool of donors.

I heard that you recently added a database component to your collection of online tools. Tell me about that.

The database component an interesting new development for us. There are obviously a lot of vendors out there that sell databases to non-profit clients, but it became apparent to us that a lot of clients didn’t only want a set of on-line tools. They wanted a set of online tools, but they also wanted an entire CRM [Customer Relationship Management] system, where everything worked together. I think we have done a pretty good job in the past of integrating with programs like Raiser’s Edge. Data flows back into the master database and flows the other way.  But it became apparent that a lot of those database tools were expensive and were relatively complex and that there was an opportunity for us to build a more integrated system together, and that was really the approach that we took.

What we decided to do rather than actually building something from scratch ourselves is we partnered with Sales Force. Sales Force has what they refer to as a non-profit template, which is a kind of a database for non-profits based on their commercial product. We built on top of that core piece and we built a product which is called Common Ground™. It’s a database specifically for non-profits, which talks to our online pieces.

So, if I were a development director, sending out emails and getting fine return on investment, but I really want to take my fundraising to the next level, what’s the first thing I should look into from Convio?

Rather than even looking for a tool, Convio is known for extremely interesting and high-quality research. For someone who is just thinking about how to get to the next level, I think they are thought-provoking. Obviously, they are not going to get you there automatically, but there very interesting. For a technology company, we do a lot more research than many technology companies and I think that’s one of our great assets. It depends on who you are; if you are a small organization, I would hope that you are really at the point where you are strongly thinking about bringing in technology to help you get to the next level, I would hope you’d look at product tours, which are short. They are a pretty good way to see what’s possible.

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.

Baby Boomers, Facebook, and the Australian Example.

Reluctance to embrace social media as an appropriate avenue for reaching arts patrons has often been blamed on the demographics of the user base. Many people look at sites like Facebook and immediately write them off as platforms only representing a younger generation. Not any longer. In 2010 educated adults over the age of 40 comprise the fastest growing demographic on Facebook, the age group 55+ grew by over 900%, and 40 million Facebook users in the US are now over the age of 40. This exposition of established professionals opens up the world of social networking even wider and begs the question: Are we properly using social media in the arts?

With 10 million Facebook users over the age of 55, Baby Boomers are staking their claim in the world of social media. This new demographic is college educated, professionally employed, and comprised of over 60% women. If that sounds familiar, you might be recalling the audience profile for the average arts patron in the U.S. The fastest growing segment on Facebook matches the traditional arts patron in the United States almost perfectly.

Other social media platforms have experienced similar growth outside of the traditional 18-34 age bracket. Currently users between 35 and 55 comprise the largest age bracket on Twitter. LinkedIn’s primary constituents are over 50 and MySpace continues its strong hold on original members now between the ages of 30 and 50.

These statistics along with the growing momentum around interactive websites, electronic outreach, and digital networking make social media the next frontier for audience development in the arts.

Innovations in social media within the arts have already sprouted around the country with great success:

• Characters from plays now have their own Facebook accounts to entice theatre goers to interact with them before and after the show.
• Interactive confession booths in galleries across the country load videos directly online for audiences to view and interact with.
• Viral online marketing is playing a larger and larger role in making buzz around productions and increasing web traffic.

But is it enough?

We can look to Australia for a prediction. Australia adopted social media faster that the US, UK or mainland Europe, with the highest user rates per capita in the industrialized world and the highest percent of users over the age of 35. Arts organization in Australia use Social Media to interact with patrons before, during, and after performances/exhibitions.

In the article Geeks, tweets and bums on seats, Elissa Blake discusses the adoption of social media in Australia and its affects on the arts. In the article, she writes about a production of King Lear where a woman asked permission to tweet during the performance. When asked why she did so, her response was:

It's about sharing your emotions and your experience of the show. You might have a favourite scene or a line that you love and you want to share it instantly. I thought King Lear might be dry, but it was really interesting, and I wanted my friends to go and see it...

Many Australian arts organizations and artists see social media platforms as a way for audience members to interact with companies, individual artist and each other. This interaction builds new passions for attending live performances as friends that could not attend receive enticing updates through their Twitter feed. This free viral marketing increases audience participation and makes Australia a leader of innovation in social media for the arts.

Fee Plumey, the digital program officer at the Australia Council for the Arts stated:

If arts companies want to attract new audiences, they have to jump in and chat about the minutiae of what's going on, Audiences are not just interested in a celebrity on stage. They really want to know how the show works, how the set was made, how it was cast, who's doing the lighting and what goes wrong… [social media provides that outlet].

Australia is a great case study for how social media can affect the arts. Now it is time for the US to see how social media can be creatively applied in audience development within our own country.

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!

We Have A Castle, Write Us An Opera!

Every good castle needs an opera company, or so the Savonlinna Opera Festival of Finland would lead you to believe.  They have been performing at St. Olaf’s Castle in Savolinna, Finland since 1912.  The festival took a 50-year Hyades between 1917 and 1967, but since its re-inception in the 60’s has been known for its cutting edge works and operatic premiers. Starting in their 2010 season they have decided to push the envelope of innovation even further. The Savolinna Opera Festival is crowdsourcing an opera for its 2012 season through a new project: Opera By You 2012

They are asking the public to write an opera from beginning to end for their 2012 season. They want the world to create everything from the story, set design and costume design to the music and libretto. Savolinna is providing the performers, the crew, and an orchestra; the public is providing the opera.

To my knowledge this has never been done before in Opera and certainly not to this extent. The Savolinna Opera Festival is taking advantage of wreckamovie.com to host their crowdsourcing forum. The site was originally set up for crowdsourcing movies, but also seems to be working well for opera. The only major problem I could find was the lack of music sharing technology on the site. It is still not clear how the composers will collaborate on the score for the opera.

Currently, members are working on the plot synopsis for the opera within the online forum. There are ideas ranging from aliens to sea monsters and insurance salesman to princesses, a true amalgamation of creativity. The opera is still in its early stages of creation and nothing has been set in stone yet.

I was a little frustrated that I could not find any information on how they are going to decide which ideas to use. It is not clear from the website if the management is making those decisions or if the public is going to vote. I am personally a fan of putting as much ownership on the collaborators and public creators as possible. The idea that an opera company would forgo control and perform whatever the public wants to see is very exciting.

Opera By You 2012 has the potential to change the world of opera and set a new benchmark for the use of technology in the ‘high arts’. This project is breaking many of the stereotypes typically associated with this art form and opening opera to a much wider audience. Opera By You 2012 is not about tradition or ‘the classics’, it is about making new art and opening up an opportunity for the masses to interact with opera.

Technology is helping this arts organization reach out to the world and break down some of the barriers that keep many people away from the classical music realm. Crowdsourcing taps the collective creativity of everyone involved and creates a product that is not only designed for an audience, but by them. This type of innovation is what keeps the arts current in our society. It will be very interesting to see how this opera materializes and the impacts that it will have on the world of opera.

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?

Web 2.0 Expo: Day One

Today was "workshop" day at the 2008 NYC Web 2.0 Expo, and while I enjoyed the two three-hour sessions I attended, I would not consider them workshops. I always expect a workshop to provide attendees an opportunity to put into practice some of the concepts discussed. I'd strongly encourage artists and arts organizations involved in the planning of a conference or professional development series to be cautious about the use of the word workshop. Any session that exceeds two hours should have some type of engagement activity or risk losing the attention of the laptop/iPhone-wielding audience.

That being said, the leaders of both sessions I attended today managed to keep my attention. I was especially engaged during Josh Porter's presentation, "Designing for Community." Porter is the founder of bokardo design and author of the book, Designing for the Social Web.

Toward the beginning of his talk, Porter mentioned two very important things. First, your message will get out into the world, and you can either choose to ignore the message or engage with users.

An arts example: A theater company is getting negative reviews in the local newspaper for its current production, but audiences are greatly enjoying their experience with the show. Unfortunately, those audiences are shrinking because users are believing the newspaper's message. If the theater had created an online space for actively engaging its audience, it could allow the community - not the voice of a lone critic - to define its show's success.

Second, Porter said that organizations probably already have communities, whether they know it or not. The idea is to "cultivate" that community. Often in the arts, an organization will try to artificially create a community rather than managing the one which already exists. In order to build a passionate online community, Porter says, an organization should "support an activity and make people better at the activity."

So how do you make people "better" at being an arts audience? Well, that's a much larger discussion than I care to launch here, and the answer is different from one discipline to another. But the point is that an organization should work with and grow its existing community and should not try to manufacture one.

"You want the people to identify themselves as a community," said Porter.

Another great point Porter made - which has been mentioned in many forms on this blog and on our podcast - is that when an organization is considering which interactive features to add to its Web presence, it should simply "model the interactions that already exist." In other words, study how your users are already connecting (both online and offline), and provide tools that support those connections.

Finally, according to Porter, most successful community-based Web sites comprise "objects" and "verbs." For instance, a YouTube page has objects (i.e., video pane, user profile, related videos, responses, etc.) and verbs (i.e., play, upload, respond, etc.).

I'll leave you with the following image from the "Creating Passionate Users" blog, which Porter mentioned today.