Edinburgh Printmakers Digital Development Story

And don’t forget – the service design toolkit with guides, examples, handouts and other practical and handy tools is available at http://design.festivalslab.com

Making things for screens can be tricky.

There’s something both ephemeral and infinite-seeming about digital projects that makes people nervous. At inception, these projects can seem capable of not just carrying our hopes and dreams, but also delivering our marketing targets, reaching the otherwise inaccessible and generating some incremental income on the side. If we’re lucky, our favourite digital project might also increase our search-engine ranking and tip us over a million ‘likes’ on Facebook. While also, of course, saying something trenchant about art.

Or that, at least, is how it can feel in meetings, when budgets are tight and priorities conflicted. It can seem as if a glittering digital project can save us all, while also showing that we’re modern and looking for new audiences.

Generally, digital projects that try to fulfil entire organisational strategies are doomed to failure. And I should know, I’ve worked on a few. But luckily, I’ve also worked on some that have done very well – and between those extremes a few principles have emerged:

- The most important platform is the imagination
- Try to do one thing as well as you can
- Innovate judiciously
- Not everything in the world needs to be filmed

And – of course:
- If it feels right, ignore all of the above

1. The most important platform is the imagination
Whether you’re making a film, an e-book, a website, an app or a game, the most important platform is the one between your audience members’ ears. It’s the one that can give your product a life of its own, but it’s also the most difficult one to make something for.

Digital projects that don’t leave space for the imagination tend to script every outcome, predict every reaction. As an audience member, you can’t fall in love with them because they’re already in love with themselves.

I’ve often been asked whether projects I’ve worked on have been ’art’ or ’marketing’, and I haven’t known. But I realise the difference is that an art project tends to invite the imagination in, while a marketing one will try to determine the outcomes – do the imaginative work so the audience doesn’t have to. But determining the outcomes can mean there’s no space left for the audience – which makes it less likely to become either virally popular or personally cherished.

2. Do one thing very well
Audiences seem to like this – or at least, they prefer it to ‘doing quite a few things badly’. It’s easier to take people on a journey if they think they know roughly the direction they’re going in. So, if you’re making a game, it doesn’t hurt to make it fun. If you’re making a film, make it as interesting as it can be and get the sound right! If you’re showing something beautiful, let it look as good as it possibly can. Adding additional media, calls to action, social networks and GPS mapping is the digital equivalent of Cubism – only start doing it when you really know how to paint, otherwise your audience will be confused.

And too many distractions will detract from the imagination. Keeping it simple will make your audience love it more.

3. Innovate judiciously
By which I mean, innovate as much as you like, but don’t try and build everything from scratch, just for yourself. The ocean bed of the web is littered with tools that are waiting to become vessels for your content. Bring your organisations uniqueness, its stories, its assets, its talent, to those tools and show how much better it is than everything else out there. The Space is a new platform that brings together web and broadcast elements and will let you experiment without having to build it yourself, so try to use what’s on offer.

4. Not everything in the world needs to be filmed
It just doesn’t. Particularly if it’s an event at which no microphones will be available. Or if it’s a critic or other expert sitting alone in a room commenting on something they didn’t create. If it’s not interesting enough for someone to read, it definitely won’t be interesting enough to watch as a video.

I’ve learned this the hard way. Bearing it in mind will not only save you thousands of pounds, it will free up your time to make more interesting things.

5. If it feels right, ignore all of the above
Except the first one. Never ignore the first one.

Examples
In case this seems a little abstract and esoteric, I’m going to finish with some examples of beautiful things that I think let the imagination in. Some may appear over-simple, but they have all been made with enormous skill and great respect for both the audience and the art they represent. Each has a timeless quality that lets the audience fall in love – and once the audience is in love, you can start taking all kinds of liberties.

Audio Slideshows: ‘Dick Bruna: Miffy and me – audio slideshow’, guardian.co.uk

‘Jan Pienkowski: drawing Meg and Mog – audio slideshow’, guardian.co.uk

Film: Edward Burra, Balfour Films for the Arts Council (via Pallant House Gallery)

Ebook: The Heart and the Bottle, Olive Jeffers and Bold Creative

Game: Papa Sangre, Agency of Coney and Somethin’ Else

Film: Mark Titchner Studio Tour, Tate Shots/Jared Schiller

Film: Lauren Cuthbertson: High Pointe, Royal Opera House

Rachel Coldicutt blogs at fabricofthings.wordpress.com

Gain insight & learn the best audience engagement practices through these 13 best visual representations

Infographics seem to be everywhere. These tools, which function as a clear and quick way to illustrate data or information, are beneficial to every marketer, and certainly to a creative  arts marketer. The US National Arts Marketing Project compiled the 13 most effective, informative, and fun infographics to give you tips and the strategies you’ll need to market the arts and engage audiences.

In this e-book, 13 Social Media Infographics That Every Marketer Needs to See, you will:

* Travel through time to learn the history of marketing channels
* See visual representations of complex data on the instant effect of social media
*  Follow alongside the journey of your tweet
* Learn how you can structure and maintain your website through the concept of “donut marketing.” YUM!

Box office blues?

Beth Aplin reveals eight things every chief executive should know about their ticketing system

Are you getting the very best out of your ticketing system? With such an expensive and business critical piece of software it is obviously worthwhile putting some effort into maximising your return on investment. Ask yourself the following questions, and you may find some untapped potential for improving organisational performance.

1. Do the services you are paying for include regular (annual is typical) upgrades? They almost certainly do, and your ticketing system supplier will really want you to install these – it makes supporting you much easier for them – and it’s in your interests as they always come with new features and bug fixes too. It is all too easy to ignore these and carry on using the system in the same way your team were taught during the initial installation.

2. Are some of your team regularly going to your system supplier conferences and user group meetings? For the inconvenience of a staff member out of the office for a day, and the cost of the train fare, your staff will hear about industry best practice and find out what other venues are doing. But I think one of the most important things is for your staff to build a good relationship with your supplier support team. You many not call support very often, but when you do (and this may be a really important call) being able to put a face to a name – and remember having met them – really helps.

3. Have you actually implemented all the great plans you had when you chose and installed your ticketing system? It is very easy to lose momentum after ‘go live’ – anything not resolved then tends to go onto the back burner. The important-but-not-urgent can be overlooked. Sometimes just a little effort and very small budget can transform some really time consuming processes, like group and schools booking confirmation letters for example.

4. Have you re-evaluated your opening hours and staffing levels since achieving a high level of Internet ticketing sales? If you’ve reached a tipping point of 40% internet sales, it is worthwhile reviewing the impact this has had on your box office. Research we carried out in Australia in 2010 among 52 venues showed an important difference in peak activity times between venues with no Internet ticket sales, and those with a medium to high level. Has your organisation seen a similar change and have you refined your staffing levels to match new customer requirements?

5. Is your box office making ongoing de-duplication a high enough priority? Internet ticketing is allowing customers direct access into your database, and there seems to be a strong universal reluctance by these customers to remember their previous passwords. So they simply create new entries. This leads to a permanent and significant increase in duplicate customer records. At the moment not many organisations have come up with compelling tactics to reverse this trend. As your customer database drives so much of your marketing activity, it is clearly critical to keep it to the highest level of quality and accuracy.

6. How much does your box office team know about your website and are they able to provide the support that your customers expect? As the sophistication of websites increases some customers need guidance to find their way around and learn how to do the things they want to. It is important for the team to feel confident and competent handling some regularly occurring technical issues (versions of web browsers used for example) as well as thoroughly understanding all the features of your website.

7. Are you listening to your box office staff? They spend most of every day talking and listening to your customers, and have a unique insight into their attitudes, behaviour and requirements. Some small nagging customer care issues seem to run in an organisation as long as anyone can remember and everyone is sick of them… incorrect parking notices maybe, or not getting prompt refunds perhaps. The reason why box office teams keep going on about them is because day after day they are facing customers who raise these issues.

8. Last but not least, are you using the expertise of box office staff to inform how you refine and improve your website, brochure, sales targets and methods of communication? The box office team has the most understanding of customer attendance patterns in the whole organisation. I know of box offices that run sweep-stakes about the sales that will be achieved for each show in a forthcoming season – they are amazingly accurate. The extent to which they are consulted about special offers, website design and show targets is directly related to how ‘valued’ they feel.

(Reproduced with kind permission from the author and our content partner Arts Professional, Issue 239)

Box office blues?

Beth Aplin reveals eight things every chief executive should know about their ticketing system

Are you getting the very best out of your ticketing system? With such an expensive and business critical piece of software it is obviously worthwhile putting some effort into maximising your return on investment. Ask yourself the following questions, and you may find some untapped potential for improving organisational performance.

Figure 1: Peak times – venues without Internet ticketing

Figure 2: Peak times – venues with Internet ticketing

1. Do the services you are paying for include regular (annual is typical) upgrades? They almost certainly do, and your ticketing system supplier will really want you to install these – it makes supporting you much easier for them – and it’s in your interests as they always come with new features and bug fixes too. It is all too easy to ignore these and carry on using the system in the same way your team were taught during the initial installation.

2. Are some of your team regularly going to your system supplier conferences and user group meetings? For the inconvenience of a staff member out of the office for a day, and the cost of the train fare, your staff will hear about industry best practice and find out what other venues are doing. But I think one of the most important things is for your staff to build a good relationship with your supplier support team. You many not call support very often, but when you do (and this may be a really important call) being able to put a face to a name – and remember having met them – really helps.

3. Have you actually implemented all the great plans you had when you chose and installed your ticketing system? It is very easy to lose momentum after ‘go live’ – anything not resolved then tends to go onto the back burner. The important-but-not-urgent can be overlooked. Sometimes just a little effort and very small budget can transform some really time consuming processes, like group and schools booking confirmation letters for example.

4. Have you re-evaluated your opening hours and staffing levels since achieving a high level of Internet ticketing sales? If you’ve reached a tipping point of 40% internet sales, it is worthwhile reviewing the impact this has had on your box office. Research we carried out in Australia in 2010 among 52 venues showed an important difference in peak activity times between venues with no Internet ticket sales, and those with a medium to high level. Has your organisation seen a similar change and have you refined your staffing levels to match new customer requirements?

5. Is your box office making ongoing de-duplication a high enough priority? Internet ticketing is allowing customers direct access into your database, and there seems to be a strong universal reluctance by these customers to remember their previous passwords. So they simply create new entries. This leads to a permanent and significant increase in duplicate customer records. At the moment not many organisations have come up with compelling tactics to reverse this trend. As your customer database drives so much of your marketing activity, it is clearly critical to keep it to the highest level of quality and accuracy.

6. How much does your box office team know about your website and are they able to provide the support that your customers expect? As the sophistication of websites increases some customers need guidance to find their way around and learn how to do the things they want to. It is important for the team to feel confident and competent handling some regularly occurring technical issues (versions of web browsers used for example) as well as thoroughly understanding all the features of your website.

7. Are you listening to your box office staff? They spend most of every day talking and listening to your customers, and have a unique insight into their attitudes, behaviour and requirements. Some small nagging customer care issues seem to run in an organisation as long as anyone can remember and everyone is sick of them… incorrect parking notices maybe, or not getting prompt refunds perhaps. The reason why box office teams keep going on about them is because day after day they are facing customers who raise these issues.

8. Last but not least, are you using the expertise of box office staff to inform how you refine and improve your website, brochure, sales targets and methods of communication? The box office team has the most understanding of customer attendance patterns in the whole organisation. I know of box offices that run sweep-stakes about the sales that will be achieved for each show in a forthcoming season – they are amazingly accurate. The extent to which they are consulted about special offers, website design and show targets is directly related to how ‘valued’ they feel.

What to Post on Facebook Pages to Maximize Engagement – kindly shared and originally posted by Technology in the Arts

Source: Technology in the Arts | Blog, podcast, and workshops exploring arts management and technology

Author: Crystal Wallis

So apparently, Buddy Media has these great (and free!) white papers and webinars about optimizing your Facebook page. They’re short and (mostly) easy to understand. Best of all, they tell you about things you can do that don’t cost a penny: what to measure, what and when to post, how to get your posts on the newsfeed. It’s all based on research they’ve done with their clients—big-dog companies like Johnson & Johnson, Sony, Southwest Airlines, Ford, and the NHL.  Here are the most useful tips for what to post on your wall in order to maximize engagement (measured in likes and comments).

What to Post

-  Keep it short. Posts 80 characters or less in length have 27% higher engagement rates.

-  Post trivia questions and contests, especially if they’re on a recurring schedule. People love to show off their knowledge. Key words for contests: Event, Winner, Offer, New, Win.

-  Ask for what you want! Do you want fans to ‘like’ a post? Ask them to like it. Want them to ‘share’ it? Ask them to click share.  Fans follow instructions well—the simpler, the better. Key words: Like, Take, Submit, Post, Comment, Tell Us

-  Asking questions:

• Posts that END with a question (rather than having it at the beginning or middle) have a 15% higher engagement rate.
• Use these key words in questions: Where, When, Would, and Should. Avoid asking “why” questions, which have low engagement rates and may be seen as intrusive.
• Ask for opinions on new products, concerts, exhibits, etc.
• Encourage your fans to share personal stories that relate to your organization or discipline.

-  Photos, videos, and links show up more in News Feeds, so use them in your posts. Post photos of employees, videos of upcoming artists (think behind-the-scenes sneak peeks), even photos from your archives, and encourage fans to post their pictures to your wall.

-  Relate your posts to current events, and ask your fans what they think about breaking news or other topics. Also, you may like to know that posts that reference upcoming events (including your own) get ranked higher on the News Feed- so run timely campaigns to promote your events! Just make sure you don’t post too often (once every few hours for the same event is probably too often).

-  Interact with fans on your post threads to keep the conversation going (longer threads are more likely to show up in News Feeds). Also interact with fans individually if they mention your organization.

-  Use the full length link. Engagement rates were 3 times higher for posts that used a full-length URL.  (On Facebook, using the full-length URL isn’t a hassle. On Twitter, however, you’ll need to shorten those links using bit.ly)

When to Post

-  For the entertainment industry, the days when our fans are most engaged (i.e., most likely to like and comment on posts) are Sunday, Friday, and Saturday, in that order. So don’t neglect these days!

-  Post early in the morning, at the end of the work day, and late at night- when your audience is checking their Facebook- not when you are at your desk! Brands that posted outside of business hours had engagement rates approximately 20% higher than average. Try TweetDeck to schedule your posts for free.

You may also want to check out “The Five Most Important Metrics You Should Be Tracking On Facebook” – a tab view, “engagements” (i.e. likes and comments), clicks, submits (i.e. fans sharing your posts), and news feed impressions. Some of these are only available through a paid service like Buddy Media or Convio, but go in to your page’s “Insights” and poke around to see what data you already have for free.

And if you’re having trouble finding a “Facebook Voice,” check out our article What is an Arts Organization’s “Online Voice”? and the associated webinar recording.

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