Blog Posts for October 2013 Blog Salon

Thank you to the many people who have been blog contributors to, and readers of ArtsBlog over the years. ArtsBlog has long been a space where we uplifted stories from the field that demonstrated how the arts strengthen our communities socially, educationally, and economically; where trends and issues and controversies were called out; and advocacy tools were provided to help you make the case for more arts funding and favorable arts policies.

As part of Americans for the Arts’ recent Strategic Realignment Process, we were asked to evaluate our storytelling communications platforms and evolve the way we share content. As a result, we launched the Designing Our Destiny portal to explore new ways of telling stories and sharing information, one that is consistent with our longtime practice of, “No numbers without a story, and no stories without a number.”

As we put our energy into developing this platform and reevaluate our communications strategies, we have put ArtsBlog on hold. That is, you can read past blog posts, but we are not posting new ones. You can look to the Designing Our Destiny portal and our news items feed on the Americans for the Arts website for stories you would have seen in ArtsBlog in the past.

ArtsBlog will remain online through this year as we determine the best way to archive this valuable resource and the knowledge you’ve shared here.

As ever, we are grateful for your participation in ArtsBlog and thank you for your work in advancing the arts. It is important, and you are important for doing it.


Laura Kakolewski

Powered by Community: Welcome to our Arts Marketing Blog Salon!

Posted by Laura Kakolewski, Oct 07, 2013 0 comments


Laura Kakolewski

Portland, Oregon is the home to this year’s National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) Conference: Powered by Community. You can look forward to conversations about audience diversification, strategies for engaging college students, using augmented reality, the top telemarketing tips, and so much more.

This year’s keynote speakers are creative change agents, community builders, and marketing gurus – Kevin Carroll, Matt Stinchcomb, and Pamela Moore. From Matt’s lessons on community building from the D.I.Y marketplace Etsy to Pam’s arsenal of tactics to keep your online communities striving, this year’s keynotes will leave you inspired and recharged to collaborate with your communities on a more meaningful level.

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Michael Marchetta

The Advantages and Strategies of Marketing Arts Products Online

Posted by Michael Marchetta, Oct 11, 2013 1 comment


Michael Marchetta

Michael Marchetta Michael Marchetta

If you want to show customers service that surpasses their arts-related wants and needs, you need to go beyond just the standard “bricks and mortar” museum or store and create an established online presence.

Today, this means not only having an interactive website but also utilizing social media - Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, and more - to their fullest potential. Tech-savvy customers can easily search and find artwork and supplies that interest them, complete with product reviews. The more venues you provide for them to discover your offerings, the better your chances for a sale or inquiry about your collection. Additionally, your online accessibility will help interested customers learn more about all of your artwork and related products and services, and it will encourage them to retain your business for future transactions.

With a good interactive website and strong social media presence, you can interact instantly with your followers to understand what artwork they want and how to assist them. Marketing online with tools like Google Analytics provides the data you need to create personalized service strategies that help you deliver relevant artwork and cultivate a high level of engagement with clients who know you understand and respect their desires. You can use the data you collect to design customized recommendations and other content for your followers, and to develop a long-term strategy for including artwork in your collection that meets your customers’ needs.

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Amelia Northrup-Simpson

What Audiences Expect from Arts Marketers: Four Technology Must-dos

Posted by Amelia Northrup-Simpson, Oct 07, 2013 5 comments


Amelia Northrup-Simpson

Amelia Northrup-Simpson Amelia Northrup-Simpson

One of the pleasures of attending the NAMP conference is seeing how the field of arts marketing evolves each year as new technologies emerge. Social media, mobile technology, database systems, and video (as well as print and mass media), along with the role these play in our work, have changed considerably since the first time I attended just 3 years ago.

Changes in technology must always be viewed through the lens of what audiences (and prospective audiences) expect of your organization. As technology evolves, patron expectations and preferences change as well. In the mid-90’s, having a web presence was optional. Nowadays, not so much. Or, think back to when arts organizations were creating MySpace profiles. This was OK in 2006, but it would certainly raise patron eyebrows today. When you have so many marketing technology options at your disposal, you need a way to prioritize.  Thinking about patron expectations can help you separate the “gotta have it” options from the ones that fall under the category of “not necessary right now”.

At the NAMP conference this year, I expect to hear about the following 4 technology expectations that many patrons now have:

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Alex Davis

Social Media Strategy: Find the Cool Kids

Posted by Alex Davis, Oct 11, 2013 1 comment


Alex Davis

Alex Delotch Davis Alex Delotch Davis

Social media marketing seems to run the gamut of potential impact -- from exponential success, a la Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign, to screaming in the dark and bargaining for likes.  It’s tricky business.  Social media “gurus” make it sound like a science that you’re not analytical enough to understand or don’t have the time to keep up with, both of which are probably true.  Whatever your experience has been with social media marketing, here’s what I know for sure: it’s valuable, it’s not going away, and it’s time-consuming.

Allocating the right mix of platforms and the right amount of time to maximize social media can be difficult to manage for arts organizations with already stretched budgets.  However, engaging people that are not only savvy, but popular on social media presents a wonderful opportunity to expand your audience and check off social media on your marketing to-do list.

Adly, a startup that matches celebrities willing to post with consumer brands, calls this “amplifying” your content.  Rather than working your poor intern to death trying to get your twitter followers up, retweeting, posting, and sharing your little heart out - identify and engage the socially savvy in your community.  There are most certainly people in your immediate reach, who have a huge following on twitter, Instagram, and Vine (Facebook is so 2 hours ago) that can push your content out to the audience you want to reach.

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Allison Houseworth

The User Experience of Your Space

Posted by Allison Houseworth, Oct 07, 2013 3 comments


Allison Houseworth

Allison Houseworth Allison Houseworth

In the hours before Barry Hessenius’ Dinner-Vention this past September, Devon Smith wrote a post in which she asked “What if an arts organization employed a user experience designer?” As defined by Wikipedia - the dictionary powered by community - User Experience Design is “any aspect of a person's interaction with a given system, including the interface, graphics, industrial design, physical interaction, and the manual.” Apple is the best example of a company that excels in the area of UX design. Everything they create is based on user experience - your iPhone, its packaging, the stores themselves. But how do arts organizations embrace the user experience?

For the last four years, I have taught a course called “Audience Engagement: In Line and Online” to MFA Theatre Management and Producing students at Columbia University. (You can follow us on Twitter at #AlliClass.) Each semester we discuss “Service Mapping,” which is identifying each touchpoint the audience member has with your organization from the moment they decide to go to the theatre to the moment they get home. We start with exposure, move on to research, purchase, and include moments like entering the venue, exiting the venue, pre- and post-show activities. Traditional tech-world UX designers - and often arts marketers! - will focus often on the two stages of service mapping we call “research” and “purchase.” This is where we analyze how easy is it for your customer to find what what’s playing, when, where, and how to buy tickets. Where I see arts marketers - and yes, arts fundraisers, producers and programmers too - really struggle is when we bring the audience into our home - “entering the venue,” “getting to your seats,” “intermission.” Once the audience gets in the door your job is not done. Your audience is, in perhaps not the kindest of terms, held captive. They are, more positively, your captive audience. So what are you going to do with them?

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Melanie Harker

Let’s Explore: Engagement

Posted by Melanie Harker, Oct 08, 2013 10 comments


Melanie Harker

Melanie Harker Melanie Harker

I am an arts explorer. Investigating ideas, pursuing new bits of information, engaging in conversation, or listening to the buzz around me; I thrive on discovering new perspectives and navigating new concepts. Through much personal exploration, I have realized what I loved most about the theater was not performance (I hold a degree in Acting) but instead the art/artist/audience community that surrounds all art in general. As a twenty-something arts professional, I have decided to dedicate myself to the pursuit of all ideas encompassing this fascinating intersection.

A couple of weeks ago I saw this New York Times (NYT) op-ed, “High Culture Goes Hands-On” by Judith Dobryanzki. In it, Dobryanzki makes the case that museums are trying too hard to create space for “visitor engagement” which augments (even tarnishes) the purpose and reputation of museums; “It changes who will go [to museums] and for what.” She even adds in a follow-up article on her personal blog that, “Art museums are… luring visitors by giving them participatory art experiences rather simply providing them with the opportunity to experience viewing glorious works of art.” While this piece references the museum world, I would like to challenge this community of arts marketers to think about its broader impact and how its claims can map directly to all arts audiences.

Linda Essig responds to Dobryanzki’s point of changing “who will go and for what” on her Creative Infrastructure blog. She writes, “That, it seems to me, is a good thing.  Arts organizations have for years been decrying their declining and graying membership and subscription bases.  If visitors change and visitors change their expectations, perhaps the sound of membership rosters circling the drain will not be so loud.”

Deborah Markow, in contrast to Essig, responds with a letter to the NYT editor agreeing with Dobryanzki, and makes the case that creating visitor engagement opportunities (like meeting the artist or interactive art installations) is not the way to help the public “appreciate and feel at ease in the presence of the great art of the past.”

As I read about all of these heated and contrasting ideas, I saw that words such as “activation,” “engagement,” and “participation” were being dropped into a bucket of full of buzzwords. Over the past two years of working for various Washington, DC theaters who are all energized by the support of their community*, I have come to know these words beyond their empty buzzword-y shells.

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