Videos to make your Wednesday less like Wednesday and more like Friday

It's Wednesday, sigh. To help with your mid-week blues, here are a few humorous and just plain cool videos. Ever wonder… …what it would be like to work for Twitter? We regularly emphasize the benefits of Twitter and other social media networks for arts managers, fundraisers, developers, marketers, PR personnel, etc. So today I offer a break from the usual discussion about Twitter and instead, an “over-budget,” under-informative and comical video highlighting the Twitter office experience featuring Twitter CEO Dick Costolo…

[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vccZkELgEsU[/embed]

…how much video is uploaded to YouTube a day? Then check out this website that visualizes just how much video it is in comparison to other worldly and environmental phenomena.

[embed]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHPfc6whaSk[/embed]

…about a popuphood? It’s exactly what it sounds like, a neighborhood or block of pop-up stores. But these aren’t your typical, temporary pop-up stores. In an urban initiative to revitalize the historic Old Oakland neighborhood in Oakland, California, popuphood is providing six retail store owners with free rent to occupy vacant storefronts in the neighborhood. The ultimate goal is for the six stores to be successful enough at this location to sign a long term lease upon the close of the first six months. Innovation in economic and urban development at its very best.

[embed]http://vimeo.com/evakolenko/popuphood[/embed]

Hope these ideas make your Wednesday all the more pleasant!

Tweets and a Show

The lights dim, the orchestra tunes one final time, and the audience begins to liveblog. Perhaps you’ve heard about operas creating apps or navigating an art museum with your iPhone, but have you considered tweeting during your next trip to the theatre or musical hall? While most venues view cell phones as a rude violation of decorum, others have embraced this modern culture of mobile communication in an effort to enhance the artistic experience. Enter the “Tweet Seat”, as defined by the New York Times section Schott’s Vocab

"Theater seats reserved for Twitter users"

The Milwaukee Chamber Theatre is a notable instance of this phenomenon. During an April production of “The Lion in Winter”, Tweet Seat tickets were sold. Patrons who purchased Tweet Seats stat in the upper-level balcony and were encouraged to tweet during the production. Staff provided a handout with the Milwaukee Chamber’s Twitter handle as well as a special hashtag for their tweets about the show. It should be noted that at the bottom of these instructions was the bolded phrase: “Please silence your phone”. (It should be further noted that no cell phones rang or interrupted the performance.)

Tweet Seats may sound like a fun, edgy experiment to some, but other arts organizations are embracing mobile technologies as a part of their internal culture.

Take a look at the future Tateuchi Center of Bellevue, Washington. When given a choice of blocking cellular service in the building, John Haynes, the CEO of the Tateuchi Center, chose to increase cell phone capabilities in the facility.

Audience members will be encouraged to tweet, liveblog, and interact electronically during performances. The Tateuchi Center is self-described as,

 " ...one of the first, great performing arts centers of the 21st century, distinguished by its having been planned not just for a new era, but a new generation..."

What do you think? Is this the natural progression of performing arts? Or does allowing audiences to have their phone out detract from the performance? Is it unfair to the performers?

Would you tweet during a performance?

The votes are in: the most popular nonprofit cause on Facebook and Twitter is…

Hold on, hold on! Before the grand reveal, a little contextual information. The Nonprofit Quarterly recently published the article, “Which causes do best on social media? That world according to Craig Newmark,” highlighting Newmark’s research on the United States’ top 50 not-for-profits (determined by Charity Navigator), their causes and which “do” social media the best. The leading not-for-profit organizations were grouped into categories of causes. Within these categories, the top 5 organizations were analyzed. The categories of causes include:

• Animal
• Children
• Cultural
• Disaster Relief
• Environment
• Health
• Veterans and Military
• Women

To report his findings and analyses, Newmark and his team at Craigconnects produced two cleverly designed infographics, “Who Rules Social Media? A Look at Social Media Impact by Nonprofit Issues" and "How the Top 50 Nonprofits Do Social Media." In addition to data and nifty graphics, the reports shed light on the staffing of these organizations, revealing that of the 21 not-for-profit organizations Newmark and his researchers personally spoke with, all but one employed either a designated full-time or part-time social media staff person. Furthermore, Newmark's research indicates

...revenue does not increase a nonprofit's visibility and interactions in the social media world. Some of the most social media savvy organizations are in the bottom quarter bracket in terms of revenue, yet they are clearly active on social media. It's about fostering conversations and interactions, not money.

The winners of the most talkative category on Facebook and Twitter (in terms of Facebook posts, Tweets and responses) are the animal and environmental causes, averaging between 88-134 Tweets per week; the loser, the veteran and military category. The winner of the most talked about category on Facebook and Twitter was again, the animal cause and the losing causes, women and veterans. Curiously, though women are the dominant demographic using social media, the “women” cause is talked about the least…

How did the cultural cause fare? The top 5 cultural organizations considered in the report were the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Opera and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Averaging 8 Facebook posts and 32 Tweets a week, the cultural cause ranked 5th and 4th respectively out of the 8 categories of causes. In terms of being talked about, the cultural cause ranked 5th both on Facebook and Twitter. Comparing revenues relative to social media activity of the top not-for-profit organizations, the Metropolitan Museum of Art ranked highly (considering its reported revenue of $319,054,654 is one of the lowest in the study). While the research and reports do not represent the cultural not-for-profit landscape in its entirety, excluding the hundreds of thousands not-for-profit cultural organizations that did not make the top 50 cut, the message is strong:

… the bottom line is that your main concern should be to cultivate conversations, relationships, and interactions within your own specific community, whether it’s 2,000 or 200,000 people. Work to move “your people” up the ladder of engagement, based on their needs. But know it will take an investment of staff time and resources to achieve this. These are the keys to keeping up in the fast-paced arena of social networks.

Who not only maintains, but stimulates social media activity for your Facebook and Twitter account? Do you have a designated staff person or team regularly producing your online content? If not, can you delegate the responsibility to a committed volunteer or intern? How can not-for-profit arts and cultural organizations make their online social media presence stronger and more impactful to move from 5th place to 1st? With a know-how for attracting and retaining wide audiences in playhouses, galleries, museums, halls, theaters and the like, cultural not-for-profits should have a definite advantage when it comes to the same, but online. Take a look back at your own organizations Facebook and Twitter activity over the last few months, then share your thoughts, solutions and impressions of the research with us on Facebook or Twitter.

Art Meets Technology in New York City

For many of us in the arts community, especially in cities that feature a wide variety of art opportunities to explore, we are often tasked with a dilemma: what is the best way to find not only events that are close to me, but also events that my friends and I will enjoy the most? As is often the case, this is where technology comes in. The New York Times reported yesterday on a group of young arts professionals in New York City who are using social media to not only find those very events that are the most appealing to them, but also to organize like-minded individuals to join them at the newest buzz-worthy art gallery opening or museum exhibit. The tools and tactics these arts professionals are using can serve as an excellent model for artists and art lovers in any city where the arts are appreciated.

For those who are looking for more targeted art opportunities, there are a number of social media outlets where you can discover more information. The first is Meetup.com, a website where millions of people have created and found scheduled events in their communities. A good section of the site to bookmark is museums.meetup.com, where you will find dozens of groups and thousands of members all across the country who meet regularly and advertise upcoming arts events. For example, here in Pittsburgh one of the many great arts groups is the Pittsburgh Cultural Arts Group, home to 550 members who organize regular arts-related events and shows.

Organizing events and participating in MeetUp activities is not only a great way to find out about upcoming shows; it also serves as a place to meet fellow arts lovers and make contacts in the arts community. Especially for those young people who are either in school or new to a particular city, MeetUp can serve as a conduit to meeting others who share their unique interests. Instead of attending that upcoming exhibit you were looking forward to alone, you know have the opportunity to share the experience with people who share your passion and interests.

So meeting and befriending fellow arts lovers is the first step. Once you have found a group of people committed to discovering the latest and hottest events, what’s next? Instead of using more general platforms like Facebook or even text messages, the young professionals profiled in the NYT piece and many others have used Twitter to share news and events not only with their friends, but with the entire world as well. They use the hashtag #artstech to promote events, share tips and/or links to more information. The great thing about this technology is that it is completely open to everyone: searching for #artstech on Twitter will show you all recent postings by anyone who tweets using that hashtag, whether you follow them on Twitter or not.

The hashtag is one of the most important tools Twitter offers, and you can tailor it to your group’s interests. Are you involved with a small group of museum lovers in Cleveland? Start using the hashtag #ClevelandMuseumLovers when tweeting about local museum events, and as more and more people view the tweet and re-tweet, the more ubiquitous it will become, especially if you have a large Twitter following (for example, one of the hashtags we use here at Technology in the Arts on our Twitter page is #TechArtsReads to share interesting stories about the intersection of arts and technology with our thousands of followers).

But perhaps the best part about using technology and social media to discover new and exciting arts opportunities and events is the ability to use these tools to facilitate and improve the offline relationships that are so important to us. Social media is merely the first important step: meeting new people and developing new contacts is integral to our personal and professional lives, and is bound to open up exciting new opportunities that may not have been available before.

With many museums, arts organizations and galleries using social media to reach out to art lovers, there has never been a better time to use some of these technology tools to better organize and share the exciting new events and opportunities in your area.

What tools do you use to learn about art events in your community, and how do you share this information with fellow arts lovers?

(Photo: CC by Emilio Santacoloma)

10 Takeaways From the 2011 Emerging Practice Seminar

CultureLab, a partnership between an informal consortium of arts consultants and the Cultural Policy Center (CPC) at the University of Chicago, recently held an 'Emerging Practice Seminar' in April. The organization was formed to break down the silos of research, policy and practice, and create a new capacity and approach to tackling challenging issues. The topics at this year's seminar were:

• Uses of technology in audience engagement
• Revenue management and dynamic pricing

The seminar's website features all of the speakers' presentations (both videos and slides) and is an extremely helpful resource!

Here were my top 10 takeaways from the 'Use of Technology in Audience Engagement' portion of the seminar.

1. Embrace technological innovation, there's nothing to fear! Tim Roberts of ARTS Australia provided an introduction to the day's topics. Tim's introduction called attention to the unfortunate fact that any arts managers and organizations still view technology as something they are fighting against. He quoted NEA chairmen Rocco Landsman as saying "the arts are battling the technology invasion". Roberts argues that many also believed cable television to be the death of television and photography to be the death of painting and that technical innovation has not caused the death of an artform but has contributed to its spread and created new audiences.

Uses of Technology in Audience Engagement - Tim Roberts from Cultural Policy Center on Vimeo.

2. Engagement is an ongoing process: Technology is least effective when it's not used in a proper context of engagement. This process of engagement often begins prior to the audience coming through the doors. Likewise, the process shouldn't end after the performance or visit ends. Technology can help to provide context to a piece of art or performance, personalize the experience and even augment the experience. There are many options when it comes to sustaining a deeper level of audience engagement.

3. Layered Arts Experiences are cool! This type of technology has been extremely underutilized in the performing arts sector. Layered Arts Experiences offer audiences options for real-time assistance imperative during arts programs. They can come in the form of supertitles for opera and dance performances. The Columbus Symphony Orchestra had a device called the 'Concert Companion' which enabled patrons to read something about the piece they were hearing as they listened to the concert.

4. Museums continue to lead the way when it comes to adapting technology: Another common theme during the seminar was the overwhelming lack of technological innovation in performing arts organizations. Even though there were examples of organizations using layered arts experience tools and mobile interactions, it seemed as though they were few and far between and many had even stopped using these tools.

5. The verdict is still out on Tweet Seats: A 'Tweet Seat' is simply a seat reserved in a theater for Twitter users. Tweet Seats have many benefits, including: encouraging a younger audience demographic to get involved in the performance, having this demographic spread the word about the performance to their Twitter followers, and cutting down on distracting other audience members by blocking off a section for Twitter users. The question, however, remains whether or not people can truly become immersed in a performance if they are multi-tasking with other technological devices.

6. Mobile Interaction isn't just limited to QR Codes in Museums Ron Evans of Group of Minds had some great ideas about ways to engage audiences via mobile devices. Evans suggested placing a QR Code on tickets for previews of the show. Evans also suggested distributing digital keepsakes after shows. He also discussed the importance of using these mobile technologies in the proper context of audience engagement. Unfortunately, most technology has focused on the pre-performance and pre-sale with the sole intention of making the sale and increasing attendance. Engaging audiences should also involve increasing their understanding and appreciation of an artform. The 'during' and 'after' is just as important to leading people to the next experience.

Mobile Interaction: adding content and context - Ron Evans from Cultural Policy Center on Vimeo.

7. Location Based Servies has a long way to go: Devon Smith presented the findings of a research study she conducted on arts organizations using location based services. Location Based Service is simply a service that uses the geographical position of a mobile device (Foursquare, Yelp, Google Maps). Applications like Foursquare can be useful in providing real-time analytics on the demographic of those who are "checking in" to a venue. Smith's study found that only 36% of the 76 nonprofit theatres she tracked, had properly claimed their venues on Foursquare, yet 97% of the venues had a mayor. Even though claimed venues had 3% more activity, the real-time analytic information could be very useful to any organization.

8. Blogging Isn't Dead!: Thomas Wickell of Malmo Opera shared one of the most interesting case studies of the day. Wickell emphasized the importance of viewing the stage from the audience's perspective as opposed to looking out at the audience from the stage. With this key distinction in mind, Wickell and his team found that the audience they wanted to attract was not responsive to traditional channels of advertisement (newspapers, television, etc). Since most of their target audience were highly engaged online, the team created a blog that was centered around the life of a character in an upcoming opera. The blog became so popular, at one point in time, traffic to the blog surpassed that of the company's main website! The staff even invited readers to a ceremony for the character (since she does not survive) and over 100 people came to pay tribute to her life. The blog can still be found here!

9. Technological Innovation Often Requires a Culture Change Within an Organization : Linda Garrison and Thomas Weitz at Steppenwolf Theatre gave an overview of helpful practices for creating video content. An important theme during this presentation was the importance of finding allies when seeking to implement any changes. Whether designing a new video campaign or placing QR codes on marketing material, implementing new technology can often mean a culture change within an organization. Finding out who your champions, advocates and contributors are beforehand can make a world of difference when proposing any sort of change. It's also well worth your time to watch the Steppenwolf videos here.

10. Know Your Target! The Steppenwolf and Malmo case studies highlighted the importance of understanding who the target audience is prior to implementing any of the strategies and tools listed above. Steppenwolf researched and found their audience tended to be highly educated, comfortable with direct marketing and confined to a very specific geographic location. As a result, Steppenwolf decided that an online video campaign could be effective in engaging their audience. The Malmo Opera worked backward and began by envisioning what type of audience they wanted to attract. Either way, this process is extremely effective when the target audience is clearly defined.

The Art of Social Media Analytics, Part 3

Summer is the “off-season” for many of us in the arts world. Why not take this time to refresh your social media strategy? This is part 3 of our 3-part series on social media analytics tools. Check out Part 1 and Part 2.

The last part of our series concerns making management decisions based on data. Once you have the data, what do you do with it? As we come up with more sophisticated methods to track social media sentiment and reach, it becomes possible to track more accurately how people are responding to social media. This is especially important because social media can be a valuable part of your market research. It is like a 24-hour focus group, answering many of the questions you may have about your audience as well as the questions you didn’t think to ask.

As mentioned in Part 2, there are a variety of questions that you may have about your audience and a variety of tools that track different measures of success. Some tools are narrowly focused on one measure, while others give you a conglomeration of these measures. Some examples of the measurements of success include:

• Sentiment: Are social media users referring to my organization positively, negatively, or neutrally?
• Conversions: How many and which fans are buying online (or offline)?
• Spikes in activity or “buzz”: How are social media users responding online to campaigns?
• Impact: How many people is the message reaching and how much influence does the organization have? How many people are sharing posts?

When thinking about measurement tools and management decisions, the first question is often, when is it worth it to pay for analytic tools? As technology evolves to be able to track more specific and more valuable information, more paid analytics tools have come on to the market.  There are two basic instances where it’s worth it:

1) when you have a large customer base

2) when you need enterprise-level social media analytics

Firstly, if you have a large customer base or a large social media base (no hard and fast rule, but larger than 100,000) and you are literally having trouble monitoring comments on your brand, you need a tool that takes more of a summary view. Secondly, most paid tools are enterprise-level tools--tools that more than one person can manage or assign tasks to others and have other special features. If you feel you need this type of functionality, then paying for an analytics may be worth it.

Besides those two factors, a company should also consider the elusive “Holy Grail of Social Media,” return on investment, or ROI. Many organizations have found a “chicken and the egg” scenario of needing time and resources to show results (often, revenue), but needing results to convince upper management to spare the time and resources to devote to social media. This situation can be difficult; you might try proposing a pilot program or experiment with a cheap or free tool before proposing a larger investment.

One institution that has made a practice of using data to make decisions in social media (as well as investing in technology—check out their web and new media strategy) is the Smithsonian, under the guidance of tech guru Nancy Proctor. As one employee put it “why would you change anything without metrics and feedback?”

Once a company has the analytics tools in place it’s easy to observe your numbers of fans, interactions, and gauge the quality of those interactions. What’s more difficult is translating your observations into actionable decisions.

A simple example is that of David Horgan’s, eMarketing Specialist for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. David had experimented with linking ads to their Facebook page and their homepage. “We found that the ads that direct people to our Facebook page (rather than to our homepage) were about 3x more effective on a cost per click basis.” Management Decision: Direct more ads to the Facebook page than the homepage.

Another example is the blogathon on the Smithsonian Collections Blog that Rachael Cristine Woody worked on for American Archives Month. According to Rachel:

Until that time we had almost solely focused on collections content.  In October we shifted to also cover our profession and offer a more behind-the-scenes look at what we do/deal with, every day.  These posts became the most popular posts we’ve published so far, numbering in the thousands for direct hits, and to this day still receive at least 100 hits a week.  It was at that time that I think the blog truly found its most invested and engaged audience, and it helped to call attention to us that we should be covering more on our profession.  Management Decision: In addition to giving the collections exposure, engage and influence the professional community by providing transparency, advice, and support.

The National Museum of American History combined traditional survey techniques with data from analytics tools (Google Analytics and WebTrends data, click metrics from HootSuite, etc.), comparing the results of four closely-related surveys on each of four major communication channels (their blog, email newsletter, Facebook page, and Twitter feed). Although more complex, the results allowed Dana Allen-Greil to make decisions regarding how the Smithsonian communicated with patrons:

At the National Museum of American History, we’ve long had a hunch that our Twitter feed should focus on conversational and educational content, rather than marketing in-person events. If our followers aren’t local, do they really want to hear about events they can’t come too? Click metrics from HootSuite plus data from a survey of our Twitter followers gave us solid footing to make the case against Twitter as a platform for driving foot traffic to the museum.  Less than 25% of responders reported planning a visit to the museum after seeing a message from us—this is compared with over 55% of email subscribers who said they did.  Even more to the point, less than 10% of Twitter followers reported attending an event compared with over 30% of our email readers.  We discovered a similar trend with our Facebook fans and have altered our content strategy accordingly. Management Decision: Use Email (not Twitter) to Promote Synchronous, Location-Specific Events.

More info on Dana's Twitter content strategy can be found here.

So there you have it. As much as social media can seem nebulous, there are specific things to measure, to think about and analyze, and then to make decisions that you can feel confident about. When you develop your social media strategy for your next season, mix things up a bit with some new questions about your audience, new tools, and a new perspective on the art of social media analytics.

Special Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this series: Michael Edson, Brian Hinrichs, Maggie Johnson, Katryn Geane, Kristin Garbarino, Devon Smith, Lindsay O’Leary, and Crystal Wallis.

The Art of Social Media Analytics, Part 2

Summer is the “off-season” for many of us in the arts world. Why not take this time to refresh your social media strategy?

This is part 2 of Tech in the Art’s 3-part series on social media analytics tools. Check out Part 1.

This part of our series is based on a simple question: As of today, what are your options for social media tracking? Let's take a look at some popular analytics tools and how to evaluate them given your organization’s more specific goals.

The Next Level

So let’s say you help determine social media strategy for your organization. If you’re like many organizations, you have Google Analytics, you look at your Weekly Facebook Update, you respond to comments on Facebook and/or Twitter. Your workload is, for the most part, tenable, and your social media presence is flourishing.

First of all, great job!

How can you take it to the next level without spending an inordinate amount of time or money? Get serious about analyzing your efforts and seeing what’s working. Using an analytics tool, you can begin tracking your efforts formally over time, just as you probably have a formalized system of tracking ticket revenue through sales reports. Some analytics tools offer a sort of moment-in-time snapshot. Others track over time as well.

So, as you endeavor to improve your tracking, which tools are for you? Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

1. Exactly how much time per week or month am I able/willing to devote to researching our followers/fans and the analysis of our data?

2. What am I interested in knowing about my social media presence? Examples include:

a) Who are my fans? (donors, members, subscribers, employees, artists, etc)

b) How much of an impact am I having? (Am I reaching key influencers? How far are my posts being shared?)

c) How much of a return I am seeing on my investment of time or money?

4. How much money (if any) am I or my department willing to spend and what do we expect for that money? (See Question 2)

5. On a related note, how much buy-in will you get from senior management/the board? Will data provided by these analytics aid your case in advocating for future social media campaigns?

6. Who will be maintaining a regular schedule of analyzing the data? Yourself? An intern? Someone else?

There are hundreds of tools out on the market, and more emerging everyday. Since there is no way for this list to be comprehensive, here is a list of our favorites at Technology in the Arts. If you know of other useful tools for tracking social media, please comment on this post.

Disclaimer: For the sake of limiting the project in some way, we have included only 3^rd party social media sites—that is, mainstream social media sites that are set up for external relations with the general public, like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the like. We will not cover basic brand management tools or web analytics tools like Google Alerts, except that in terms of tracking conversions from social media.

Free tools

bit.ly used in conjunction with Google URL Builder/Google Analytics

If you’re already using Google Analytics for your web analytics, one of the smartest things that you can do is track click-thrus from social media to your website. Here at Technology in the Arts, we do this through Google URL Builder and bit.ly. Earlier this year, Tara gave us an in-depth look at Google URL Builder. Basically Google URL Builder equips you with the ability to tag any URL you link to in your social media posts. You specify the campaign, medium (Twitter, Facebook, feed, etc) and a few other details about the link and, voila!, you can track click-thrus from your social media platforms.

Using Bit.ly gives you the added bonus of shortening the links and creating QR codes as well as tracking of any link, even those you’re not tracking through Google, with registration (free).

Think up

This program stores all your posts, tweets, replies, retweets, friends, followers and links on social networks like Twitter and Facebook in a database that you can easily search, allowing you to analyze and export the data.

What’s unique about this is that it puts the data directly in your hands rather than giving you the results of the analysis. This means you can slice and dice any way you like, beyond any restrictions the program might impose upon you.

Flowtown

“If social and email had a baby, it would be called Flowtown.”

- Dylan Boyd, Vice President, eROI

When I first started researching social media analytics, I held a focus group with social media experts, one of which was Devon Smith of the 24 Usable Hours blog. She suggested Flowtown, which she reviewed in detail last fall.

The concept is that it helps you manage your email list in the context of social media. Flowtown is currently renovating the tool; however, you can sign up to be notified when they are accepting new users.

Social Mention

Social Mention analyzes interaction from across the social media universe--Not only Facebook and Twitter, but other social media sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, YouTube. It gives you a snapshot of how your social media presences are faring. One of my favorite features is the focus on sentiment. A common feature for paid tools, you get information on how your brand is perceived—in a positive, negative or neutral way—for free.

Klout.com

Klout is one of the most comprehensive systems for social media analysis. The tools help you track your presence over time, measuring things like influencers, reach, the probability for the message to be amplified (shared), and more, all of which contribute to an all-around Klout score. Another useful feature is the ability to compare yourself with other organizations.

TweetEffect.com

Tweeteffect is helpful in finding out which tweets are most “effective”, specifically by finding out which tweets cause you to lose and gain followers.

TweetPsych.com

Tweetpsych is a tool which tells you simply who you are to the people who follow you. The platform describes itself as creating a psychological profile of the twitter account, which is done by comparing how often you tweet about a particular topic in comparison to the “average” Twitter user. For example, techinthearts tweets about work, media, and learning more than the average Twitter user, and about the past, anxiety, and self-referencing tweet less than the average user.

Facebook Analytics

The only consistently good free option for tracking Facebook is the Facebook analytics tools.  The tools are a lot better than they used to be, especially with the recent upgrades that let you see how many impressions each of the items you post on the wall receive from your fans. However, Facebook tools don’t have the same capabilities as the Twitter tools to give an accurate picture of who is being reached.

Paid tools

Radian6 ($500/mo)

Radian6's philosophy is pretty simple: Listen, Measure, and Engage. And by "listen," doesn’t just track Facebook and Twitter—they monitor across blogs, forums, news, and more. You can track topics by keywords, basically listening to the conversation about why your customers come to you in the first place rather than just monitoring your own brand name. So, monitoring internet chat about string quartets and classical music if you are a Chamber Music Society.

Radian6 offers tons of ways to measure all the data you've "listened" to. It allows you to slice and dice data of social media on par with Google analytics and more, such as identifying key influencers and tracking the lifecycle of buzz around your campaign or brand. Another thing they measure is Share of Conversation: how often is your brand (say, MoMA) mentioned in the conversation about the general topic (arts in New York)?

Finally, this tool facilitates engagement with customers with integrated workflow, alerts, and sentiment monitoring. You can assign different people to be the Community Managers for different topics or audiences who respond to those constituents personally. Radian 6 also advocates contributing to the conversation by contributing white papers or other research to the topic.

Coremetrics (price varies)

If Radian6 looks at the big picture, Coremetrics (IBM's answer to analytics software) drills down to the individual customer level. Its main strength is that it is a comprehensive marketing system, integrating different channels and even offline information to convert and retain customers online. They also have a three-step philosophy: anticipate what your customers want based on cross-channel historical data, automate an immediate response to customer actions, and syndicate personalized content to the customer via the right channel at the right time.

Coremetrics puts all of your data--social media, CRM database, etc--into one application and measures it with the same metrics. This allows you to segment your customer base according to any and as many characteristics as you want to create the ultimate personalized experience.

BONUS: Coremetrics publishes informative white papers on analytics that you can download in exchange for an email address.

ComScore (price varies)

ComScore is another "360-degree" tool. Like Coremetrics it unites web analytics and social media data. The difference is that ComScore uses a consumer panel of approximately 2 million consumers worldwide to measure people's behavior in the digital environment. ComScore's Social Analytix tool is powered by Radian6, but when combined with ComScore's other tools, you can integrate social media measurement with other analytics tools. ComScore’s analytics toolbox is vast and covers a multitude of different needs, including ad effectiveness, search marketing, mobile, and cross-media measurement.

Twitalyzer ($30/mo)

One of my favorite free tools is now a paid tool, but it is still affordable to many non-profits. At only $30 a month, Twitalyzer not only tells you what is happening with your Twitter account in terms of reach, impact, and the other metrics we’re familiar seeing in association with social media, but it give you concrete recommendations on how to improve your outcomes based on more successful Twitter users. For example, I did a social media analysis for a client last year and Twitalyzer told me that:

If @"ClientName" is interested in having a more measurable impact in Twitter we recommend the following:

●     It is moderately important that you find more followers ●     It is moderately important that you find a few more people to follow yourself ●     It is moderately important that you engage others in conversation more frequently ●     It is very important that you write more frequently

Few tools on the market actually connect the dots by analyzing data and then telling you what you should be doing. If you can afford it, it's a good tool for those starting out as well as those re-orienting their social media strategy.

Next time in Part 3: Basing management decisions on the data you find with these tools (in case you aren't using Twitalyzer), including when it is worth it to pay for an analytics tool and examples from the Smithsonian on the concrete actions their staff has taken based on social media data.

The Art of Social Media Analytics, Part 1

Summer is the “off-season” for many of us in the arts world. Why not take this time to refresh your social media strategy? This is part 1 of our three-part series on social media analytics tools.

This is your brain on social media. Image from Your Social Move.

Social media marketing is an artistic endeavor as well as a scientific one. We use the right side of our brains to create the perfect message that will engage our audience and the left brain to crunch numbers on views, comments, etc. We know instinctively how to talk to our audiences, but we don’t always know how they are reacting to that message beyond a peripheral “feel” of the importance and sentiment behind the comment or action. There is often not an obvious way to categorize or quantify reactions to gain insights into your audience’s thoughts and feelings and to chart your own impact.

With the economic situation as it is right now, nonprofit employees are under more pressure than ever maximize their productivity and capacity. With technology, and social media in particular, as the most nebulous, mysterious, and constantly shifting elements of an organizations’ marketing/PR operation, it can be frustrating to track social media interactions and to gain resources from management for social media. Often initiatives face “death by delay” or end up being based on assumptions rather than data. At the Center for Arts Management and Technology, it’s one of the issues we talk about most often amongst ourselves and to clients.

It’s not just the arts, though.

In the non-profit arts world, we have the tendency to think that we are insulated and that our problems are due to a lack of time or resources. Some of these questions are ones that the social media field as a whole is trying to answer. While in the Masters of Arts Management program, I participated in a Social Media Analytics class where we had real-life clients. My team was working on the account of a major sportswear manufacturer. At first I thought that the questions that this company would have about social media would be very different than the ones that I worked on at the Center for Arts Management and Technology for our mostly non-profit arts clients. However, the more we worked with our client, the more similarities I noticed in the questions they asked about ROI, tracking, and analysis of social media initiatives.

Throughout the research that I’ve done and the conversations that I’ve had, I’ve heard social media right now described it as “the wild west”. Like web analytics was in its infancy, we are just now building the hallmarks and benchmarks for social media analytics. It’s an exciting time, and an extremely fast-paced one. If you have been keeping up with how businesses are using social media for the last five years or so, you’ve seen Facebook dominate MySpace, then Twitter edge its way in. As we moved to mobile, a slew of geo-location platforms arrived on the scene and now we’re trending toward game-based platforms.

As much as social media trends change, it is imperative to have a social media strategy, not just to spend your marketing dollars most effectively, but also to get to know your audience better. How do you get a social media strategy? You need information first. That’s where analytics come in. There is a wealth of information about your patrons hidden in their interactions on social media—like your own on-going focus group. But (A) how do you get to that information and (B) how do you draw conclusions from it?

A. As of today, what are your options for social media tracking? There are thousands of analytics tools out there and more being developed every day. Nonprofit arts organizations are faced with a dual bottom line: to serve the community and to create, present or preserve great art. Which tools are most useful to a nonprofit arts organization in gauging how they meeting the dual bottom line? In Part 2 of this series, we’ll take a look at some popular analytics tools and how to evaluate the tools out there given your organization’s more specific goals.

B. How can you use analytics data to make management decisions? There are many ways to slice and dice the data you might get from those tools. What are some strategies for using the current tools available? How can you make a confident decision about what is essentially a moving target? Given the tools and tactics in the above questions, when is it worth it to pay for analytic tools? In Part 3, we’ll address the problem of structuring your social media tracking efforts to find information relevant to your day-to-day decisions.

Arts and Technology Round-up: Museums and the Web Edition

Happy Friday everyone! For this arts and technology round-up we decided to try and hone in on a few of the awesome projects that we saw at the Museums and the Web conference last week. Up first are our picks of some of the best and most innovative projects. After that, the winners of the Best of the Web 2011 awards from the conference.

Technology In The Arts Picks

Zooniverse - This group marries together the researching needs of the scientific/historical communities and the power of crowdsourcing. By creating a series of interactive web portals, Zooniverse creates communities of "Citizen Scientists".

PhilaHistory - Philly based GIS firm Azavea worked with the City of Philadelphia to create a platform for linking historical photos of the city to their real world locations using geo-location and augmented reality.

One To One with the Artist: Ai Weiwei - A simple idea with a great effect, this project from the Tate allowed museum visitors to record and upload a video in the gallery and have a video dialogue with the artist Ai Weiwei.

The WALL - The Museum of Copenhagen's giant multi-touch multimedia screen installed in one of the central squares of Copenhagen.

ARTfinder - A new recommendation engine for artwork, this site works very much like Last.fm, taking your current interests and using them to introduce you to new works.

The Collective - Sounding a little bit like a bad 50's sci-fi flick, The Collective is the Denver Art Museum's interactive website/online programming space and a new way of connecting and bringing in the Denver community.

MoMA Learn - An extremely in-depth arts education web portal, the Museum of Modern Art's education department went all out on this one.

ARtours - The Stedelijk Museum's innovative augmented reality program.

The Best of the Web 2011

Education & Best Overall: The ACMI Generator

Mobile: The AB EX NY iPad app

Exhibition: Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century

Social Media: One to One with the Artist: Ai Weiwei

Innovative: Nationnaal Historisch Museum / Museum of National History

Museum Professional & People's Choice: Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy Wiki

Long-Lived: Exploratorium.org

Research/Online Collection: Portable Antiquities Scheme

Audio/Visual/Podcast: Access All Areas podcast

Project by a Small Institution: ASI: Archaeology Scene Investigations in North County Louth

Twitter by Example: Our Favorite Tweeps

Why are some Twitter users so effective at getting your attention while others fall flat?  What can you do to make your tweets stand out in a crowded feed?  By taking the time to reflect on some of the engagement techniques you see cropping up amongst your fellow Tweeps, you can invent your own ways to harness the power of Twitter for your organization. The Technology in the Arts team thought it might be fun to highlight a handful of our favorite Twitter users from the arts sector.   Check out these Twitter streams to see illustrations of successful, interesting, and unique ways to use the platform ...

My favorites:

@SFMOMA I love the tone of San Francisco MOMA’s tweets – they do a great job of blending humor with behind-the-scenes photos, museum happenings, and random things like wacky art historical facts.  They actively participate in dialogue with not only other orgs but also their Twitter audience - and sometimes they even project their audience’s Tweets on their museum walls…now that’s some serious tweet integration.

@TheSoapFactory With a staff of only five people, this Minneapolis nonprofit gallery proves that small organizations can make a big impact via Twitter.  Their tweets are conversational, friendly and often funny – and they actively tweet their support & enthusiasm for local arts happenings and the artists they work with.  @TheSoapFactory loves shout outs, and always takes the time to publicly say “thank you” to volunteers and interns in their tweets.  Their warmth and graciousness on Twitter creates a personal connection with their audience – which goes a long way in the tweetosphere, despite their relatively small size.

@yokoono With nearly 1.9 million followers, Yoko’s got a worldwide Twitter audience, and she keeps them engaged in a variety of innovative ways that other artists and arts organizations can learn from.  Each week, she posts a series of responses to questions that are tweeted to her – showing that she really cares about engaging in dialogue with her fans.  Her own tweets are powerful in their simplicity and she’s always got a positive message to share.  She encourages followers to participate by creating their own positive messages, too: the Imagine Peace Tower, an art installation located in Iceland, lights up a few weeks each year with tweeted "wishes" related to peace and love.  So far, over 1.3 million wishes have been sent via @IPTower, and it's happening now through March 26.

Amelia's favorite:

@SUEtheTrex at Chicago's Field Museum.  "Hi. I'm Sue, I'm a Leo, I like meat, Chicago, the movie Jurassic Park, and what else? Oh yeah, I'm the world's greatest apex predator." This tagline says it all about Sue the T-Rex--she's sassy, hilarious, and about 2 million years old. That doesn't stop her from having conversations with present-day life forms, tweeting about current events--everything from Thanksgiving to Women's History Month--and educating about the T-Rex. A great example of employees personalizing an institution.

David's favorites:

@artfulmanager Andrew Taylor, author of the Artful Manager blog and Director of University of Wisconsin’s MBA in Arts Administration, always provides great resources for arts managers.  His retweets tend to pull from sources that I may not be following – which opens me up to new content that I might not otherwise stumble upon.

@travisbedard Travis Bedard, Artistic Director of Austin’s Cambiare Productions theatre company, provides a great combination of humor and informative posts from the theatre community.

@Brandinyourhand International arts consultant Roger Tomlinson always offers thoughtful information and insights from across the Pond.

@JamesUrbaniak New York stage, screen and voice actor James Urbaniak is a subversive pleasure.  Witty, sarcastic and irreverent – a wonderful 140-characters-or-less chucklefest.

Tom's favorites:

@MuseumNext is one of my favorite sources for finding out not just what is going on with museums now, but in the future as well. Through their blog, publications and their conference, MuseumNext highlights the ways museums are using technology to become more participatory and engaging for audiences. Plus, these are the folks that brought us the wildly popular twitter campaigns Ask a Curator, Follow a Museum and most recently Picture a Museum Day.

@MuseumNerd Oh, the Museum Nerd. That Brooklyn-based lover of all things art. Museum Nerd is an anonymous persona who tweets about his/her experiences as they weave through different exhibits. Besides the color commentary, Museum Nerd is great at engaging both visitors and museums on Twitter while exploring exhibits and other art world happenings.

@NancyProctor The Head of Mobile Strategy and Initiatives for the Smithsonian Institution, I feel like Nancy Proctor is the Queen of museum mobile tech on Twitter. I check her feed for the latest developments in museum mobile tech, thoughts on best practices and to find who is experimenting and how. You can usually find her dropping some mobile tech knowledge with the hashtags #mtogo and #simobile.

Tara's favorite:

@atane Atane O. is one of my favorite music and audiophile nerds to follow on Twitter. He's currently a blogger for the Elements of Jazz blog, and always has cool pictures, videos and music clips to share via his Twitter stream. He also has an amazing vinyl collection (and great turntables!).

Now, it's your turn: who do YOU love on Twitter, and why?

Instant Encore: Classical Music goes Mobile

Margo Drakos, co-founder/COO of InstantEncore

Margo Drakos is a woman on a mission. The co-founder and COO of InstantEncore wants to take classical music directly to its audience via a host of online services, including a digital strategy package for powering custom websites for organizations, a website builder for artists and the development of mobile apps. Recently, the company has been busy building custom mobile apps for Android, iPad, iPhone and all smartphones. InstantEncore’s mobile apps have previously been featured on this blog in Tom’s article 10 Arts and Culture Mobile Apps from 2010.

InstantEncore currently powers about 100 iPhone apps and 50 Android as well as hosting mobile web apps, which make an organization's website functional on a mobile phone. Their platform powers the app for the popular YouTube Symphony Orchestra, which, at over 125,000 downloads, and beats both the Taylor Swift and Linkin Park apps by about 90,000. Instant Encore also hosts the apps of notable organizations like the NY Philharmonic, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Cleveland Institute of Music and Houston Grand Opera.

I talked with Margo recently to catch up on Instant Encore's latest endeavors.

What is InstantEncore? InstantEncore.com is a classical music platform that enables artists and arts organization to harness the power of technology to connect with their fans anywhere, any time. We are the infrastructure! We have created the only classical music-specific digital asset management system that essentially allows our Partners from a broad spectrum of the performing arts world to enter digital content – event listings, ticket selling, audio recordings (streaming, download, public or private), video (live or on-demand), news, blogs, and photos - one time, and have all of their content published in real time to their own website, mobile apps, Facebook or Twitter accounts.

How did the idea for InstantEncore come about? Two things happened: I was playing cello for a living and I had sort of grown frustrated with the disconnect between musicians and the audience, where the field was going, and how technology was disrupting the traditional models. I felt passionate about re-personalizing the concert experience without losing artistic integrity.

An InstantEncore concert card offering a music download.

Meanwhile, I had the pleasure of meeting some wonderful engineers and they had a really powerful search engine specific for classical music that resulted in a high-end jukebox called Maestro. It had originally been created to help catalog vast CD collections, like that of our chairman/CEO. I was talking to them about how sometimes as a performer you would go to a live event and afterwards people would say “I loved the concert. How can I hear it again? How can I get a recording?” And of course I was always trying to sell some unrelated CD. So I talked to these engineers about this predicament that a lot of musicians always find themselves in, and so we actually created this concept of the “Instant Encore”—where you can take a card at the concert, go home, and download the content that you just heard.

How has InstantEncore evolved from the days of concert cards to now? Instant Encore started with a very powerful search engine that had organized and standardized all classical music meta data, and our objective was to build the tools that would enable fans to connect with the music and artists they love, in a personal, immediate way. We wanted to leverage technology to extend and enhance every aspect of the live concert experience. We are committed to providing the 21st century tools that will save organizations time and money by automatically or quickly powering their digital assets to connect with fans and engage sponsors.

How does the Instant Encore component fit in with an organization’s existing social media presences and organizational website? Our goal is to streamline redundancies and save resources. Right now, you have a lot of people that are trying to update their website, spending a great deal of time developing a content management system internally instead of spending development time and resources on the front end. Then there is the mobile space--if an organization does not have a good web-browsing experience from a smartphone, people will close the site. Then organizations are manually pushing content that is often a PR push to Facebook and then to Twitter as well. So there’s a great amount of time and effort in trying to maintain all these very necessary social network platforms.

Obviously details about classical music can be a nightmare to organize or for data entry. We have a very standardized way—unless it’s a world premiere, it’s all in our search engine’s system. For example, if you start to type in “Beethoven Symphony No. 5”, it’s going to have the opus number and the key and all the movements and you just click on that and it’s automatically transferred. So, you’re never entering all that information yourself, which is 1) time-saving and 2) tagged at the most specific level, which allows people that are not looking specifically for you to find you and you that already know you and want to find you to customize their experience.

Our system is set up so that you as a Partner can enter an event listing in moments in our secure Control Panel. By that one simple event creation in our content management system, it updates in your website with our webbuilder or more advanced API (Application Programming Interface—see the end of this entry for more information). posts to the partner’s social networks, mobile apps, etc. You can do a host of different things—tag your YouTube channel. You can manually upload music for streaming or download purchase. Or you can create a private download code campaign for donors or concertgoers. One of our most valuable features is this web crawler that goes through hundreds of RSS feeds and finds articles specific to arts organizations and tag any article from newspapers or blog. This can automatically appear in your app or website as the latest news, so you’re not having to physically manage your app or site but your content is current.

The music player feature on InstantEncore's Android app (left) and the events feature on InstantEncore's iPhone app (right).

So basically it’s just a one-stop shop. It’s a digital asset management system where you come to enter your content in one place and it goes to all the platforms that you’re using. We’re just an aggregator and publisher of that content… Our concept was that it should be something that a two-person organization can use our tools and manage and have a very robust, beautiful integrated social media presence or an organization with a budget over 10 million can use the same tool.

Regardless of all the features you offer, many organizations might have trouble getting the rights to use pieces of music or convincing players that a mobile app is somewhere the music should be. What are some of the arguments you can make to convince them that this is something worth doing? I come from the musician/recording side of things, am a current member of the AFM and as a child was a member of AFTRA and SAG, so I certainly appreciate where the musicians are coming from. What I think is important is that, fortunately or unfortunately (however you want to perceive it) we’re in a new period that is such disruptive change, brought on in part by technology and change is always painful. There are new great opportunities but the existing models and the days of residuals in the way that we used to know it, at least right now, are not there. I think it’s really important to actually be very upfront about this. Artists are highly intelligent people and creative people and have wonderful ideas to bring to the marketing and development side of the business. I think it is so important that everyone be a stakeholder charting this new world together.

I think part of this is taking a holistic approach and saying that there are certainly a group of people that are going to want a physical CD’s and there’s people that are going to want to download content. But there’s a certain group of people know who just want what they want, when they want it. We see from our stats that music or videos are increasingly having a very short shelf life. People will often want to hear a new live recording over and over and then they move on and that is it. I often say to my friends and colleagues that you have to have some faith and work together to try things. Every community and every audience is different, but if you don’t have the tools to even explore or try things, that’s very challenging. I think mobile is so essential. People will be accessing the internet via their mobile devices more than from a computer within the next few years. If you don’t have a good user experience to access your content via mobile or any content in it, in my opinion, I think it will be very, very challenging.

You mentioned that you are focusing your research efforts on return on investment in digital media and how orgs can get sponsorship for their technology initiatives. Can you tell me more? Why should anyone care about social media and an integrated digital strategy? Why should anyone care about having a mobile app? I’m a very “nuts and bolts”, frugal person. When I look at some of the organizations that I work with and see how much they’re spending on print material and yet they don’t want to spend a few thousand on a mobile presence, or want to wait a few years to see where this mobile thing goes, I think it is quite alarming. Showing people the return on investment is critical for them to care.

Many arts organizations' apps are sponsored by corporations or foundations.

Many organizations we are working with have packaged a digital or mobile sponsorship package and in many cases, new donors or people who were not previously interested in sponsorship at a significant level, are excited to be part of new technology, sponsoring live video streaming on websites and mobile platforms and much more.

It’s built into our platforms—ways for people to feature sponsors, going through their audience to create new audiences, etc. What I’ve found is that I’ve been pushing organizations to think outside of their printed program with a printed logo and think, how can we think outside of the box and take the old ways that we used to monetize and seek corporate sponsors and take this into the digital space? Some organizations have come up with some fabulous things. Whether it’s embedded streaming announcements featuring sponsors, ad spots with sponsors, getting grants to cover new educational and audience development initiatives—various things. They’ve been able to monetize this in new ways, from new sponsors (not cutting out of other things).

I am very excited that Telstra, the telecom company in Australia, hired us to create a premium custom app for the Sydney Symphony that will include live video streaming of ten concerts in their mobile apps and website. This is a win-win for everyone.

How should arts organizations approach technology? There are so many platforms out there, there is so much information and everything’s changing so rapidly. I remember launching the app with the New York Phil and at that time, apps were still—people thought “what the heck is that?” So, the most important thing is to integrate digital media strategy into organizational strategy—into every aspect of decision-making across all departments. It involves PR, it involves marketing, it involves development, it involves operations, the audio recording department, musicians—absolutely everyone. I think that buy-in is essential. I think one of the most important things is just to start small and get permission to try something. If it doesn’t work, don’t let it validate that “this is never going to work” and if it’s a home-run, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to work the next time. It’s important to look at just getting started but with a clear, integrated strategy approach. And really, actually, there’s a lot of fear sometimes when it comes to technology and I think part of what’s been fun to see is that oftentimes, it’s a lot more fun than people necessarily anticipate and I think that that’s been a really rewarding part of what we’re doing.

When Thomas Hampson made his recital available for download and Performance Today, Minnesota Public Radio, and European Public Broadcasting Union announced it on air. We read the comments from people from around the world—from United Arab Emirates, to Germany to California to Wisconsin—about how that music impacted them and how grateful they were for that. I was very honored and proud that some of our tools could be helping to connect the power of his voice and his artistry globally in a way that’s never happened before. I think that’s really what it’s about and instead of feeling more protectionist, as scary as it feels, to embrace democratized access in this engaged age.

More info on Maestro API:

Tumblr Is Headed For The Creative Community, Should Arts Organizations Follow?

A vast repository of pop culture memes & internet humor, the blogging service Tumblr has grown significantly since its launch in 2007. With over 12 million blogs and with the recent raising of $30 million in funding, some see Tumblr's future as taking on blogging services like WordPress and Blogger. The site’s hallmarks are its streamlined posting dashboard and reblogging feature. Add on likes and short replies, and this gives the site a familiar feel to social networks like Flickr, Facebook and Twitter.

So this is all well and good, but how does Tumblr relate to the arts? As mentioned on mashable.com recently, Tumblr is going to focus more on developing the growing creative communities on the site.  As Tumblr’s founder David Karp stated:

“You look in fashion, creative writing, photography, music, so many of these creative circles,” said Karp, “and we have these really substantial communities that now live on Tumblr.”

Should arts organizations take advantage of Tumblr’s new direction and add it to their group of social networks? Before getting into that, take a look at Tumblr’s differences when compared to blogging platforms like WordPress or Blogger. I’ve used tumblr myself for a personal blog and here are a few of the features that stood out to me and made it feel more like a social media site:

The posting dashboard. Image via tumblr.com

• The Dashboard Streamlined for different types of media, the dashboard contains buttons that takes bloggers to posting forms customized for the content. This speeds up the posting process and makes posting media content such as audio, video and photos, a lot faster than traditional blog platforms.

A typical submission form on tumblr. Image via tumblr.com

• The Submission Feature: This feature is especially driven towards community-oriented blogs, where the author can invite his community to write and contribute their own content. Posts can be submitted by followers to their favorite blog through a built-in form and since the posts are automatically formatted, all the author of has to do is hit publish. This is probably the feature I feel would be most attractive to arts organizations, since it asks the constituents to not only read and comment on the organization's blog, but be a driver of content as well. x
• Reblogging: Probably my favorite feature of Tumblr. This works almost the exact same way that a re-tweet does on Twitter. Pressing the reblog button will instantly re-post someone’s post onto your blog. The feature is impulsive and probably the number one reason content spreads so quickly through the site.x

An example of the tumblr dashboard and update feed. Image via tumblr.com

• The Update Feed Imagine the feed of updates on Facebook or Blogger, Tumblr operates in the same way, aggregating all the Tumblr blogs you follow into one stream. All of the posts appear in a uniform format with the options to like, short reply or reblog.

Tumblr’s features make it easy and accessible for the individual blogger, but that doesn’t necessarily make it great for organizations. Here are a few issues I saw with how the site operates that might be irritating for some arts organizations:

• Tumblr is a Clique: While a Tumblr blog can be viewed by anyone, features like reblogging and replies are only available (and visible) to someone signed into a Tumblr account. This is true of many social networks, but since Tumblr is essentially a blogging platform, there is an expectation that the level of engagement should be available for all visitors. Organizations can lose out on connecting with non-Tumblr visitors who cannot “like” or comment on a post that really engages them. x
• Kept Out of the Conversation: Another problem for engagement on the site is the system for comments - it's extremely difficult to create a conversation. Tumblr users can leave short replies, but there are no systems in place to let authors and other bloggers reply to that comment. What follows is a mess of reblogs and screen captures of comments in an effort to make a threaded conversation. Some Tumblr bloggers have tried to solve this problem using a service like Disqus, but then a problem is created for the Tumblr community. Visitors outside Tumblr can engage, but the comments will not show up in the regular feed or be accessible for Tumblr users through their accounts, and the two communities remain disconnected from one another. x
• Customization on the site can be tough: The options are limited and those options change completely based on which theme you have installed. Some themes severely limit your options for color choice and background image, making branding difficult. Other themes do not allow for visitors to have a reply option, even within Tumblr. x
• Remember all those reblogs, short replies, and likes? While these show up in your update feed, there is no built-in way to track them. It’s an exciting experience to see a post go viral and get re-blogged multiple times, but tracking that effect through Tumblr over time is extremely difficult. x
• Managing the Archive: Managing past posts is difficult and while a mass editor exists, this just gives a visual overview of your posts over time. It’s hard to track a post from more than a few months back and there is no way to export your archives.

So should an arts organization take advantage of Tumblr anyway? If you have an existing, integrated social media strategy and primary blog in place, it may be worth a shot. Tumblr has a fairly clean interface with Facebook and Twitter, and could be a good way to provide content to an ever-growing community of bloggers.

If your organization is thinking of making this their main blog, I would hold off since it will be harder to manage in the long run and success metrics would be a pain. It will be interesting to see how Tumblr is going to improve the site to focus on the creative community and what effect it may have on how people interact with blogs in the future.

Want to Reach [insert ethnic minority group here]? Try Being Relevant

Perhaps one of the most difficult and sensitive topics in the arts community is that of building audience diversity. As national celebrations like Black History month approach, artists, arts managers and arts organizations often brainstorm for ways to reach out to and include minority communities in their organizations, especially if there is special programming during these celebrations. As the Pew Research Study indicates,  minority groups do have a strong presence on Twitter, with 13% African  American and 18% Hispanic. There are also a host of groups within the LinkedIn and Meetup platforms that are exclusively for minority professionals. Many arts marketers are concerned that targeting groups of people based upon their ethnic background can come across as unethical or forced.

An example of one such social media marketing tactic popped up in my Inbox earlier this week courtesy of Thomas Cott's clipping-service "You've Cott Mail."  In this Clickz article, Giovanni Rodriguez suggests that using hashtags is an effective way to reach the Latino population on Twitter.  While the article appears on a website with general marketing advice that is not necessarily specific to the arts,  its inclusion in an arts-related clipping service suggests that this practice should be considered by arts managers.

The screen shot below shows one of these hashtag-driven discussions in action.

Hashtags in Action

Hashtags in Action

The bottom of the screenshot shows a promotion for the Broadway musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown using the hashtag "#latism."  An important thing to note is that the user promoting this event is NOT the Belasco Theater or the musical's production company, it is another person promoting Latino Events in general. While this musical is certainly relevant to the Latino community, the message is especially relevant coming from a community insider.

As an African American female who frequently uses Twitter to discover cultural events in which I may be interested, I can see how "community insiders" could either be offended or altogether ignore this type of "hashtag marketing" from someone outside of their community.  A random #Black or #BlackHistory tag from an organization I'm not familiar with would probably be ignored.

Reaching out to a key influencer or community-recognized group is a more genuine and relevant approach for social media campaigns.  One possible workflow might be:

1. Define the target audience (young professionals, African American women, Hispanic youth, etc.)
2. Pick an appropriate social media platform (Twitter, LinkedIn, Meetup)
3. Find and connect with a key influencer on the platform (for example: @LatinoEvents or @ElementsofJazz on Twitter)
4. Find and connect with relevant niche groups on the platform (for example: minority professional networking groups on LinkedIn and Meetup.
5. Offer Value.  A great example of this is to host a special pre- or post-event gathering exclusively for these new community members whom you targeted.

This type of strategy boosts an organization's credibility within the communities to which they want to develop connections. It is also a more genuine way to build relationships.  As my colleague Amelia Northrup pointed out in a previous article on this topic:

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?

Cultivating new audiences may be a daunting and often challenging task, but it is one of the most worthwhile investments that any organization can make.  A relevant and genuine outreach campaign is the first step in this important process.

Social Media Spotlight: The ToonSeum

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

How to allocate time and money towards both social media engagement and online marketing is different for every arts organization. To get a different perspective Technology in the Arts decided to talk with a smaller organization, the ToonSeum, about how they achieve their social media and online marketing goals with a limited staff. I had a chance to chat with Joe Wos, Executive Director of the ToonSeum, about his approach:

So Joe, what is the ToonSeum?

The ToonSeum is Pittsburgh’s Museum of Cartoon Art. It is one of only three museums in the country dedicated to the cartoon and comic arts. We offer rotating exhibitions covering all aspects of cartoons and comics, from animation and anime, to comic strips, comic books, editorial cartoons, illustration and much more. We also offer ongoing workshops, screenings and lectures.

It really is one of the most unique museums in Pittsburgh. Every city may have a version of a children’s museum or traditional art museum, but there are only three cartoon art museums! New York, San Francisco and Pittsburgh. We take great pride in our unique place in Pittsburgh.

What kind of marketing and PR challenges does the ToonSeum face?

Our number one challenge as with any small non-profit is budget. We are a small museum up against juggernauts! We are up to the challenge.  If anything, budget limitations have led to creative thinking. You aren’t going to see us investing a lot in “traditional” advertising.  Being a smaller museum also eliminates a lot of the fear of change you see from larger venues. We don’t have a huge investment in outmoded technology or ideas, so we are more inclined to let go and move forward to embrace new ideas in both marketing and tech.

We have been very lucky, the media both locally and nationally has been very supportive.  Part of that attention is because of our approach to marketing. We use online marketing to create interest in “real world” experiences. We innovate new ways of reaching out. How many museums can say they had their own beer? Illustration Ale was a great success. We didn’t mail out postcards we used facebook.

In February we will launch our own themed hotel room in partnership with the Wyndham Grande downtown. It’s all about immersive experiences, translating virtual experiences we enjoy in gaming and through cartoons into the real world. That’s the kind of creative thinking we embrace.

A limited budget forces truly creative thinking.

Why did you choose to go with social networks/online marketing as a solution?

We are a fan-based museum. It’s a new approach to museum management, marketing and even exhibitions. Comic and cartoons by their very nature, are a fan-based medium. We embrace that. Just look at San Diego Comic Con, why is every major movie launching there? Because of the power fans have via social networks. We tap into those same fans. We are a geek museum, and proud of it. Our audience is very tech savvy, early adopters who can market virally better than anyone.

We know that the ToonSeum is a real world extension of a fan based virtual world. We are a museum of characters, icons and avatars. We want to become a real hub for comic and cartoon fans, and the only way to do that now, is through creating online connections and then inviting them to join us at the ToonSeum. Once we get them here, we know, they will tell their friends, strangers, tweet, blog, post, and tell the world about us.

We also recognize that it can’t be just virtual, you have to take it to the fans! We have booths at major Comic Cons, from San Diego to New York. We also host Blogger events and Tweet Parties at the ToonSeum. If we can get the word out to them about our exhibits and programs they will help us spread the word.

Beyond the standard social media efforts, such as a Facebook page and a twitter account, what other types of online efforts are the ToonSeum trying?

I worked for twenty years with a museum that had a real aversion to technology, it took a decade for them to come around. The ToonSeum is the opposite. We want to be the first. We were the first museum in Pittsburgh to have an I-Phone App. We may still be the only one! MailChimp, EventBrite, every new social marketing tool that comes out we give it a try. We were among the first to participate in KickStarter (we were even featured in the New York Times in an article about it.) I attend the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas just because I know we need to stay at pace with the public. The technology in most museums is outdated, kids can do more advance and exciting interactions at home. So we reach out, we are a Beta Test museum. We put ourselves out there to new technology and say, let us try this out first!

We have an ipad docent at the entrance. Any guests who wants to experience more online while in the gallery can use it as a tool.

For light up night we launched lights in our windows that can be controlled from the outside via an iphone. The guest has control over their experience before they even enter the door.

I am a self-professed geek and nerd, I attend the Consumer Electronic Show in Vegas every other year, I attend the Toy Fair in New York. I bring those innovations and ideas back to the ToonSeum and find ways to integrate them. So the ToonSeum has a giant screen projection in the center of our ceiling that loops cartoons. It is of course blu-ray 3d as well.

We have worked with Behar-Fingal to integrate QR codes into all our exhibitions. This allows guest with smartphones to link to additional content online. Whether it is a wikipage entry on the artists, or video we provide of the cartoonist at work. This is a great tool to take our exhibits beyond our walls and is also cost effective. People are walking around with access to all the information they need. In the future museums won’t need placard after placard of explanatory text. They will just need to provide a link. Their curiosity will take them beyond your walls. Each and every work of art is a potential jumping off point to a world of discovery in the world wide virtual museum.

We know that the traffic has to flow in both directions. A museum should be a destination from those on the web looking for real world experiences, but a museum must also be a gateway to curiosity that can be infinitely explored in new and exciting ways online.

Despite our using technology in so many ways, the ToonSeum is still ultimately about art on the walls. Because we have integrated ways to put the technology in your hands we don’t have to use a lot of monitors and computers. It makes it an individual experience, which is something we learned from social marketing. Everyone wants to interact on their own terms.

I know you operate on a small staff, how does this affect how you manage your various online efforts?

We have a social marketing intern whose only job is to tweet and post. That’s a must! The museum has to have a presence online that allows for immediate interaction. So we respond to every tweet that mentions us, every facebook post. It’s time consuming but it is the most important aspect of social marketing… being social!

All of our staff also has access to post to our various accounts. So we are updating daily. More important though is the fact that our fans are out there, retweeting and posting everything for us. It gives us a much bigger presence.

They also know to speak with the ToonSeums voice. It’s always connected to our mission and not personal. I have seen top-notch museums whose official facebook page has post about their kids getting the flu! Unless there is an epidemic of every kid visiting your venue getting the flu, how does a museum have kids that get sick? It doesn’t. Your venue has to have a virtual identity, a voice that your fans can interact with and it has to be consistent.

This is all easier to accomplish with a small staff. There are no committees, no approval process, no budget meeting, we identify what needs done and do it!

Does your staff size affect how you track the success of all of your online projects?

Every guest that comes in is asked how they heard about us, and their zipcode. We track every single opened email and clicked link. That data is all placed into a matrix we use to measure our success. It doesn’t take a big marketing firm, it just takes a commitment of a few minutes each day.

Can we talk about the Bloggers Blast? What is the event and why focus on bloggers?

I was at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas and attended about 5 after parties. What impressed me was they were all geared toward bloggers and social media. I knew this was something the ToonSeum had to do in Pittsburgh.

Traditional press is great, we love them! But today even they are pulling content from bloggers. Bloggers have fans, just like we do. It comes back to embracing a fan-based culture. So we wanted to let those bloggers get a sneak preview at our upcoming exhibitions and programs for 2011. We have special guests, a preview of the art, prizes and every single blogger will get a flash drive filled with all our press releases, promo art and more. If you are reading this and are a blogger, contact joe@toonseum.com for your invite.

We will be following this with tweet parties, where everyone is admitted free if they tweet about the exhibits.

You have mentioned that the ToonSeum was one of the first Pittsburgh museums to develop an iPhone app. What does the app do and what was the development process like? Has there been a good response?

Going to back to my previous experience with another museum, I was often frustrated by the phrase “we’ll look into it.” I began to realize that phrase meant, we don’t know how to do it and aren’t willing to learn. Forget the yellow pages, the phone book is dead. It’s all about web and apps. We knew we needed an iphone app. It provides immediate access to enhance the guest experience. It also goes a long way to legitimizing you to tourist. It’s one of the first things I do when I visit a venue in a new city, I check them out online and then download their app.

Creating an app can be an expensive prospect, thousands of dollars. That was out of the question for our budget. So, I just learned to do it myself. I applied for an apple developer license, found a great site that would allow me total control over the creation of the app, submitted it for approval and that was it. Total process took about five hours, not counting waiting for approvals, which took three weeks. I used rss feeds so that info on our hours and events could be changed on the fly. I created a framework that would allow our youtube videos to be viewed from within the application. As a cartoonist it was easy to do most of the graphic design work myself and there you go. It’s done. Our social marketing intern can update it from anywhere. I can even update from my iphone when I am out of town.

If I am going to run a museum I should know how to do every job. I better know how to market, run the register, curate an exhibition and even mop the floors. I can then have a better understanding of how difficult a task is and more important I can lend a hand when it is needed.

I am working on an android app right now and we are doing a complete web overhaul in spring.

We are geeks, we love this stuff.

Social Media Spotlight: SF Playhouse Pluggers

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

Earlier this year, the SF Playhouse invited Bay Area Twitter users to apply for the SF Playhouse Pluggers, a group of individuals invited to "plug in and Tweet during the performance in special 'tweet seats' where their thoughts will be instantly be shared with the Bay Area and the world." I recently had an opportunity to talk with Dan Meagher, Director of Marketing for SF Playhouse, about this controversial and highly debated social media program.

What inspired the SF Playhouse to explore a Twitter program?

When I came to the SF Playhouse as Director of Marketing, I wanted to devise a program that would be unique plus tap into social media. Since I had been using Twitter for quite some time and liked the "real-time" aspect of it, I saw the potential for using it in conjunction with a live performance. More importantly, it lets us give folks a voice for their criticism and instant thoughts of our shows. Twitter lives in the moment, just like theatre. We're creating our own critics. There couldn't be a better combination.

How did you arrive at the program name?

The name came about after thinking about what people were doing with this program. They are "plugging" into the show, into social media, and into the SF Playhouse. Plus, it's darn catchy!

How does the program work? How do you find program participants? What are the criteria for participation?

A few weeks before a Plugger event, we start advertising on our Facebook and Twitter pages. The requirements are: - Must be 18 years or older - Must be a Bay Area resident - Must have an active Twitter account - Must have a portable texting device that can last a least 90 minutes.

Participants are selected on a first-applied basis and receive one complimentary ticket to the show, where they sit in the last row. We also extend to them a special ticket offer if they want to bring a friend (who won't be tweeting). We've had Pluggers use everything from cell phones to iPads! We accept 8-101 Pluggers for the event and usually end up with a wait list.

Do they tweet for a single performance or are they invited to come back to tweet throughout the season?

The Pluggers are initially invited for the one performance. Some love it..some find it challenging and not their thing. It's not a program for everyone. We have about a 70% rate of people asking to come back to plug for the next show, but it is important to me to have new people with us each session. We have one guy who has been with us for every Plugger session! It's great to see them arrive and become a group...they get each other's Twitter screen names and even start tweeting to each other during the performance. For that show, they become a community.

Our Pluggers come from all over - different backgrounds, communities, jobs, you name it. We've had them as young as 18 and up to their 60s. Our average age in 30 -40.

What rules (if any) govern the program?

We have a few basic rules: must turn ringers/any sound elements off; all screens must be dimmed; no talking; and no photos or recording devices may be used (we're an Equity theatre). We do let them drink from their seats, which, with a laptop or iPhone, has caused a few spills!

The biggest rule (well, not really a rule) we have is that we will not censor anything our Pluggers have to say. We retweet all of their messages about the show, whether they be good and bad. This has allowed us to gain a trust with our Pluggers and our audience, because they know that they are seeing all of the instant reactions - not just selected ones.

Someone once asked me if this is bad, letting people possibly criticize your production. Actually, I see it as a good thing. Theatre must be able to take the good and the bad. It allows us to see things from another perspective. We've had some Pluggers be very direct about what they didn't like in a show.

Is there a particular hashtag for the Pluggers’ tweets?

#sfplay - We started using this hashtag during our last Pluggers session in the hopes of making the feed more streamlined. Also, in the past, we have crashed our Twitter page because of too many feeds going out at the same time. I have been in touch with the folks at Twitter to ask for their help in maintaining our feed, but they weren't very responsive.

Do you post the hashtag feed on a screen in the lobby for your audience before the show, during intermission, and after the show?

That's a great idea! Unfortunately, we don't have the capability to do that right now. We do mention at the start of the performance to the audience that they should go home and look at our Twitter page and see the live feed.

What are your benchmarks for measuring the success of the program?

I don't use any specific bench marks for the Playhouse Pluggers.  Since it's a very "organic" kind of program, I don't feel the need to throw in tickets codes or other marketing positions.  We know it works because we have people come to the SF Playhouse and mention that they read the Plugger feed from the last show.  We've also received much press coverage.

What feedback has the program received from your on-site audience?

It's funny.  When we first announced this program, we received emails from patrons unhappy with the idea.  Of course, we heard this before we even did a Pluggers night!  However, Executive Director Susi Damilano and Artistic Director Bill English were unwaivering in their support for trying this crazy new idea.  Without their support, this would have never gone forward.

After our first session went off without a hitch, we didn't hear many complaints.  We have had audience members sitting right behind our Pluggers and, at the end of the show, say they didn't even know the Pluggers were there.  The non-Tweeting audience members wouldn't even know it was happening if we didn't tell them.  Now that people see that this isn't disruptive to the show, they seem to have embraced it.

What type of response and interaction have the Pluggers’ received from the Twitter community?

The Twitter community has been very supportive of the idea. I've heard from people all over the US and the world about how much they enjoy following the live feed.

Twitter has also brought us some surprises.  During our last Pluggers session for the new musical Coraline, who should join in the tweeting but the author himself - Neil Gaiman!

Another wonderful thing happened during our Plugger session for Cormac McCarthy's The Sunset Limited.  We were about 40 minutes into the show and suddenly, someone from Twitter-land sent one of our Pluggers a direct message asking them a question about something they just tweeted.  That was a first for us.  We now had Twitter users from other places asking questions of our Pluggers during the show!  It helped me realize the scope this program.  Those interactions took the Playhouse Plugger program to a whole new, unexpected level.

Why do you think there has been so much controversy and debate about the program?

Many theatre people are afraid of the "new."   Technology scares a lot of folks.  We're taught that theatre is a revered place where you come, sit, watch, and applaud.  Interaction is not allowed or encouraged.  So when you create something that breaks down a wall, people are going to jump up and say, "Not in my backyard!"  Here's the bottom line...the Playhouse Pluggers program is not going to end the world or change theatre as we know it.  This program will not cause thousands to run out and start tweeting during Romeo & Juliet.

Theatre is about change...about evolution.  The basic nature of theatre requires us to adapt to the new, or else we would be going to see plays by Euripides on Broadway.  Theatre is a shared experience and this program is just a way to let the theatergoer have voice in the theatre going experience by sharing their thoughts.  That's it..it's a very simple concept.

In an article earlier this year, Theatre Bay Area quoted Artistic Director Bill English as saying of the program, “It’s an experiment. We're trying to check out the balance between social media and theatre.”  Eight months into the experiment, what has SF Playhouse learned?

We have learned that social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Skype, etc.) has become a major force in everyday life.  It's here to stay.  We've also learned that people love to discuss theatre using these platforms.  It can connect a theatre fan in England with a theater fan in the US instantly.  If anything, social media has opened up lines of instant communication that never existed before and encourage discussion.

I'm happy to share my knowledge about this progam with all!  Feel free to contact me at Dan@SFPlayhouse.org

This has lead to the creation of citizen critics. Everyone today has a voice and the ability to broadcast their thoughts. With the demise of print and media criticism, theatre needs to find and cultivate these new voices that will talk, criticize, and promote.

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 One - Recap Discussions

David, Corwin and Amelia report out on Day One of the 2010 National Arts Marketing Project Conference. Items discussed: keynote by Chip Heath, breakout sessions (pros and cons), designing conferences for people with varied experience levels, social media rock stars, and more.

On the Way to San Jose & NAMP 2010

Corwin, Amelia and I are heading out to San Jose for the National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) Conference this weekend. In addition to presenting a panel on using performance video to motivate audiences and leading roundtables on Twitter and search engine optimization (SEO), we will be interviewing various presenters and arts marketing superstars for upcoming podcast episodes.

We will also be chatting with conference attendees to find out what useful information and experiences they will be acting upon when they go home.

If there are particular people whom you would like us to interview or particular questions you would like us to ask conference participants, then drop a note in the comments area below.

If you are on Twitter, you can read our thoughts about the conference by following TechInTheArts.  You can also follow the #NAMPC10 hashtag on Twitter to read the chats taking place during the conference.

Stay tuned for more from NAMP 2010 in San Jose!

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.