This presentation was delivered during the State of the Arts 2011 conference held in Austin TX on January 31, 2011. The conference theme is Leading the Creative Economy, and the presentation offered ideas on using social media for marketing arts organizations.
4. Today We’ll Cover … Social media review Good examples Time-saving tools Tools & utilities Clever contests & promotions New things to try Q&A/Live demos
6. It’s Not Just for Little Susie The ROI of Social Media
7. General Benefits of Social Media It’s FREE! Builds deeper relationships Increases brand awareness Broadens your network Helps SEO Increases website traffic Can help reach journalists/media Empowers fans to be viral ambassadors for your brand Source: Social Media for Tourism Pros
I’m Sarah Page and I work for the Lower Colorado River Authority providing tourism and economic development assistance to the communities and organizations in our service area. I’m a married mother of two terrific kids – one of whom is actually quite artistic. Though, sadly, she didn’t get it from me.
… and what Gaye didn’t tell you is that I’m a geek. Who other than a geek would get their Twitter handle on a t-shirt? I love social media. I use it every day. I love social media, but I also live in the real world. So I’m going to show you some tips and tricks that will make using social media much easier for you.
Can help reach a different demographic – one that doesn’t respond to traditional advertising (no newspapers – can get news on your phone)SEO = getting found onlineViral = now people will tell friends in a more public way
Before we get started, I want to share a cool example that happens to be from the city I live in. The City of Round Rock is trying to determine how to make arts and culture more of a focus. They’ve hosted some town hall meetings and coffees to get input from the public on what arts and culture mean to them and what they’d like to see the City do. Check out this short video of what they heard.
They’re keeping the momentum going with a dedicated arts and culture Twitter feed.
And a blog to get input from citizens who either can’t or won’t attend the public meetings. I think this is an excellent example of how an entire community can be engaged in a process to make life a little better.
One of the questions I get asked most frequently is “how much time will all this take?!” The truth is, that it does take some time. But there are some tools out there to help you cut down on the time you spend posting content and monitoring your social media channels.
Twitter Feed is a great little tool that can automate sharing of your blog posts to either Facebook or Twitter, or both. Just create a free account,
You can then get stats on how many times people click on your link from Facebook and from Twitter.
Twitter Feed makes it very easy to create an RSS feed. Just name it and copy the feed address into the second blank from your feedburner account.
Then just choose where you want your new blog posts to be published.
UsingHootSuite to manage your Twitter feeds and Facebook pages makes life a lot easier. HootSuite allows you to schedule tweets and Facebook posts in advance. You can do many of your tweets for the week all at once to free up time for other things while you’re at work. Just type your text in the box and click the calendar button.
In the calendar dialogue window that pops up, select the date and time of day you want the tweet to go out.
Any tweets you’ve scheduled will show up in the “Pending Tweets” column where you can check on its progress and even edit it. We’ll look at HootSuite and do some live demos at the end of the presentation.
HootSuite is also great for helping you monitor your brand or keywords that are relevant to your business. Here I’m pointing at several keywords I’m tracking. These are for presentations I had coming up to help me find good content to share. I’ve circled the “Searches” tab I set up. There, I track mentions of various LCRA properties, LCRA-related topics and more.
This is another cool (and free) service that allows you to post your content at one time and in one place, and have it sent to multiple social media channels.
Just type in your content and select which channels you want the message sent to.
If you manage Facebook pages, this tool allows you to post your content on Facebook and have it automatically sent to Twitter. Login to Facebook and open a new tab. Then go to facebook.com/twitter. Since you’re logged in, Facebook will know what pages you manage. You’ll see a list like this, and you simply click “Link to Twitter” for the ones you’d like to link. Couldn’t be easier.
This is a brand new one I just stumbled upon last week. HyperAlerts is a free service that will tell you when you’ve had any fan activity on your Facebook page. That feature doesn’t currently exist in Facebook now.
After you create your account or sign in, you can add new alerts for other pages or edit the types of alerts you’re receiving for the pages you already monitor. I set up alerts on 3 of my pages. You’ll notice that I don’t want alerts for my own content on two of them. That’s because I’m the only one who posts content there – I know when I’ve done that. For the LCRA Community & Economic Development page, I’ve chosen to be alerted for fan posts, fan comments AND our own content. That’s because other people in my department post to that page, and I want to know what they’ve done in case I miss it (or so I don’t post the same thing).
They’ll send you an email as often as you choose to let you know what’s been happening on your page when you weren’t looking.
Nutshell Mail is another relatively recent find. This is a free monitoring tool from Constant Contact – the email newsletter people. This also notifies you when there’s been fan activity on your Facebook pages, as well as activity from your friends on your personal profile.
You’ll receive an email with all the notifications from the previous time period.
You’ll see all your notifications and show you some recent posts from friends it thinks you might like. The cool thing about NutshellMail is that it allows you to RESPOND directly from the email without having to go to Facebook. Very cool.
Everybody knows about hashtags, right? Has anyone ever used them to follow along at a conference? A conference you’re not even attending? What about a Twitter chat? Tweetchat.com is an awesome tool that lets you monitor a hashtag in real time. Just sign in to Twitter and enter the hashtag you want to follow in the window.
You’ll be taken to a “chatroom” where you can see tweets from everyone using that hashtag at that exact moment. If you tweet something, it automatically appends the hashtag to the end of your tweet.This chat is following the hashtag #coopext. However, they are promoting a Twitter chat called “#AgChat”. I participate in a chat called “#TourismChat”. Twitter chats are regularly scheduled discussions that occur over Twitter. Tourismchat has people “attend” from all over North America and several other countries. There is usually a pre-announced topic and everyone can participate. You might want to start a Twitter chat for your arts niche, like performing arts, or artmuseums, etc.
URL shorteners come in very handy with Twitter, where you only have 140 characters to get your point across. But you can use them on Facebook too. The cool thing about them is that you can track how many times the link you shared gets clicked, and whether the click-through came from Twitter or Facebook. So this is one way to actually account for your social media efforts.There are several other URL shorteners. HootSuite has its own called owl.ly. There’s bud.url which allows you to assign each tweet or post to a category (like food, arts, history, etc.) so that you know what category performs best. Bud.url is not free, however, and also takes a fair amount of work for each link.
Just type in (or copy in) your long link, and bit.ly automatically generates a shortened link for you. Down below it shows the number of clicks I was responsible for out of the total number of times that link was clicked.
The Austin CVB just held a contest using Gowalla. They developed a trip in association with the Fun FunFun Fest held on November 6th in downtown Austin. Their goals were the following: 1) to get festival participants to venture out of the festival grounds and explore some other cool Austin places nearby2) To increase awareness of the festival3) Get people to come into the Austin Visitor CenterPeople who completed the trip were entered to win 2 VIP passes to the festival.They promoted in on Twitter and Facebook.
From Katie Cook with ACVB:We had 12 people complete our FFF Fest PIP Trip. The winner received 2 PIP (aka VIP) passes for Sunday’s festival. He was stoked and tweeted about it: http://drippic.com/node/10655 Twitter: We had 361 people click on our Gowalla trip link and 245 click onto Austinist.com article.We had 20 RTs of our 4 tweets on the contest. Facebook: We sent an update on our contest to our 5,500 fans and in that post tagged Austinist’s fan page (3,100 fans), Fun FunFun Fest (10,200 fans) and Transmission Entertainment (producer of the festival to their 1,800 fans).
Here’s another cool application of location-based apps. I’m proud to say it’s my alma mater – Texas A&M – who came up with the genius idea of doing a scavenger hunt on campus using Twitter and Foursquare. Are you beginning to see the possibilities for your attraction?
SCVNGR is a game sort of like Foursquare and Gowalla. It’s a 21st century scavenger hunt. You check in places, do little challenges, and earn points (both in the game & in the real world). Experience Grand Rapids has developed a new way to entice people to explore the city using SCVNGR.
Downtown Grand Rapids, MI is working with some other local organizationsto do a GR Tag Tour using QR codes to drive people to audio podcasts. Thiswill give tour-goers some insight on what Grand Rapids was like back in the olden days by sharing stories from the past. More on QR Codes in just a minute.
Has anyone heard of either of these two services? Anyone using them? I’m not ashamed to say that I’m addicted to both. If you’re a deal seeker, then this is for you! For businesses, it’s a great way to get rid of excess inventory, introduce a new product, get people in the door, as well as an opportunity to up sell. For people like us, it’s deeply discounted products and services that are emailed to you daily based on your location and preferences.
Here Downtown Nashville shares on Facebook the deal for that day. It happens to be for one of the downtown Nashville businesses.
Has anyone heard of Gowalla or FourSquare? Used them?These are applications you can download onto your smart phone. The apps “know” where you are based on your phone’s GPS. When you open the app, you’ll see a list of business or places nearby. You can “check in” to that place via the app.Why would you do this? For the geekiest of the geeks, it’s the game. You can earn virtual pins and badges that laud your check-in prowess. For regular geeks, it’s probably the real (not virtual) perks. On Foursquare, businesses have the ability to reward people for checking in multiple times. Think of it as a virtual “frequent flyer” program. On Gowalla, you can create virtual themed trips for your destination. Each trip has its own URL so you can link to them and promote them on your other social media channels.
Here’s an example of what a check-in looks like on Foursquare, and how you’ll know if there’s a special being offered.
And another example of an “old school” way to promote a “new school” tool. This is just a chalkboard outside a coffee house that lets people know they offer Foursquare deals.
Here the Brooklyn Museum has a whole page on their website devoted to Foursquare users. It shows who the current and past mayors are, who’s checked in recently, who’s got the special museum badge, and several comments about the museum from Foursquare users.
Gowalla lets you set up “trips” for a destination or attraction. Most of the time, they are themed trips like this one. This is an Austin Museum Tour created by the Austin American-Statesman. There are several more listed below the fold. Once a Gowalla user has checked in to at least 3 of the locations on the trip, they can get a special badge. This is a great way to create an itinerary for travelers. Gowalla’s trips have unique URLs, so you can link to them on your website or other social media channels.
Gowalla and Foursquare also allow you to let your friends know where you are. You can do that through the application itself (on your smart phone), or you can tweet it or share it on Facebook.
QR stands for “quick response”. A QR Code is a 2 dimensional bar code that can be read with a special app on a smart phone. They are usually linked to a URL to get more information on something. Realtors are using them a lot to show 360 degree tours of properties. There are lots of uses for them in the arts world too.
The Cleveland Museum of Art is providing a little primer on how to use the QR Codes in their latest marketing campaign.
The Grace Museum in Abilene, TX is using QR codes all around their galleries. When you scan them, they link you to different things – like YouTube videos with the featured artist speaking further about the exhibit and what inspired them. At the entrance of the museum they have a poster and it says "This is a QR code.“ and it explains what a QR code is, how to download the app and scan the code, etc. The code pictured here goes to the museum's website.
Every object in every exhibit has a QR code that can be scanned – like the ones pictured above. Shanna Smith Snyder with the Abilene Convention & Visitors Bureau says, “It’s kind of like a treasure hunt around the museum. An enhanced experience of what you were already seeing.” Shanna went out and took these pictures for me after seeing my tweet about needing examples. Behold the power of social media!
The Vancouver Opera used QR Codes to promote a new, modern opera that kicked off its 51st season.
In their blog, the describe the campaign. Basically, they put up posters all over town showing only the QR Code and the phrase, “Where is Lillian?”. Knowing this would raise a few eyebrows, the Vancouver Opera thought this would be the perfect marketing for this modern opera. People would be curious about the QR Code and learn about Lillian Alling in the process.
Most of the QR Codes directed users to a YouTube video called “Who Is Lillian Alling?”. The video provided information about the opera’s subject matter, as well as dates and ticket information.
They even created a Twitter feed for the main character as a unique way to share information about the opera.
Creating a QR Code couldn’t be easier. If you Google “QR Code generator”, probably the first 10 or so listings will work just fine. This one – QRStuff.com not only generates the code, it connects you to other sites where you can make things with your code (like t-shirts).