Arts Intranet

Mary Trudel

Everything we ever knew about the value of authentic engagement is louder, faster, and more challenging.

My partner, Rory MacPherson, and I spend a lot of time interviewing arts organizations about their use of social media to seek out best practices and learn from field exemplars. What I come away with after hundreds of interviews is that effective use of social media is building engagement on steroids!

The best organizations understand that your greatest assets are—to use a Facebook word—your friend relationships with audiences, visitors, fans, and patrons. You can mobilize these groups to help but you CANNOT make those friends in a crisis.

Friends are made on the frontlines through individual experiences that bring fans closer or push them away. We’ve noted 7 important elements of effective engagement which can solidify engagement and make social media mission critical for your fundraising:

1. Make it Personal + Concrete + Time Sensitive
2. Connect with Values and Value Connections
3. Listen and Respond
4. Answer the Audience’s Question: What’s in It for Me?
5. Cultivate Productive Partnerships
6. Measure What Matters
7. Involve the Whole Organization

Two outstanding examples:

• Georgia Shakespeare was facing a perfect storm of funding, facing possible closure. The managing director made a personal appeal—not unusual—but what happened next was explosive and exponential. A New York actor who got his start at Georgia Shakespeare sent out a birthday wish—“Don’t buy me a beer for my birthday, donate the price of one to my theatrical ‘birthplace.’” And donations flowed in—$325,000 in 2 weeks from more than 1000 people across the U.S.
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David Dombrosky

Over the last few years, I have been paying an increasing amount of attention to mobile technology and its intersection with the arts. Many people in our field hold the philosophy that mobile is the future. I would argue that mobile is the present—it’s where things already are.

• There are currently 6 billion mobile subscribers worldwide. That’s 87% of the world’s population.
• As of Dec 2011, there were 331.6 million wireless subscriber connections in the United States. When you divide the number of active connections by the total population of the U.S. and its territories, that’s a penetration rate of 104%.
• In March 2012, the number of U.S. mobile subscribers using smartphones surpassed the number of those using standard feature phones.
• In the United States, 25% of Internet users are mobile only.

If any of you are waiting for a “tipping point” to arrive before you begin exploring how to engage audiences via mobile devices, allow me to gently inform you that you are late to the party.

The point has tipped.

So what are your options?

Participate in mobile-optimized environments
Thankfully, most of us already use mobile-optimized environments to communicate with our audiences. Your Facebook pages and Twitter profiles are presented to mobile users in an optimized format, and your messages on those platforms appear in your followers’ activity streams on their mobile devices—which is critically important given that over 50% of Facebook and Twitter users access their accounts from smartphones and tablet computers.

Develop a mobile website
Whew!  Okay, so at least you have some mobile-optimized content. Now, what about your website? For those of you who have a mobile website, good job. Skip this section. For those of you who do not have a mobile website, I have some questions for you:

Adam Cunningham

The biggest myth facing digital (and all the activities from social media, advertising, and marketing that fall under that title) is that it is still viewed as something that cannot fully track sales, being incorrectly lumped into the same categories as print, television, and radio.

In reality, 100% all digital activities can be tracked down to a dollar and cent value via 1x1 conversion pixels that can be placed at the conversion/thank you page for any client, selling any product, on all major ticketing systems.

Most verticals outside of the arts have realized this for years, and have adjusted their spends accordingly.

Looking at Lexus (a decidedly “older” car), recent data showed their spend allocation at 50% traditional and 50% digital/emerging technologies. For the always progressive Virgin America plan, 70% went to digital and 30% for traditional. Looking at Converse, 90% of the spend went to digital and content development (which, inevitably, is distributed via digital avenues) with only 10% left for traditional advertising means.

The arts, meanwhile, appear to be hesitant about shifting dollars.

Devra Thomas

How do you keep your audiences coming back for more? World-class art? A triple-digit marketing budget? How about making friends with them and creating an awesome experience from the moment they enter your space to the second they exit?

Scott Stratten, in last year’s NAMP Conference keynote speech, said, “We don’t share brochures. We don’t share logos. We share awesome. We share experiences.”

How is your organization crafting the total experience for your audience, or is it? Too often in the administrative world we get caught up in the questions of how we find new audiences and how we get those audiences to give us more money.

Those are valid questions, but exist in the before and after of the actual art experience. As administrators, we need to be more concerned with the “during” portion of the audience member’s visit, as this is the best time to turn them into friends. The customer’s personal experience with our organization does not begin when the lights go down, or when they stand in front of a painting, it begins the minute they pick up the phone to buy tickets or they step in the door for the show. It doesn’t end with the applause; actually, the goal is for it not to end, but to grow into a personally (and, yes, financially) valuable relationship.

Yes, the art itself is of the utmost importance. You don’t go to a restaurant, have a bad meal and exceptional service, and say, “Oh, I have to go there again, the food was awful, but that waiter!” But the reverse is often true: you can partake of a wonderful meal—or show—and have terrible service but go again because the product was good.

Imagine what would be said about your organization if you combined your great art with exceptional service: “I love coming here because you’re all always so friendly.” Or “I feel like I’m part of the family and wanted my friends to meet you.” Crafting an exceptional customer service mindset within your entire organization is the fastest way to start creating those awesome experiences that your audiences will share.

Amelia Northrup

For decades, the arts industry has chased new audiences, especially younger audiences. Today, that chase is directed at the largest population under 30 years old in human history. It’s little wonder that Gen Y (born 1981–2001) is a hot topic for arts marketers.

As a data-informed member of Gen Y, here’s a take on my generation of arts consumers.

We curate our lives. For as long as we’ve been consumers, we have always had access to Google and Amazon. Search is our way of finding out anything and everything we want to know. We are the generation of the long-tail. This means we have had access to more variety of art, music, performances, and consumer products than any other generation in history.

Because we have access to virtually everything, we take pleasure in exploring the original and local and not just mass-market products and experiences. The data backs this up; an Edelman Digital study found that 40% of Gen Y participants preferred buying local, even if it meant paying more than a mass-market product.

Beyond buying local, the exploration of everything available in the marketplace has led to a culture where we curate our lives. The rise of personal curation—selection of exactly what we want from all that’s available—is evident in the recent popularity of Pinterest.

We spend on what we value. Gen Y is often characterized as cheap. There’s good reason for our cost-consciousness. Gen Y paid much more for college than previous generations and now has record levels of student debt. We face an unprecedented labor market that has offered us more unemployment and underemployment than under-30s of nearly any previous generation.

In light of our generation’s thriftiness, the Edelman study’s spending metric suggest that a cheap price is not our only motivation to buy. Warren Buffet once said, “Price is what you pay, value is what you get.” Price and value are connected for Gen Y.

As the 2012 National Arts Marketing Project (NAMP) Conference: Getting Down to Business quickly approaches, we are taking some cues from creative business leaders, entrepreneurs and change agents. And that is exactly how I would describe our keynote speakers – Rohit Bhargava, Eric Ryan, Nina Simon, and the musical collective cdza:

What better way to kick off a meeting about audience engagement, communications, and revenue generation than with an online discussion with you and 25 top marketing practitioners and consultants in the field?

Join us here on ARTSblog for a dialogue on the broad landscape of arts marketing, technology, and audience development. Bloggers include David Dombrosky, Clay Lord, Jill Robinson, Nina Simon, Adam Thurman, and many others.

From October 1-5, join us as we wrestle with and ponder on such questions as:

•    What new strategies are you utilizing to broaden your audience and build business?
•    How are you using ROI analysis in your marketing campaigns?

Jill Robinson

Ten years into our ongoing patron behavior research and analysis, data is showing us an alarming fact: There’s a huge set of cracks in the foundation of patronage that arts organizations are built upon.

In patron behavior terms, the “cracks” are caused by Tryers. These are households that have infrequent, one-time, or long-ago transactions with arts and entertainment organizations and they are the most prevalent type of patron behavior.

Right now the databases of most arts organizations are likely comprised of 90 percent Tryers. And most of them are patrons you’ve allowed to lapse.

Tryers—TRG Arts research has found—are the least loyal, most expensive to acquire, and most difficult to retain patrons. That most audience or visitor bases are built on Tryers is a real threat to the sustainable future of arts and entertainment organizations. It doesn’t have to be that way.

• The focus on finding new single ticket buyers is part of the problem. Research tells us that new ticket buyers churn out an alarmingly high rate after their first attendance. Often, organizations lose more patrons than they bring in annually, and that trend triggers institutional decline.

• Specific patronage programs–subscription, annual fund giving, membership–are escalators toward lifetime loyalty. Patrons who stick with a company over time and through continuing investment—loyalists—do so through these programs.

• Loyal patrons are made, not found. An organization’s most loyal, most engaged, largest invested patrons rarely if ever arrive in an organization’s pool of supporters fully formed. Research shows that new patrons who do stick with an organization do so by adding specific transactions in an escalating pattern of increased, frequent, current investments of time and money.
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Laura Kakolewski

As an arts marketer, I made sure to pay particular attention to the commercials during the Super Bowl.

Although a few stood out from the rest, Twitter helped me discover what I believe to be the smartest Super Bowl commercial that (unfortunately) only aired in Canada.

Before reading any further, take a few minutes to watch this matchless Canadian Budweiser commercial that I found straight from the twitter feed of Scott Stratten (@Unmarketing), author of UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging, and keynote speaker at the 2011 National Arts Marketing Project Conference:

In my opinion, Budweiser Canada deserves a standing ovation from the world of marketing and advertising.

Rick Lester

When I worked as an arts manager, the election season----particularly presidential years like 2012----was a time of fear and loathing. Why?

First and foremost, ticket sales and admissions soften or die immediately before and on Election Day. At TRG, we’ve watched this trend play out across the U.S. over the past two decades in client sales results from markets of all sizes.

An inescapable consequence of major election cycles is campaign advertising----a driver of America’s economic engine that is bad for arts and entertainment.

The flood of campaign advertising every other October sucks opportunity out of our promotional campaigns. (Just ask anyone in Florida right now where the Republican primaries alone are having a major impact.)

Campaign advertising drives up the price and limits----in some markets eliminates----the availability of advertising time on radio and TV. Email inboxes, postal mailboxes, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts are stuffed beyond capacity. The normal roar of media clutter hits overload.

It becomes nearly impossible to create a viable marketing message capable of cutting through. No matter the quality of what goes on stage or in the gallery, patrons are less likely to hear about it.

Will Maitland Weiss

Anyone still reading this on a desktop computer?

Even you—along with the smart phone and smarter tablet readers—know that the tsunamic trend of digital communication will continue to roil how we deliver art (and get money to do so) in 2012.

You certainly aren’t reading this in one of the printed “newsletters” of my (distant) youth. Those, and brochures, and posters, and postcards, and print advertising—which used to take up so much of our time and of our paltry budgets--are going, going, gone.

We tell the stories of our art differently now. We sell our tickets differently; our tickets, which will soon be pieces of cardboard as often as our subway fares are paid in metal tokens.

C-R-M! C-R-M!

Variable pricing—which got a passing shout-out in a recent Sunday Times Magazine (page 11), kind of in the context of “Duh? Some people aren’t doing this?!”

Stephanie Spalding

For someone who is employed by an arts organization and considers herself an arts advocate, I sure question my ability to think creatively.

Am I thinking outside of the proverbial box? Do I read enough blogs and take in enough industry research to resourcefully solve problems and suggest new projects or strategies?

In an effort to address this issue -- I am taking a cue from the inspiring presentation of Oliver Uberti, design editor for National Geographic, who I had the pleasure of listening to during the National Arts Marketing Project Conference.

It was time to geek out and make a chart.

I needed to take an inventory of something sort of concrete, sort of reflective and personal and sort of plain fun. And he seemed to have gained insights into an alcoholic beverage consumption chart, so why not?

Question: Who feeds my inspiration and what qualities do they possess?

Goal: By creating a grid to chart out who challenges me and what type of “thinkers” my challengers are, I will better understand where to look for insight and maybe even where I am lacking.

Jarin Hart

Throughout the weekend of the National Arts Marketing Project Conference, several people tweeted about experiencing conference withdrawals, or unmarketing withdrawals, etc.

I didn’t experience this as I felt my head nearly exploding from all the information I was dutifully scribbling down as fast as arm could push my pen. Armed with page after page of notes and new, exciting ideas to share with my co-workers, I left NAMP feeling inspired and empowered.

The messages that resonated the loudest for me were:

1. Remarry your audience -- A simple, albeit brilliant concept, don’t you think? Scott Stratten reminded us all that we must honor and respect our current audience. We must ask, “What can I start doing? What can I stop doing? What can I continue doing?” We must take the time to listen to our current audience member and long-standing supporters, because too often we unwittingly take advantage of them. We abuse their loyalty whether or not that is our intention. “Make new friends, but keep the old, for one is silver and the other gold.”

Jarin Hart

Thirty minutes into the 2011 National Arts Marketing Project Conference and listening to keynote speaker, Scott Stratten talk about unmarketing, I suddenly became aware of 2 things: 1) Scott Stratten is a genius  and 2) I was in the right place at the right time.

Being new to the arts world as well as the nonprofit world, I had no idea what to expect to gain (or lose) from attending the NAMP Conference. I recently landed a job with a small, nonprofit arts organization in Fort Wayne, IN, where I continue to encounter challenges with discovering effective methods of marketing for a unique, niche performing arts organization. Scott’s speech could not have come soon enough!

What Scott said, (though dripping with sarcasm), resonated in me, and judging by the tweets throughout the day, my mind wasn’t the only mind being blown!

I think sometimes we forget that marketing is a verb, and depends on our ability to engage our audience in fresh, new ways. Scott suggested we can maintain a successful relationship if we simply choose to “remarry” our current audience. I believe I heard an audible click in the minds of those around me as Scott nonchalantly suggested the concept of honoring our relationships with our current patrons.

Stephanie Spalding

Day One at the National Arts Marketing Project Conference (NAMPC) and I am drinking coffee “for two” in order to keep up with the flurry of questions and concepts oozing out of the mouths of my fellow attendees during the preconference.

This is my first NAMPC, by the way, but who has time for a learning curve? I am barreling through and keeping my ears open. There were inspiring anecdotes, fascinating case studies and fresh ideas coming in rapid fire during the Marketing Masters Think Tank.

In the interest of word count, there is one concept in particular that resonated with me. During a small group discussion about audience development, many in the group agreed that marketing departments often become the curator for an organization’s programming, often the ones taking enrichment to the next level (or any level). Okay, so people have heard this before. It was when the idea that we (read: the organization) curate an audience too. We do? We do.

Audience development comes in many shapes and sizes, and the commitment level from an organization can run the gamut. But if you or someone you love is considering a serious commitment to audience development  beyond the occasional event or focused ticket deal, then it is time to commit to knowing and serving the community.

Whitney Miller-Brengle

A first-time National Arts Marketing Project Conference attendee can sum up day one of the conference with the following experiences: hearing and sharing new ideas, developing a camaraderie with fellow attendees, diving into the Twitter conversations going on throughout the day (with the appropriate corresponding #hashtags, of course), and—at least for this first-time attendee—ending the day with achy feet and a fresh outlook on arts marketing. I was thrilled to participate in my first NAMP Conference, and honored that my hometown served as host for the conference this year.

I’ll admit that prior to the conference, I was unfamiliar with keynote speaker Scott Stratten and his book, Unmarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging. Therefore I went into his presentation with no expectations, though a little weary of someone who describes his techniques and practices as “unmarketing.” To my delight, Scott went above and beyond the duties of a keynote speaker. Not only was I thoroughly entertained (who doesn’t love to start the day off with several good laughs?), but I left that room with several key take-away ideas.

Perhaps what stood out to me most during the presentation were the points that supported Scott’s suggestion to “stop marketing and start engaging.” Our audiences and potential audiences are already expert engagers. They’re religiously reading their Facebook newsfeeds, tweeting up a storm, checking in, commenting, tagging, blogging…you name it, they’re all over it. And as arts organizations, if we aren’t right there with them—starting conversations, listening and responding to their feedback, sharing photos and videos—we are doing ourselves and our patrons a huge disservice.

Scott Provancher

My colleagues and I at the Arts & Science Council (ASC) have been closely following the national and regional trends that affect the health of the arts industry.

In particular, several trends have caught our attention: 1) arts giving in America continues to lose market share to other charities; 2) recent analysis showed that 85 percent of cultural patrons (ticket buyers, visitors, etc.) are not donating to the organizations they patronize; and 3) the traditional fundraising campaigns of the arts community seem to be making little progress in reversing these challenging trends.

A little over a year ago these trends were the topic of ASC’s annual board retreat. As one of the largest united arts agencies in the nation, we owed it to ourselves and the field to be a leader in addressing these issues both at a local and national level. Our board wholeheartedly agreed and we left the meeting with a firm commitment to develop and invest in innovative ideas that could change how the arts engage new donors in the future.

A year and a half later, ASC launched a new website called power2give.org, which we believe will change the way we do business forever.

David Schillhammer

The Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra’s ticket sales are up again this year, shattering local and national sales trends.

With several months left in the year, our box office is already seeing a 10 percent increase in subscriptions over this time last season, and renewal rates for freshman subscribers are over 53 percent and growing. This is the fifth year in a row we’ve had such gains.

Subscriptions to the orchestra’s “Super Series” have been steadily rising over the past five seasons. So far in 2011-2012, the orchestra has sold over 3,432 subscription packages, 300 more than this time last year, and a huge increase over the 1,500 sold in 2006-2007.

Our recipe for success? Marketing, innovative programming and outstanding customer service.

In the fall of 2007, we began working with freelance arts marketing guru Jack McAuliffe, president of Engaged Audiences, LLC, who pushed us to stop devaluing tickets through “buy one, get one” offers, and focus on marketing subscriptions. Specifically, he challenged us to convert one-time concert attendees into two- and three-time attendees, and then into long-term subscribers. So in 2007-2008, we began a targeted effort to grow subscriptions.

Here’s our method:

As the orchestrator of this year’s blog salon I had to laugh when a colleague forwarded me the cartoon below:

Fitting right? Yes, my job was to blog, tweet, like, comment, and share as much as possible about this blog salon. But you, our readers, made my job super easy.

On behalf of Americans for the Arts, I would like to thank all of you for visiting our 2011 arts marketing blog salon and adding comments, tweets, questions, and opinions to the conversation.

With almost 7,000 views, 20 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: Winning Audiences next month.

Andy Rooney

Remember, you’re a lot more interested in what you have to say than anyone else is.” - Andy Rooney

Are you going into a meeting today to introduce an idea, request funding, or propose a program?

Did you know its success depends on whether you get people’s eyebrows up in the first 60 seconds?

People at many meetings are either jockeying to get THEIR idea heard – or they’re bored, distracted or just waiting for the meeting to be over so they can go back to work on the UPO’s (Unidentified Piled Objects) stacking up on their desk.

The good news is, you can test in advance whether your idea is going to get any traction.

Just ask a colleague for 60 seconds of their time.

Explain your idea/proposal/request to them...using the exact same 60 second opening you’ll use in the meeting.

Now, watch their eyebrows.

One of the prompt questions for this blog salon was, “What research is affecting your marketing and fundraising strategies?”

TRG’s research on arts patrons by generation has really given me perspective on where the arts are today and what we need to plan for long-term. Right now—even amidst the recession, organizational bankruptcies, and funding pullbacks, today may be the “good old days” for arts marketing.

There are four generations of arts buyers in the market right now. Each cohort is born roughly between these dates:

Traditionalists, born before 1945
Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964
Generation X, born between 1964 and 1981
Generation Y, born between 1982 and 1995

I am a HUGE proponent of partnerships! There is nothing like getting in front of a group that is loyal to a certain brand, and have that brand state that your organization has value for the group to also support you. Throughout a season, we work with numerous partners to reach new audiences, from arts organizations to corporations and beyond.

Here are some of the more successful partnerships we have had:

Dracula's Night at the Bats

Dracula’s Night at the Bats: A fully integrated campaign with Louisville Slugger Field and our baseball team, the Louisville Bats. Dracula threw out the first pitch (a bit high, but right down the middle), we had a table set up behind home plate, our promotional video was played on the jumbotron in the outfield, we gave away an opportunity to purchase $10 tickets to an entire section and  one lucky person won two season ticket packages (and Dracula handed them out on the third-base dugout).

The benefit: Exposure to a different audience in a fun and interactive way. It showed potential patrons that theatre is not as intimidating as they might think. While there was not much advance promotion of this event, the face time we had with the thousands of people at the event was invaluable.

Ian David Moss

The hardest question to answer in arts research is “what would have happened if we had done things differently?” Researchers call this question the “counterfactual,” since it refers to a scenario that doesn’t actually exist. Generally speaking, it’s hard to measure things that don’t exist; hence the difficulty for arts research. We can’t measure that scenario directly, but we can get close to it through experimental designs that include a control group.

In a marketing-specific context, counterfactual scenarios come into play when considering alternative strategies aimed at driving sales or conversions. One technique that a number of organizations have used is called A/B testing, which is when two different versions of, say, a newsletter or a website get sent to random segments of your target audience.

Internet technology makes A/B testing relatively painless to execute: in the case of a newsletter, for example, all it requires is a random sorting algorithm in Excel to divide the list in two before sending the slightly different newsletter versions to the lists as you normally would. You could test which design results in more clickthroughs to a specific link or which subject line results in a higher open rate.

Christy Farnbauch

A couple of years ago the makers of Gain laundry detergent, Proctor & Gamble (P&G), were looking for a way to better engage and win customers. They used web and social media tools to launch a “Sniff Contest."

They invited current and new Gain customers to purchase a bottle of detergent, open the cap, and sniff the scent. Then, customers were to visit the company’s website or Facebook page and write a brief story or upload a video about their experience with that bottle of detergent.

When I first heard about this request, I found it hard to believe that anyone would take the time to do this…for laundry detergent?

As it turns out, the campaign was wildly successful, resulting in over 300,000 stories, videos, and fans. P&G dubbed these people the “Gainiacs” and continues to engage them in a variety of ways to increase product sales.

Everybody loves to hear a good story. A powerful story is a critical tool for engaging and winning audiences – current and potential ticket buyers, class participants, board members, artists, and donors.

Chad Bauman

In Part 1, Chad discussed how Arena Stage conducted research to determine if subscriptions still worked for their organization. In Part 2 and below, he discusses some of the tactical changes Arena Stage has made as a result of that work:

Eliminated Advertising, but Increased Direct Mail and Telemarketing.
Prior to 2008, 25% of our subscription budget was allocated to advertising. After exhaustive efforts, we could not trace a single subscription purchase back to our advertising campaigns. Therefore, we cut all subscription advertising, and refocused those resources on direct mail and telemarketing. In doing so, we completely revamped our direct mail and telemarketing campaigns.

In terms of direct mail, we would previously print hundreds of thousands of season brochures, and then mail them out in a few rounds of massive mailings. Our brochures were 28-32 pages in length, and functioned more as a branding tool than a sales piece.

Today, we send out 30+ direct mail pieces during each subscription campaign that specifically tailor the offer to the target. We have eliminated our subscription brochure, cut our design costs by 60%, and have directed all of our resources to testing message and offer. For more information on our new approach to direct mail, please read "The Future of the Season Brochure."

Mary Trudel

Our 2011 How Strong is Your Social Net? Survey – that gathered responses from more than 1,600 arts organizations across the country – explores adoption and usage of digital and social media, measurement tactics, platforms, and return on investment (ROI).

The findings track the “how,” “to whom,” “what,” “why,” and “how often” of communications across multiple platforms and probes perceptions of effectiveness. We also examined internal policies and institutional protocols around issues of community building and audience feedback.

Trudel|MacPherson developed the survey to help arts groups connect with target audiences using a wide array of available digital communications options. The survey gathered data on how arts groups regularly communicate with various target publics; whether and how groups are connecting with patrons and fans – creating communities of interest and responding to their ideas and concerns -- and how groups are measuring the ROI of their digital efforts.

Creative Connections with Audiences

We asked respondents to share their best/worst experiences with digital media.

Very few arts groups reported any horror stories and most praised the intimacy and immediacy of social media to help them repair relationships, deliver last minute information, and build awareness and demand. A few examples:

Clayton Lord

As the marketing and communications director at an arts service organization, I’m often approached by marketing directors at our over 300 member companies with questions about various channels of marketing and communications.

Recently, a frazzled executive director at a small company (one of those that often doesn’t have a dedicated or even semi-dedicated marketing person) contacted me to have a conversation about social media. She had a board member who thought they could expand their reach dramatically by reaching out through social media, and she wanted to know how to create a Facebook page to do that.

I was sad to have to tell her that that strategy probably wasn’t going to work. The truth of the matter is that social media, like all the tools in the marcomm toolkit, has a specific spectrum of usefulness—and unfortunately, the type of social media interactions she was talking about just weren’t going to get her very much traction with people who didn’t know or care about her organization already.

Whenever I think about a marcomm plan, I work in my head with a very basic and non-scientific spectrum, stretching from what I term “engagement” (i.e. making those who already know you feel more engaged with you) to “development” (i.e. making those who don’t know you, well, know you).

Sam Horn

I've talked about how having FUN and using LINKS contributes the F.L.A.I.R. that motivates investors to care on my own blog, but what comes next in F.L.A.I.R.?

A = Alliteration

Say these words.

Best Purchase.

Dirt Vacuum.

Bed, Toilet, Etc.

Kind of clunky, eh?

Now make those words alliterative. (Alliteration is when words start with the same sound.)

Best Buy.

Dirt Devil.

Bed, Bath and Beyond.

More musical and memorable, right?

Brian Reich

There is little denying that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is a genius. He created a site that not only attracts more traffic than any other on the web, but also influences behavior, business, and social norms at an unprecedented level.

He can sit down and build something that most of us could never even imagine existing with lines of code that almost none of us can understand. But for all that brilliance, I wouldn’t give him the task of running a nonprofit organization. And especially not an arts organization. He is not the right fit for the task.

But if Facebook were to commit its resources and energy towards supporting the arts, Zuckerberg would almost certainly assume a leadership role in that effort because of his existing role as CEO of Facebook.

Thankfully that is a hypothetical situation. But it happens all the time – an existing organizational leader is thrust into a position where they are not a good fit. They are asked to guide an effort, inspire a team, and help an organization transform itself to meet a new set of challenges, only to find out too late that they weren’t up for the task. That practice needs to stop.