On behalf of Americans for the Arts, I would like to thank all of our readers for stopping by our first ever arts marketing blog salon.  With almost 6,000 views, 73 comments, 15 bloggers, hundreds of tweets and retweets, and hundreds more of Facebook likes, the salon was a perfect way to jump start the National Arts Marketing Project Conference: New. Tech. New Tools. New Times.

I also want to extend a huge thank you to our bloggers:

• Chad Bauman
• Ben Burdick
• David Dombrosky
• Ron Evans
• Susannah Greenwood
• Amy Kweskin
• Clayton Lord
• Ian David Moss
• Amelia Northrup
• Deborah Obalil
• Brian Reich
• Kyle Semmel
• Brian Solis
• Mary Trudel
• Chloe Veltman

All their contributions were thoughtful, smart, relatable, and well presented.  They shared their ideas with ease and honesty, and I can’t wait to hear what they all have to say when they present at the NAMP Conference in San Jose, November 12-15.

Ron Evans

I wasn’t able to attend the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention this year, but I did get to participate in the next best thing: following the conversation on Twitter.

There were lots of great discussion and opinions. But unless you were following 24/7, you may have missed some gems.

So, I’ve gone through the entire stream of tweets using the hashtag #AFTA11 (all 2389 of them!) cut out all fat, and filtered them down to my picks for the top 50 most-useful tweets to me from AFTA 2011.

I say most useful because I wanted to separate out things that can be acted on, resources/measurements that can be explored, impactful facts and figures, and new “lightbulb ideas.”

A big thank you to these great posters for posting meaty tweets – If you like something you see, follow the author on Twitter.

So here goes, from oldest (public art pre-conference) to newest (end of conference) order…

Graphic: Mike Licht via Flickr

Having written about social media and its application in arts marketing for the last few years, I’ve become aware of a disconnect. I’ve written about specific social media tools and tactics, but I realize that I haven’t addressed how it fits in with overall marketing strategy, and within the media mix.

Think about the campaigns that have delivered the most revenue. For many organizations, subscription or membership campaigns are the lifeblood of their revenue each year (a good example of this came from TRG Arts client Arena Stage recently).

Direct-response renewal campaigns usually produce the highest sales volume as well as the highest marketing return-on-investment (ROI). On the other hand, social media has eluded our efforts to assign value to it since its inception. Social media is hard to track ROI on and even harder to monetize. On top of that, it’s nearly impossible to track social media users because doing so falls outside of the proprietary systems designed to protect their privacy.

You will not, repeat, NOT hear my colleagues and me advocating for abandoning your social media efforts. However, we do ask you to consider the question: Looking at your marketing strategy holistically, how does social media complement your most effective marketing campaigns?

Kory Kelly

This year, Actors Theatre has launched a campaign that features the art on our stage with a combined focus on the people who attend. The campaign’s tagline is “Your City. Your Arts. Your Actors Theatre.”

The idea behind this is to feature a variety of people in all the materials, including people of many ethnicities, age groups, occupations, and backgrounds. Each featured patron states why Actors Theatre is THEIR Actors Theatre, with reasons ranging from date night to seasonal fun, and everything in between.

This campaign has provided us audience engagement at offsite events where we provide dry erase boards and photograph people with statements about why they like Actors Theatre. These photos are then looped into our lobby videos.

We chose this campaign for numerous reasons:

1.  Community Focus
Actors Theatre’s mission (expanded for clarity here) is to represent the community in which we live and provide theatrical opportunities that anyone can attend. However, as most arts marketers know, access to all is not something that is easy to say, so why not show it? It is easy for people to look at a picture and say, “Hey! That person is just like me! And they go to Actors! Maybe I should go!”

Alison Schwartz

I wonder what makes a product, a store, an experience, an artwork a HIT. I am particularly curious about how certain products make it big when they aren’t playing by the rules.

Why is Target a beloved low-price big box store when most big box retailers are demonized for displacing the business of mom-and-pop shops?

Why is In-N-Out Burger a revered fast-food chain when fast food is unhealthy?

How is Blue Man Group still selling out performances with anonymous performers who don’t talk? Without a celebrity to anchor the show (such as Tony winners Scarlett Johansson and Denzel Washington), why should anyone pay attention?

While I am no branding expert, here are a few possible answers.