In the rush to engage and reach out to new audiences, it can be all too easy to forget that one of the overriding goals is to get people to concerts; which means all of the followers, fans, likes and shares in the world aren’t worth much if they don’t help sell tickets. The last thing an arts group needs is to fall victim to the metrics syndrome where you spend more time compiling stats than tracking conversion and performance. And nothing drives this home quite as well as humor.
So remember, engage away but don’t forget that it’s all for naught if you only get eight people to show up for the concert.
Are you following Who’s Minding The Score?, the weekly orchestra comic strip by Paul Dixon that’s part of the Adaptistration Network?
Capacity Interactive (CI) recently published their fourth annual Arts Industry Digital Marketing Benchmark Study (h/t Thomas Cott) and some of their findings are worth…
Hi Drew,
This stuff is hard to measure, as I’ve discovered with my own chamber music series. We have a much broader social media presence now, which has given us much more visibility in general. And it’s amazing how many people get virtually all their information from a group’s Facebook page rather than the institution’s website.
I can’t say it’s directly resulted in a huge ticket increase for us, but we were doing pretty well anyway. What I do value is the increased presence and overall profile, and the opportunity for people to interact with us more directly. It’s always nice to remind people why they should care about what you’re doing rather than just put up concert dates and press reviews.
It seems these sites are really a necessary tool for audience development, but they have to be part of a much larger strategy, and used intelligently.
Hi Drew,
This stuff is hard to measure, as I’ve discovered with my own chamber music series. We have a much broader social media presence now, which has given us much more visibility in general. And it’s amazing how many people get virtually all their information from a group’s Facebook page rather than the institution’s website.
I can’t say it’s directly resulted in a huge ticket increase for us, but we were doing pretty well anyway. What I do value is the increased presence and overall profile, and the opportunity for people to interact with us more directly. It’s always nice to remind people why they should care about what you’re doing rather than just put up concert dates and press reviews.
It seems these sites are really a necessary tool for audience development, but they have to be part of a much larger strategy, and used intelligently.