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By James Kelly, May 11, 2010

There’s no doubt about it, digital and social media hold great potential for those looking to increase the engagement with their audiences. For those with little experience of the area, the promise is great, and yet without significant experience in the area, it can be difficult to envisage what is involved in building momentum around a blog, or a social media campaign, using Facebook or Twitter.

Emmet Sheerin and Anne O’Gorman from NYCI entered this mentoring process looking for assistance with building an on-line community and social media network. However the very valuable lessons they learnt from the Lucy Campbell, Murne Laffan and the team in RTÉ Publishing was to first concentrate on getting the basics right, and as such Emmet and Anne’s report will provide very informative reading for those;

• considering starting a blog or social media campaign

• looking to optimise their overall presence.

If you are interested in discussing this work with those involved please visit the Arts Ireland group on LinkedIn – if you’re not already a member, it’s free to join (what’s this? find out more here).

to download a pdf of this report, click on this link:NYCI Mentoring Report

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REPORT OF EMMET SHEERIN & ANNE O’GORMAN

Original Plan

Our original aim, when applying for mentoring was to seek support around developing an on-line community and social media network.

As we saw it, this would enable NYCI to facilitate more organisations and practitioners in sharing practice and networking with others in the sector, regardless of geographical location.

Also a more effective presence on-line would also help us to promote specific aspects of our work programme, to highlight opportunities, and to further advocate for youth arts in Ireland.

As such, our specific goals were;

• to create an online discussion forum and blog to enable youth workers and youth arts practitioners to engage with each other, to share practice, and to access relevant youth arts news and resources.

• to exploit the potential of Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to engage with individuals and organisations in the youth / youth arts sector.

As we saw it, the objective of the mentorship would be to help us generate interest and participation around these applications and to develop a strategy for attracting and maintaining engagement with the on-line community.

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The first step – identifying our audience

Our initial meetings with Lucy centred on a critical reflection on our target audience, identifying their needs, and what information/ discussions we wanted to communicate and generate on-line, such as funding, training and supports etc.

This process of reflecting on our target audience and their needs was extremely valuable. Even though organisations engage with their audiences day in day out, it is really useful to make the time and space to step back and think critically about target audience.

We discussed what kind of information we are looking to share: this included networking and information exchange, and the facilitation of discussion around important topics affecting our audience.

In terms of finding new ways to connect with audiences, there was a useful discussion around identifying well known people who we could approach to be champions for youth arts, and who could use social media networks to advocate for the sector. These ‘champions’ would be well known figures who had been engaged in youth arts when they were younger – Aidan Gillen (former member of Dublin Youth Theatre), for example.

photograph by Emmet Sheerin, published courtesy of NYCI

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The way forward – a critical decision

On closer examination of our situation, we began to realise that creating an online community, consisting of a discussion forum and blog, might not be the best use of our resources at this current time. While the technical aspects of creating these applications is realisable (our content management system Drupal is capable of this), the main challenge lies in attracting and maintaining a critical level of engagement.

RTÉ Publishing have considerable experience in this area, and they felt that without a very large amount of traffic to our website, it would take a considerable amount of time and energy to build a discussion forum and blog of the scale which we had hoped. As it stands, NYCI’s youth arts site does have a relatively large amount of traffic given the size of the youth arts sector in Ireland. We would therefore have to invest a great deal of time into attracting a critical mass for the online community to be worthwhile.

We made the significant decision to change the focus of the mentoring, and that we would now focus on ways of attracting greater levels of visitors to the website. Achieving this would mean that we would be in a stronger position to develop the online community at a later stage.

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Social media network

In advance of making the above decision, we spent some time investigating the level of engagement other organisations in the youth/ arts sectors had with their social media networks. It was decided that our social media ambitions, for now, would be best served as part of the broader National Youth Council of Ireland’s social media strategy, and not as a separate, specific youth arts network. This would help maximise our potential audience and allow for greater integration with the other work areas in NYCI.

We did, however, decide to continue plans towards creating a YouTube channel, which we can use to show films made in the youth/ youth arts sector, and highlight best practice in this area.

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Focus on the Website

Before discussing any potential website developments, we took time to reflect on our programme of work, the resources and opportunities we offer the sector, and our strengths as a national organisation. Identifying the range of these “assets” helped us focus on what information and structure would make our website more engaging and attract more traffic.

Some of the key strengths we identified include:

• Optimum domain name (youtharts.ie), which features well in search engine results
• Wealth of publications, manuals and other resources produced by the programme
• Strong and exciting programme of work, which includes youth arts training, professional development opportunities, a funding scheme and an advocacy agenda.
• Wealth of images documented during youth arts trainings
• Professional networks and contacts
• Monthly e-bulletin (Youth Arts News) which has over 1200 subscribers

The main issues in respect of our website were:

- Design

Our website is too text heavy and does not capitalise on the wealth of images and visual documentation at our disposal.

- Applications

Currently, when we show images documenting our work (from trainings etc.) we use flickr to do this. While this is a nice feature to have on this website, it takes traffic away from the site when people click into the application. We should be trying to avoid this, by keeping people on our site.

- E-bulletin

Our e-bulletin Youth Arts News is a very important tool for us to communicate with the sector. We use an application called Mail Chimp to create and send the bulletin. This works fine, except for the fact that we are not drawing people back to our website. All the news is contained in the e-bulletin with no links to our site. [note from Arts Audiences: readers who are interested in the “the digital loop” may be interested in looking at the mentoring report of Marcella Bannon, Director of Droichead Arts Centre].

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photograph by Emmet Sheerin, published courtesy of NYCI

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5 Key Priorities

Out of this process, we came up with the following five main priorities/ practicalities for improving our online presence:

1.Integrated e-bulletin and website

In order to attract more traffic to our website, it is vital that we capitalise on the established success of our e-bulletin Youth Arts News. To do this, we have created a noticeboard section on our website for news. Instead of our e-bulletin containing every bit of information on each news item, it will only contain teasers. Subscribers to the bulletin click on the title for a news item and will be directed straight to the ‘full story’ on our website noticeboard. Not only will this greatly reduce the length of each monthly e-bulletin, it will ensure a greater level of traffic to our website. This new system was piloted on the 2nd April. See an example of our new newsletter by clicking here.

2. Explore the capabilities of our content management system (Drupal)
Instead of using external applications like flickr to display photographs from our programme of work, we need to explore the potential of our content management system to do this. This will help ensure that the traffic on our site remains there and isn’t directed elsewhere.

Having a self contained photo gallery will also enable us to display images of youth arts in action from around the country. We are now considering the possibility of having a ‘Year of Youth Arts’ gallery on our website.

3. Creating a more visually dynamic website
To help us come up with ideas for this, we met with Niamh Collins, Online Producer (RTÉ), and Micheal Lisovskiy, Platform Manager (RTÉ). The key advice was:

• We need a main feature for our homepage. We should ask ourselves, ‘what is a message we want to get across?’ ‘What’s our call to action?’

• We are using too much text to explain who we are and what we do. We should also use images and video to do this.

• Keeping the site updated with regular information is essential. Out-of date resources and articles shouldn’t be on the homepage.

• The text we are using on the site is too small. It makes it hard to read information and is not attractive.

• Need to pay attention to detail and fill the screen with images and applications.

• We should consider creating a campaign page on our site. Campaign should be understood in its broadest sense – a call to engage with our programme of work. It could also be an important tool for our advocacy work.

• Give visitors the opportunity to sign up to our e-bulletin on site.

4. Integrate website maintenance with daily work
Having dedicated time to update the website and manage its content is vital. The website is our calling card and is the first port of call for many people new to our programme of work. Maintaining the website only on an ad hoc basis will lead to the site appearing stagnant and out of date.

5. You Tube Channel
It’s relatively easy to set up a YouTube channel and the upload videos. We can even categorise the videos under different genres/ topics etc. A YouTube channel will keep the traffic away from our site unless we can direct people to it. We should therefore make sure that any video put on the YouTube channel has our web address at the end. We have to ensure that we have consent from groups/ individual’s whose videos are put on our channel. We can’t put up any videos that have copyrighted music.

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In Conclusion

Over the course of the mentoring, our plans changed from working towards developing an online community to a much more realistic plan for strengthening our online presence at its core. Developing and maintaining a strong website, and facilitating increased traffic is essential for any future ambitions to develop forums, blogs etc.

Underlying the mentorship process was a critical and realistic reflection on what we can currently achieve in terms of developing our on-line presence. Such critical reflection, we believe, has proved extremely valuable.

We have a more focused idea around what we practically need to do to develop our website. While the five priorities above are specific to our own plan of work and context, they are nonetheless relevant to other organisations – particularly organisations wishing to strengthen their website as a main calling card for clients.

An action plan was formulated with deliverable and realistic timelines to prioritise the website project. It is envisaged that phase 2 of the project will focus on the Socal Networking priorities including You Tube.

The National Youth Council of Ireland’s Arts Programme would like to thank RTÉ Publishing for their invaluable mentorship and time over the last three months. In particular we would like to thank Lucy Campbell, Muirne Laffan, Niamh Collins and Michael Lisovsky. We would also like to thank James Kelly (Arts Council) for this opportunity and for his support throughout the mentorship process.

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RTÉ Publishing manages five leading brands – RTÉ Guide, RTÉ Aertel, RTÉ.ie, RTÉ player and RTÉ News Now and has built significant multimedia hubs or “mega sites “around RTÉ’s core content areas of News, Sport and Entertainment. Working with RTÉ News, Sport, Television & Radio, RTÉ Publishing creates packages and distributes content on digital platforms to extend the reach of these properties in new markets.

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The National Youth Council of Ireland’s Arts Programme is a partnership approach for promoting and developing youth arts in Ireland. NYCI’s Arts Programme aims specifically to realise the potential of young people through good quality arts practice in the youth service and to develop appropriate policies and activities at local, regional and national level. NYCI’s Arts Programme is funded by the Arts Council and the Youth Affairs Unit of the OMCYA

Youth arts can broadly be defined as, ‘young people taking part voluntarily in creative, cultural or expressive activity outside of the formal education process. It can encompass participation and appreciation, as well as engagement with arts work specifically created by with or for young people’. Arts in Their Lives (NYCI’s Youth Arts Policy 2003-2007)

For more information on youth arts and the work of NYCI’s Arts Programme, please visit www.youtharts.ie

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By James Kelly, March 12, 2010

The Model in Sligo has recently put online the first phase of its new website, in advance of the opening of their new building in April/May. The site promises to be an exciting new departure in an Irish context, however they’re not shouting about it just yet. Some time in development, the site will be fully online over the coming months, and will incorporate key web 2.0. elements in it’s architecture. In order to better understand what elements the site should incorporate The Model has been trying out blogs, facebook, twitter, flickr and youTube during their temporary closure period. In this article Aoife Flynn, who was the Model’s Development Manager through this process, talks about the blog they set up in late April 2008.

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Why The Model Blog?

http://sligomodelblog.wordpress.com

In January 2008 The Model closed for a major redevelopment, which would take 2 years to complete. We recognised early on that one of our most significant challenges during the closure period would be to stay connected with our regular Sligo visitors and those from further afield, who were used to dropping in to The Model whenever they were in town.

We devised an experimental offsite programme which was specifically designed to remain connected with local audiences and to connect with artists and other audiences in new ways, but The Model also functions as a social space, a creative hub, and while we might be able to maintain a connection with the programme visitors through the mounting of offsite exhibitions or touring The Niland Collection, we couldn’t maintain that social connection in this way. The Blog was born as a response to this challenge.

We wanted to re-create something of the feeling of dropping in to The Model and chatting to the Front Desk, picking up on programme info, hearing opinions from curators, linking to interesting artists and projects, feeling you could contribute your opinion and reaction- a Virtual Front Desk.

Web 2.0 and getting to know you….

At this time we were also keen to explore uses of the emerging social media (facebook, flickr etc) and web 2.0. developments to harness a more interactive experience for our visitors. At The Model we are always working to create a more accessible, welcoming experience for all visitors, working to breakdown any “exclusive” or “elitist” barriers that exist for some when considering entering a Gallery. We work hard to have a welcoming Front of House team, and wanted to explore online applications that might extend this welcoming, egalitarian feeling to our visitors. The blog was a way to test out reaction to this idea, and in part to test out how curators and programmers might feel about speaking to our audience in a more informal, conversational manner; which can often present a major challenge to those used to speaking and writing in a more formal art language.

Did it work?

In many ways, yes. The blog was set up using WordPress in April 2008 and by May 2009, a year later, it was attracting 2,400 thousand reads a month. It has maintained an average monthly readership of 2,300 since that time. Interestingly the existence of the blog has not detracted visits from the main Model website rather visits have increased by 30% over the same period.
While the main Model site was down in early 2010 (in advance of launching the new site) the blog views have increased by 25%, as we use it as the organisation’s main online profile. We have also just recently been nominated as one of the best arts and culture blogs in the Irish Blog Awards. We don’t get a lot of commentary on the blog from users, which is something we hope to improve in the new integrated web platform.

Blog v’s Site

The Model draws a distinction between the material we publish on the blog and that which we place on the main website. Using the previous site as an example; The main website existed as a virtual event guide, presenting clear, direct, event-based information for each performance, exhibition or education event, generally no more than a screen in length. The Blog, however, is used as a discussion platform to publish additional artist or project information, updates of projects in progress, or information that is immediate and relevant to a project, but may not form a core part of the project’s output. The blog also allows The Model to share external content easily in the form of links to other articles, photos, film clips, music files, and to post stories that engage people in conversation. Importantly, a more informal voice is used for the articles published on the blog.

For example The Model’s main webpage for the Medium Religion exhibition was relatively standard, containing a curators description of the exhibition, a list of artists, a lead image to match the invite, links to further reading and the connected symposium

While over on the blog if you search for Medium Religion you see a range of articles from notifications about curators’ tours or events, to articles that appeared in the press, sneak previews of the artworks arriving on site and updates on the election unrest in Tehran; arising as one of Medium Religion artists is Iranian and quite rightly decided to stay in Tehran to contribute to the protests rather than travelling back to the Symposium in Sligo. This is an excellent example of the introduction of a current affair, which was relevant to the exhibition, but not necessarily appropriate to place on the main exhibition web page

The blog also allows us to give space to different voices within the organisation, so for example our visual programme assistant Lara writes about a tour in Ballina.
Young Model curator Linda Hayden writes about a trip to Dublin with the young Model group.
Marketing Assistant Denise Rushe on a Josh Ritter gig in October.
Or Young Model member Jason on his experiences of the programme.

The next steps…

For The Model the next steps are to further enhance this interactive experience with our online presence by integrating the blog and our other social networking tools with the main website as an overall web platform. This is currently under development and will allow for a richer experience for regular physical visitors, and those that live further afield and can only physically visit us once a year or less. This new platform will be launched very soon.

If you have any specific questions about any element of this case study, or museum and gallery blogs and online presences in general please email: aoifeflynn@modelart.ie

The Model can also be found online at;

http://www.facebook.com/TheModelSligo The Model’s facebook page
http://www.twitter.com/modelsligo Model on twitter
http://www.flickr.com/photos/modelniland Model on flickr
http://www.youtube.com/user/modelniland Model on YouTube

(elements of this article were first presented at the National Gallery of Ireland symposium 2009)

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By James Kelly, February 23, 2010

Freelance consultant Aoife Flynn of asquared is one of the mentors on our New Media Mentoring scheme. Aoife has very kindly put together the following information for those looking to facebook, and in particular the ‘facebook page’, to build audiences. Even if you think you know facebook (as did I!) what follows is highly informative and well worth a read.

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Facebook is a fantastic resource for businesses on the web. As facebook is about social groups and sharing of experiences and interactions, experience-based businesses are a natural fit, making it particularly suitable for arts organisations. As a web platform, facebook allows you to gather those users that are interested in your work into one place, and then allows you to have a two-way conversation with them, sharing information and content.

There are over 1.2 million Irish users on facebook meaning that 1 in 4 Irish people use this service, and approximately 50% of these users check into their account at least once a day. That’s a potential daily readership of over 500,000 people – significantly higher than the reader/viewership of traditional Irish media outlets. Not least of all that facebook is a free tool, with the potential for an international reach for your organisation and its programmes, so the real question is whether you can afford not to have a presence on facebook.

Page/Profile/Group
In theory you, or your organisation, can have a presence on facebook in three main ways
1) a personal profile
2) a group
3) or a business page

This article will illustrate why a business/fan page is the best option for your organisation.

Personal Accounts/Profiles.
This is the basic facebook account, and if you are already on facebook under your own name then this is the sort of profile that you will have. It displays your personal information and is set up to best represent individuals. From this profile you can become “friends” with other users, post pictures, share links and so on.

A lot of organisations have set up accounts for their businesses as a personal profile. This is actually against facebooks terms and conditions and may case your account to be removed, and in the case of repeat offenders to have your access to facebook restricted. Personal Profiles should only be used to represent individuals.

Not only is this against facebook’s terms, but many users will refuse to “add you as a friend” if your organisation is set up in this way as doing so would give you a high level of access to their personal information. Let’s say Mary attends your events and wants to stay in touch on facebook, if you are set up as a personal profile and she adds Arts Centre X as a friend, You- as Arts Centre X, would potentially be able to see Mary’s friends, her photos, her status updates and so on. Similarly any of the staff members of your organisation, now or in the future, could technically login as Arts Centre X and gain similar access to Mary’s information which might include where she lives, her personal email address, her education information and other very personal info that she would not wish to share with the organisation. No matter how much Mary may like your organisation it is highly likely that she won’t add you as a friend if she knows how facebook works.

Correct business presences on facebook:
Facebook terms and conditions ask that businesses set up either as a Group or a Page. Although they look very similar, and while it is ok to have a group, it is far more advantageous, and more appropriate, for your organisation to have a Page.

Group v’s Pages
Groups are a reasonably acceptable way for you to represent your organisation but, as they are intended for volunteer groups, informal groups, and unofficial representations of an organisation or a person they are not the most professional option.

Groups will allow you to communicate to your fans, and will restrict your access to their personal information, but they are linked into your own personal profile and as such you are personally identified with every post you make. This means that your name and your personal profile picture appears beside any email or status update you make on behalf of the group, and may leave you open to receiving emails from group members, depending on how your own personal account privacy settings are set.

Why set up a page?
There are several compelling reasons
1) Pages are locatable by google or other search engines. They will also display for anyone on the web- you do not need to have a facebook account to view a business page.

2) A Page will allow several individuals to administer it. So your director Lisa, your marketing manger Julie or your receptionist David can, providing they have facebook accounts, be set to administer the page. Anytime Julie or David or Lisa post an update on the page it will appear to come from Arts Centre X, not from Julie or David or Lisa personally. Your organisation’s image appears beside each post, not that of Lisa or David or Julie. So the public will not know who is who, and furthermore the public cannot see who administers a page. This allows for better administration between a group, a more consistent voice for your fans and a depersonalisation of the online space from individuals to the organisation.

3) Users connect with pages by becoming “fans”. Once you reach 25 fans you can set a specific url, or web address for your page. So rather than an unwieldy web address with letters and numbers you can set the page as http://www.facebook.com/ArtsCentreX

For example: http://www.facebook.com/TheModelSligo

If you have a page, and have over 25 fans, but have not already set your specific url go here to do so: http://www.facebook.com/username

4) As the administrator of a page you cannot access a fan’s personal profile- unless they have allowed their profile to be accessed publically. This protects the fan and will make them more comfortable connecting to a page.

5) Pages cannot direct email messages into the inbox of their fans. Rather a page will send an “update” to it’s fans. It looks the same but it is delivered into the less visible “update” box, and fans are unlikely to get notifications that it has been sent. This may seem like a disadvantage, but actually it works to encourage people to become fans as they know they won’t receive lots of emails.

6) Status updates from Pages, unlike those from groups, will appear in the newsfeed of your fans. The newsfeed is what a user sees when they log in to facebook. It is a clickable list of all the recent updates from people and pages that the person follows. As we observed in the introduction about 50% of users check in to their newsfeed every day, and many of these check in several times a day to see what is “new”. This makes the news feed a key way for you to reach your audience.

7) Pages allow you to import information from other social media platforms (blog, flickr account, youtube, twitter etc. ) thus providing you with an easy way to share content with your fans. If you have a blog or twitter feed you can set your page to automatically publish a new blog post/twitter post to your fans without you having to log in to facebook to make it happen.

Pages will give you access to valuable stats on your fans. A business page will tell you if your fans are male or female (by % and numerically) what countries/counties they are from, how often they interact with you etc. This information can be extremely valuable when tracking campaigns to see what methods of communicating work best with your fans.

If you want to set up a page for your organisation click here (read the FAQ’s below before setting up your page).

Click here to read more on Pages from facebook.

FAQ

I don’t have a personal facebook account, can I set up a page for my organisation?*
Yes you can. Facebook will allow you to set up a business account which will give you access to your page and to advertising but not to people’s personal profiles. Click here to see how to do this.

*Although it is possible to do this I would caution against it. If you are going to make the best use of your facebook page you are going to need to know how facebook works, which you can only do if you are a user yourself. How will you design campaigns to appeal to facebook users if you do not know how facebook users behave?

I already have a personal account but I want to set up a business account to keep things separate. Can I?
No. If you already have a personal account it is against facebook rules to set up a second account, business or otherwise. Doing so may cause all of your accounts to be deleted.

Who in my organisation should set up the page?
Ideally someone who is an active facebook user, however- it is important to note that whoever is the original creator of the page is not currently able to sever their relationship with the page without deleting the page entirely. This may change in the future, but this does mean that a more permanent member of staff should be the one to first create the page. Once the page is created you can add any number of admins to manage it.

IMPORTANT NOTE the Name of your page (Arts Centre X) is not changeable once it has been set. i.e. the name that displays on the page will be the one you create on the first screen, so be very careful to chose the correct name for your organisation.

I’ve set up the page and I want to make John, a member of my team, an administrator- how do I do this?
Go to the Page. Click on the words “Edit Page” which are directly below the page picture. This will bring you to the edit screen, scroll down a little and look on the right hand side. You will see a box called “Admins” with your name and image in it. Click on “Add”. From here you can add any other user as long as you are already friends with them. If you are not already friends with John you will have to add him as a friend before you can select him as an admin.

I already have a profile/Group set up for ArtsCentre X, can I convert this profile group into a page?
No, facebook doesn’t currently allow this. It is reasonably easy to move people who are friends of a profile or part of a “group” for ArtsCentreX onto a new page.
The simplest way is to email them with a link (remember to type/paste the whole link including the http:// part) to the new page explaining that you will be closing the group (and why if you like) and asking them to join the new one to stay in touch. It is often advisable to wait until you have your 25 first fans in place, and to have chosen your unique url facebook.com/ArtsCentreX before sending this email, but it’s not crucial to wait for this.
Additionally you can change the status update on the group/profile to say: We are moving ArtsCentreX to a Page and will be closing this group/profile we’d love if you came with us too- just click on this link: (and link here to the page of course)

And finally, you can also change the name of the group, and the info box on the group to say it’s closed. For example see a group that was set up for DJ Donal Dineen here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&ref=ts&gid=5367509854


I have set up my page but I can’t find it when I type the name into the search box on my facebook?
Are you a fan of your own page? You will need to be a fan before the page can be found in this way.

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By James Kelly, January 20, 2010

Interested in a quick and highly informed insight into the world of online ad campaigns?

Technology in the Arts is a US based organisation which, in its own words, “explores the intersection of arts management and online technology“. As well as blogging, twittering and, eh, facebooking, they also podcast, and have an archive of over 60 podcasts looking at a broad range of ideas and initiatives and developments.

In a really informative interview, Erik Gensler e-marketing consultant talks about how he helps his clients (such as New York City Opera, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Carnegie Hall) to use google ads and facebook ads to target audiences successfully.

I found this interview really informative, particularly when Gensler explained just how good a match a facebook ad campaign can be for the arts (all to do with segmentation). I’ve paid into new media seminars, and learnt less. For this lesson, I downloaded the podcast for free, and listened to it while sitting in traffic… the joys of the podcast.

To access the interview click here

http://www.technologyinthearts.org/?p=1052

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By James Kelly, January 13, 2010

Google are now offering free websites to anyone who would like such a thing. They’re by no means the first to offer this, and of course you do have to design it yourself, but they do make it pretty easy for you.

Within 2 hours, I’d put together a basic test site with about 8 pages, with personalised backgrounds etc. If nothing else, I think google sites could be useful as a way of ‘drafting’ a website, before going to a web designer to get the ‘real thing’ made. Anyone who has been through the web design process will know that a huge part of the process is deciding what information goes where.

Here’s google’s intro to their new offer;

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