Social Media and the Arts: Less Advertising, More Talking

Today on the TechSoup Blog, we talked about performing arts organizations using social media to attract new audiences, including the San Francisco Symphony and the Anaheim Ballet.

How can nonprofits use new media to reach new audiences? The blog post focused on arts orgs, but let's open the discussion to other types of organizations too.

Happy Friday,
Elliot

Hi Elliot:

Thanks for the shoutout .. my big takeaway was that social media and the arts - is about audience development and education - and that those departments inside of arts organizations should be using those tools

Elliot,

Great post, by the way.

My first step would be to have specific specific goals AND be clear about your reasons for using the new media. Why a new audience? What are you looking to accomplish by reaching out to the new audience? And exactly who is this new audience? How are they different from current audience?

The good news is that a lot of "new media" is relatively cheap to explore.

But I'm curious about what others think...

John

P.S. Check out how kids in Tanzania are using Tumblr.

I think that this is really a trick question.  Social media isn't good at attracting new audiences, but rather to engage existing relationships.  Something I've noticed recently is that when people say "new audiences" they frequently mean "young people."

This is frequently followed-up by a classic false assumption: since young people use social media, if an arts organization uses social media young people will start to pay attention to them and to start liking art.  This is what I call the "If you build it, they won't care" rule.

I've found that the better way to apply social media tools to audience engagement is by asking the question: "How can we use social media to deepen our relationship with our existing audiences?"

Hi everyone,

thegene: Thanks for the good points. I hesitantly agree: that would have been the better way to frame the question. But I think new media attracts new audiences all the time, particularly young people. Blogs (and local arts filters like Squidlist) are where you find out what performances are new and interesting, far more than traditional advertisements or the arts section of the newspaper.

Having said that, the reason why many attempts to attract young people fail - particularly by arts organizations, particularly in the "serious" performing arts - is that they're predicated on the idea that young people don't already understand or appreciate or enjoy fine arts. People under 30 are the ones who read about what's going on year-round and splurge for a standing-room ticket once or twice a year.

There's the annoying "ballet but entertaining" ad I linked to in the blog post. I've also seen advertisements - both in old and new media - that go out of their way to say that "You can even come wearing jeans!" This condescension and misunderstanding of the audience is confused at best and outright offensive at worst. Most money spent advertising to young people would be more effectively spent on under-30 discounts.

john: Good to hear from you. The one thing I'd add to your list of considerations is "What do we want this new audience to do after encountering our message?" Getting a thousand-dollar donation or selling season tickets probably isn't in the cards. If the goal is to sell one ticket to a certain event or make one small donation, that's actionable. Make that action as easy as possible.

Cheers,
Elliot