||| June 1, 2010 by Marc van Bree

Evaluating Socia Media for Classical Music Organization

Marc Van Bree's photo over social media logos

Will Rogers contacted me earlier this month to ask if he could post my evaluating social media series on the Arts Engagement Exchange site. He learned about it through You’ve Cott Mail, a clipping service from arts marketer Thomas Cott.

The series on evaluating social media, which I wrote from the perspective of classical music organizations, was inspired by the communications evaluation guide Are We There Yet? by the Communications Network. I learned about that guide through IssueLab, an online publishing forum for nonprofit research.

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||| January 19, 2010 by William Rogers

Social Media Pays: Chase Giving grants $25,000 to two Chicago theaters

Many of you may have followed the Chase Community Giving Program on Facebook. With this project Chase claims, “We’re exploring a new way of charitable giving – harnessing the power of social media to give individuals and communities a voice in corporate philanthropy.” So engaging your audience and testing the limits of your network were crucial to winning one of one hundred $25,000 grants and becoming a finalist for the $1,000,000 prize.

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||| November 2, 2009 by William Rogers

NAMP: Email Done Right

Playwrights Horizons, a critically acclaimed New York based theater company has made an art of the eblast under the leadership of Marketing Manager Bradford Louryk. Sending out more than 109 blasts last year alone (that was an 700% increase over previous years), the key to PH’s electronic success is the highly targeted messaging encouraging time sensitive action.

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||| October 26, 2009 by Tim Frick

“Return on Engagement” Series: Engage…and be nice

One-sided conversations are painful in real life. Why should they be any different online? After you have done a good deal of listening, research and strategy, add your own voice to the conversation.

There are about as many ways to engage as there are social sites on the internet, but it helps to start simple. Here are some basics:

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||| September 29, 2009 by William Rogers

One Fish, Two Fish…uh…Three Fish

You have been asking for them and they are finally here. The videos of Pete and Michael's Open Forum are up in Resources. Check them out. We also followed up with our "fish" to get reactions to their consultations by some of Obama's best. Read what they had to say below, and follow the links to watch the entire consultation.

Oh, and for good measure, here are the nuggets of gold our speakers shared with us before they went swimming with the fish.

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||| September 22, 2009 by Marj Halperin

Open Forum Takeaways

Most of the comments I’ve heard so far from last Tuesday’s open forum with Pete Giangreco and Michael Organ have something to do with trying to keep up as they threw out so many great tips, stats and smart ideas. So, I thought I’d follow up with my own notes to see if they help fill in some blanks. And, I hope you’ll post whatever you caught that I missed. Between us, we should be able to build a solid record of the whole session!

The presentation slides are posted here, so I won’t try to recap those in any detail. But my notes do pull out a few points that I know I’ll continue to think about.

When Michael Organ explained that Obama supporters had created and joined 35,000 different groups on the mybarackobama site, he said something like, “we had 2 million people create profiles on this site—and they did so for 35,000 different reasons.” This said more to me than anything else about the power of sharing control. We spend a lot of time trying to “create a community” on our websites, but letting the community create their own structure seems smarter—and maybe easier?
“Did you ever see an Obama internet ad which asked for a donation?” Organ assured us we never did. Through testing, he says, they discovered that you get people in the door (aka, to your website) through emails about issues and events that matter to them. THEN they’re ready to see the ask for a donation. When you send the right email messages, you’re telling people why they should support you. When they get to the website, you’re giving them the way to do it.
“Complacent people don’t act.” That comment—accompanied by the Sarah Palin slide—sure raised the bar for email content. We don’t all have the equivalent “urgency, anger, fear and special moments” but it’s a good reminder to try to send email messages that will jolt the complacent reader into action!
“The Internet is a direct response medium.” I know people hated those Obama splash pages with the sign up forms, but this was a good reminder to make sure links go directly to relevant information. And I don’t think linking to a sign-up page is such a bad idea for arts organizations! With a click-thru option, of course.
Sharing content control. Here’s that idea, again. Is there anyone who attended this session who still feels too timid to allow patrons to post reviews of their shows on your own website? Go for it!

These are just some of the thoughts that stand out to me. I encourage you to leave me comments with your own thoughts. In the meantime, please poke around the slide show from the presentation and stay tuned over the coming days as we post video of Pete and Michael and check in with our "fish."

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