smArts & Culture | your arts marketing edge

Have you made the wrong choice on Facebook?

Chances are that your arts organization is already on Facebook. If not, there are a lot of good reasons to consider it. Hint.

So, should you use a Facebook Page or a Group?

At one point, it might have made sense to start a Facebook group for your organization. After all, getting a bunch of people with something in common – undying love for your cultural organization, for example – is something that can help you in the real world as well as online. But in 2009, Facebook redesigned Pages to act more like personal profiles.

You’ll benefit more from a Facebook Page than a Group.

Why?

• Page updates show up in your fans’ newsfeed. Video, photos, news, polls – anything you want to share with your fans. Postings to Facebook Groups don’t. When your Page content pops up in your fans’ newsfeed, they can instantly comment, like, and share with their friends. Facebook Group members must deliberately go and seek news and interaction, and check their inboxes for your messages.

• Facebook Pages are part of public search. So it’s likely that your Facebook page will show up in a Google search of your arts institution.

• You can create a vanity URL for your Facebook Page. Instead of an unintelligible string of numbers and letters, your URL can be facebook.com/yourfabulousmuseum. Why do you care? Because it makes for better search engine optimization. It will be easier to find you on Google. (You need at least 25 fans to be eligible for a vanity URL.)

• You get a separate URL for each tab on your Facebook Page. That means you can create tabs that serve as landing pages for specific offers. Say you promote a coupon for half-price tickets. You can add the coupon to a tab on your page, and use that URL for the landing page of your offer. Your visitor doesn’t have to hunt around for it – you’re sending him right to the coupon.

• You can set different tabs on your Facebook Page as default landing pages based on whether someone is a fan or not. The default tab for a new visitor could ask her directly to become a fan or take some other action.

• Fans of your Facebook Page can get your content via text message by clicking “Subscribe via SMS” at the upper left corner of the page. Why is this good? While people are sometimes away from their computers, they’re rarely away from their cell phones. Facebook Groups don’t offer this option.

• When you administer your organization’s Page, you have access to analytics. You can measure fans’ interactions, get demographics, and see how your content measures up. Can’t do that with Groups.

Takeaway: Pages are the way to go.

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I’m asking arts people how they feel about Facebook: do you want to learn more about how it can help your arts institution, or do you feel you’ve got the whole Facebook thing down for now? Answer this one-question survey by clicking this link.

Can your arts group engage both Boomers and Gen Y?

Boomers consume. Millennials create.

Those are the conclusions of the October 2009 report American Life & Culture Survey. Conducted by Patricia Martin and LitLamp Communications Group, a survey of 2,348 U.S. arts and culture consumers asked about the role of culture in their lives in our down economy.

According to the report, the younger generation spends more time creating and playing music, writing, and promoting their work by connecting online.

Older cultural participants consume more and create less. Despite the challenges of the recession, they continue attending live performances and visiting galleries (good news), but classes and music lessons are more likely to fall by the wayside (hmm).

Interestingly the researchers “found some 60-year-old bloggers held the same opinions as 24-year-old poets: they are willing to work hard in their creative endeavors. … They don’t spend time gaming online.”

Sixty-seven percent of the sample says they’re still attending live theater and paying for other entertainments, but 69% are also attending free performances, too.

Since this report was meant for for-profit brand managers, lifestyle choices and attitudes of cultural consumers were also studied. We’ve seen some of these areas, like degrees of political activity and attitudes towards education, in other publicly available studies, but not others.

For instance, the cultural consumers surveyed are extremely health conscious. Seventy percent reported that they exercise regularly, see their doctor, and eat well. Sixty-three percent buy organic food despite the economy, and shop at farmer’s markets.

When was the last time you saw an arts organization partner with the local farmer’s market for cross-promotional purposes? Ever?

The survey also covered attitudes towards traditionally American values and spirituality.

American Life & Culture Survey is really a summary of the findings – a quick read can be a good thing; as far as I could see, a more detailed report is not available for download.

Get the report here.

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Learn arts marketing in 5 fast lessons, designed to help you start now. They're free. Click this link to learn more.

Why you should take Facebook seriously

Is it the 300 million-plus active users? (Remember six months ago when 200 million seemed astonishing?)

Is it the fact that people 35 years and older are the fastest growing group on Facebook?

Well, those statistics don’t hurt.

But the reason I think your arts organization should take Facebook more seriously is this emerging trend:

More and more, people are using social networks like Facebook to aggregate all the rest of their online interactions.

Instead of looking at the party photos from last weekend on Flickr, they’re sharing them on Facebook. That hilarious video might be hosted on YouTube, but people are watching it on Facebook, and then posting it to their profiles. Instead of holding a group email discussion, people are posting to each other’s Facebook walls. They’re messaging on Facebook instead of emailing. They’re creating events in Facebook instead of using Evite.

When people start to want to get all the stuff they care about in one place, you want to be there, too. And the interactions on Facebook seem inherently more personal to people.

I have a theory that just being in the Facebook space is a sort of social lubricant – people who normally wouldn’t comment on your blog or email you a link are more likely to interact with you on Facebook. It feels like less of a risk.

Need another reason?

Facebook Pages are now available in public search, and Google has already indexed hundreds of millions of them.

Depending on your Google ranking, it may be easier for people to find your Facebook page on Google than it is to find your site there.

At this point, your arts organization is probably already on Facebook. Isn’t it time to start taking it a little more seriously?

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Want to shake up your arts marketing?

It’s November. Your season is in full swing and you’re insanely busy.

That doesn’t mean you have to put your own professional development on hold.

Did you know that you can take a free ecourse that gets right to the point and tells you how to put marketing ideas into practice for your organization immediately?

It’s an ecourse called “Shake Up Your Arts Marketing.”

What’s an ecourse?

It’s a series of emails with lessons that are short and sweet. “Shake Up Your Arts Marketing” is a free 5-lesson ecourse that arrives in your inbox every 4 days.

To get your first arts marketing lesson now, fill out the form with your name and email address, and hit “Send me the ecourse.”




P.S. I hate spam as much as you do. smArts & Culture will never sell or trade your email address – ever.

(If you’re reading this post in a feed reader, like Google Reader or Bloglines, click here to the original post to sign up for the ecourse.)

A new arts blog to watch

Are you brave enough to allow real voices on your arts blog?

The Curtis Institute of Music is.

Curtis (which, by the way, has its own iPhone app!) has a fledgling blog called Backstage at Curtis, written by students and faculty, truly in their own words.

That’s what I like most about it. It sounds like a student blog – there’s no official, corporate feel to it at all. Based on my experience at The Academy of Vocal Arts, I’m guessing that people who love Curtis care deeply about the students and follow their progress at the conservatory and long after. What better way to help them get to know the students?

There are very few posts so far, but they’re good.

Third year hornist Adedeji Ogunfolu explains how Curtis’s location on Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square inspired him to start a dog-walking business that now employs fellow students Natalie Helm (cello)  Alexandra von der Embse (oboe) and Maia Cabeza (violin).

Fourth year bassist Derek Zadinsky gives us a sense of the challenges of traveling with an unusually large instrument (sometimes when he flies, he simply purchases an extra seat for his double bass and straps it in!). Here he relates what happened when he tentatively accepted a ride from a seat mate with good intentions:

We got off the plane and I waited with the bags while she went to get her car. A few minutes later she shows up, not in a van or an SUV, but in a red MINI COOPER convertible! Needless to say, I didn’t take this as a good sign, and things were not helped by the tornado warnings for Denver. Believe it or not, somehow everything fit. The bass blocked the right rear view mirror, though, so whenever we needed to merge on the highway, I had to stand up and turn around to check that the coast was clear.

I hope Curtis can keep up what promises to be an engaging and amusing look at the life of a young musician. So far, so good.

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Learn arts marketing in 5 fast lessons, designed to help you start now. They're free. Click this link to learn more.

When your arts patron asks, why aren’t you doing … ?

“Uh, well, actually we’ve been doing XYZ for the last two years.”

Do you sometimes find yourself in this awkward conversation with a patron? The one where she asks, why isn’t your arts organization doing such-and-such, when the fact is that you’ve been doing it for quite some time?

That’s a signal that you’re doing something wonderful, something your people care about, but you’re not communicating it effectively.

Over this past weekend, we were planning to shop at the Wegmans, so I took a look at their weekly flyer in advance. I found that the front page was dedicated to showing customers that instead of raising prices, they've lowered them in the last year. Instead of just the usual “every day low prices” claim, the copy shows empathy for the shopper:

A year ago, the economy was in tough shape. Stocks were falling and prices were climbing. We knew people needed a hand.

The page is filled with specific price comparisons, this year to last: chicken breasts $1.97/lb compared to $2.69 in 2008; flour $.99 compared to $1.49 in 2008; eggs $1.39 compared to $2.19 in 2008.

They’re not just saying they’ve lowered prices, they’re showing you.

So is there something you’re already doing, something that’s meaningful to your patron, that you haven’t put front and center? Is there a way you could show her?

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Workshops & webinars for arts managers

Has the  National Arts Marketing conference put you in the mood for learning?

Well, a whole bunch of affordable learning opportunities are coming up soon – some are even free. Take a look and see what's right for you.

Workshop
Mapping and Geographic Information Systems for Nonprofits
Philly Net Tuesday
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
6 – 9 PM
Buffalo Billiards (second floor)
118 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia PA
Free

We’re seeing more and more creative uses for mapping and GIS. Are these tools right for your organization?

Matthew Fisher of Night Kitchen Interactive will share the upcoming PhilaPlace.org which aims to "illuminate the history and culture of Philadelphia's unique neighborhoods" through an interactive map of personal stories connected to specific locations. I’ve been fortunate to work with Night Kitchen in the past – their work is thoughtful, playful, and innovative all at the same time.

How can you engage the public and crowd-source the collection of data?

Katie Edwards of Clean Air Council will share the tools used to create IdleFreePhilly.org, a site for the public to report idling vehicles around the city and collectively work to reduce air pollution.

How can freely available Census data help you accomplish your mission?

Anne Jeffers of the US Census Bureau will share how to access the census data, what sort of information is available, and how you can incorporate it into your work.

How can GIS inform policy and directly engage the public in the political process?

Tamara Manik-Perlman of Avencia will discuss RedistrictingTheNation.com/Philadelphia, a joint project with Committee of 70 to study the gerrymandering of legislative districts and present it to the public in an easy to use website.

It's not necessary to RSVP. Find out more on Philly Net Tuesday's Facebook page.

Lecture
Boosting Your Board: Keeping your board motivated to fundraise during stormy times
Presented by philanthropist Carole Haas Gravagno
Drexel University’s Arts Administration Graduate Student Association
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
6 – 8 PM
Campbell Auditorium, Stratton Hall
32nd & Chestnut Streets
Philadelphia, PA
Free. Light refreshments.

Hear the wisdom gained by Carole Haas Gravagno in her roles as an active board member of 12 organizations, including Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance, Arden Theatre Company, and the Please Touch Museum. As a long-time philanthropist, she has served on a long list of boards including Temple University, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the William Penn Foundation.

Find out more on the event's Facebook page by clicking here.

Webinar
Mobile Applications for the Arts: Where Are We?
Presented by Ron Evans, groupofminds.com
Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Arts Management & Technology
November 5, 2009
2 – 3:30 PM Eastern Time
$25

Mobile phones are ubiquitous. According to a recent report, 17% of active internet users worldwide access online content through their mobile devices.

Arts marketing consultant Ron Evans shares the results of his own multi-city study of mobile phone use by arts patrons and discusses trends that you can leverage as an arts manager. You’ll hear about the “best of the best” uses of mobile technology by arts groups, as well as applications, strategies, and costs. You’ll also have the chance to take part in the Q&A. This one is on my calendar for sure.

Find out more about the Mobile Applications webinar by clicking this link.

Workshop
How to craft a potent tagline for your org, program, or campaign
Presented by Nancy Schwartz, president, Nancy Schwartz & Company
Support Center for Nonprofit Management
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
9:30 AM – 1 PM
305 Seventh Avenue, 11th Floor
New York, NY
$60 - $160 - Fee based on the size of your organization

After announcing the winners of the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards, communications expert Nancy Schwartz facilitates this half-day workshop on creating effective taglines. The session includes a new diagnostic tool, and Q&A. According to Nancy’s blog there are only a few seats available, so register today if you want to be part of this tagline clinic.

Find out more about the Tagline workshop.

Workshop
Enter the Collaboratory: An Interactive Think-Jam for Increasing Arts Attendance
Presented by Maureen Craig
Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance
Session #1- Tues. Nov. 10, 8:30am – 12:30pm
Register at: http://collaboratory1.eventbrite.com

Session #2 -Tues. Nov. 10, 1:00-5:00pm
Register at: http://collaboratory2.eventbrite.com

Session #3 - Weds. Nov. 11, 1:00-5:00pm
Register at: http://collaboratory4.eventbrite.com

International House
3701 Chestnut Street
South America Room
Philadelphia, PA
$40 Cultural Alliance members/$80 non-members. Bring a co-worker to the same session and save 50%

The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance latest report on arts engagement, Research into Action, is fascinating. As part of their research, brand strategist Maureen Craig conducted focus groups with urban and suburban Philadelphia area residents of multiple ages and ethnicities. Find out what they said about arts and culture – what excites them, what bores them, what confuses them, what frustrates them, what inspires them. This session will include an in-depth presentation and an innovative, hands-on exercise for brainstorming. Three different workshop times are available.

Find out more about the Increasing Arts Attendance workshop.

Special deal – ends October 31
Course: Arts Blogging – Without the Angst (Premium)
Class: Intro to Arts Blogging
smArts & Culture
$68 for both ($115 value)
Deadline October 31, 2009

If you’re trying to get your arts group’s blog off the ground, you have until October 31, 2009 to get a special deal. Sign up for the premium version of the ecourse (which already comes with all kinds of extra goodies) and get the audio class at no charge.

Find out more by clicking this link.

Arts, Culture & Technology Meetup
Panel on Creative Commons
November date TBA
New York venue TBA
Fee TBA – all proceeds will benefit Creative Commons

Wondering what Creative Commons licensing means for cultural organizations? Join this New York meetup for a panel discussion. This regular event has grown enormously since Julia Kaganskiy organized the first one not even a year ago – so much so that she has her first sponsor in the New York Times! Seats always fill up fast, so check back at the meetup page for details later this week.

Ebook
Getting Started with Social Media for Artists and Arts Organizations
By Rebecca Coleman
$19.95

I’ve already told you how much I like Rebecca Coleman’s detailed how-to on social media for the arts. I even asked her to let me include her blogging chapter in the premium version of my arts blogging course. Rebecca’s PDF ebook is now available in alternative formats through Smashwords, where you can get it in Epub, Sony Reader, Kindle, or Palm Doc formats. Pretty neat.

A hard copy version is in the works, too.

Find out more about Getting Started with Social Media here.

The high-impact, low-cost marketing trick that everyone forgets

"Nothing Stops a Bullet Like a Job."

Wow. Does that line freeze you in your tracks?

This powerful tagline belongs to Los Angeles’ Homeboy Industries and it’s the winner of the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards in the Jobs & Workforce Development category.

Nancy Schwartz, president of Nancy Schwartz & Company, the organizer of the competition, calls the tagline a “high-impact, low-cost marketing tactic often overlooked or under-emphasized by nonprofits.” The company’s 2008 survey found that 7 in 10 nonprofits rated their tagline as poor or didn’t use one at all.

That’s a shame.

An effective tagline can instantly communicate an organization’s message. A tagline can work magic when your organization’s own name is vague or confusing or generic. How many theaters and museums are named after a founder or major donor? If a patron isn’t familiar with the institution, the name alone may say nothing to him about what makes it amazing.

As I’ve said before, I love the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra’s tagline: Making great music personal. It creates the expectation that a LACO event isn’t going to be just another classical music concert; it’s going to be as much about me as it is about the performance.

Taglines entered into the competition this year numbered 1,702. More than 4,800 nonprofit professionals voted on 60 finalists to choose the 13 winners.

In November, Nancy Schwartz & Company will publish the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Report. Sign up to get the report and get inspired by more than 2,500 taglines that were entered this year and last, as well as The 10 Have-Tos for Successful Taglines, and The 7 Deadly Sins – What Not to Do.

For the full list of this year’s winners, visit Getting Attention, and then sign up for Nancy’s informative email update. Subscribers get a free copy of the Tagline report when it’s released.

Nancy’s also facilitating a half-day workshop on crafting potent taglines at NYC’s Support Center for Nonprofit Management on Tuesday, November 10, 2009. According to her blog, there are only a few seats left. Find out more about the nonprofit tagline workshop by clicking this link.

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Arts marketing book review: 30 Days To 3,000 Facebook Fans

Recommended

The title of this ebook kind of makes me cringe.

30 Days to 3,000 Facebook Fans. It smacks of those get-rich-quick internet marketing schemes.

But it’s really not like that.

The author, Nick O’Neill of Social Times and allfacebook.com, uses the “30 days” format to encourage you to tackle one aspect of your Facebook strategy per day, along with an action step. He breaks down the process into manageable form, even if you can’t possibly devote time to Facebook every single day for a month. This 72-page ebook was written for small and medium-sized businesses, but there is much here that will benefit arts managers.

Besides step-by-step instructions and advice for setting up your Facebook page, optimizing your page for search engines, and leveraging Facebook applications, 30 Days gives you lessons in brand building and marketing copy writing. It explains how to integrate and promote your fan page through your existing marketing mix.

Some parts of the ebook however, like the detailed sections on Facebook advertising, assume knowledge and experience with online advertising that arts people may not have. Terms like CPC and CPM – cost per click and cost per impression – are not explained, for example.

The value of the “3,000 fans” concept is debatable, though. In fact the author says in his introduction “The measure of success should not be whether or not you’ve attracted 3,000 fans but whether you’ve attracted a large number of targeted fans.”

Nick outlines tactics like contests that reward people for recruiting friends in a smart and sophisticated way, and I’m sure they’re effective. But fans that are motivated solely by helping out a friend will not be engaged by your Facebook content, and either just ignore you, or un-fan you eventually. You want people who love you.

The bulk of the book, though, is valuable to even to arts people who are fairly familiar with Facebook. The detailed how-to’s alone are worth the reasonable $19.95 price tag. And for people who are new to Facebook or new to marketing, 30 Days is a valuable read.

Facebook will continue to introduce new features and change its rules, so Nick has promised to let customers know as the ebook is updated.

Social Times also has a much simpler overview of Facebook page strategy in a 9-page PDF available for free. (Hat tip to Beth’s Blog for pointing me there.)

Get 30 Days To 3,000 Facebook Fans here.

Note: for some reason, these allfacebook.com URLs are rendering tiny today in Firefox, so if you're having the same problem viewing the pages, try another browser.

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Why being known for only one thing is a good thing

 


What is it with me and vacations and people doing just one thing really well?


Remember when I talked about that restaurant on Lake George, the one that served only one dinner each night? And I wondered how you might apply that thinking to arts organizations?


Well, let me tell you about the Pie-O-Neer.


We were traveling in New Mexico and had nearly arrived at our destination -- the Lightning Field -- when we noticed we were coming up to a little group of buildings called Pie Town.


We couldn’t stop because we were pressed for time. But the nice lady from the Dia Foundation who drove us out to the Lightning Field really talked it up. So on our way back, we stopped in Pie Town, at the Pie-O-Neer.


Kathy Knapp, the owner of the Pie-O-Neer, took the story of the town’s beginnings – the first store in town carried home-made pies that people loved – and turned it into a business.


At first, the Pie-O-Neer had a full menu, presided over by Kathy’s mom. But when she found that the altitude of Pie Town didn’t suit her, she decided to bow out of the business. Kathy took a look at the menu and decided it was crazy to try to support such a huge selection when people were typically just stopping in for lunch on their way to somewhere else. So she narrowed down the offerings to five or six sandwiches and concentrated on the pies.


And the pies are fabulous – absolutely delicious. We had apple crumb, chocolate cream, and coconut cream between the four of us.


They were baking them fresh as we sat there. Each time a pie came out of the oven, Kathy brought it over to show us her handy work.

They keep a tally of how many pies they make each day on a white board because so many people ask. One pie that day celebrated an outing her staff enjoyed the night before with a local astronomer, who also happened to be at the café. The crust was made from little interlocking stars.

We had heard about a New Mexican apple pie with green chilies and cinnamon that sounded amazing. It wasn't in the oven that day, but Kathy told us if we call ahead and tell her when we're coming, she'll make one for us.

These people love pie.


This is positioning. The Pie-O-Neer is just about pies. It’s out in the middle of nowhere (a beautiful, breathtaking nowhere, mind you) but it’s been featured in Travel & Leisure and on the Food Network.


Is there one thing you do as an arts organization that could really put you on the map? Not “presenting the finest in Fill-in-the-Blank in the Whatever Region.” Something very specific. Something that people will remember.

Can you position your organization like Kathy Knapp positioned the Pie-O-Neer?

EDIT: After I posted this, I saw Charlie's video response -- why it's not necessarily best to excel at just one thing if you're a small business owner -- to Seth's post on being the very best at just one thing. Something in the air, I guess. :-)

Charlie's right -- Kathy Knapp is no doubt excellent at getting publicity, keeping her employees happy (they seemed so enthused and relaxed at the same time), connecting with her customers, and keeping her restaurant in business.

But she's known for pie. Just pie.

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