AMA Northwest Network Event with a spot of freestyle beatboxing thrown in for good measure

We had our first 2010 Northwest Arts Marketing Association Member Rep event on Tuesday 9th February, arranged by myself and fellow member rep Mike James. Contact, Manchester kindly hosted our event and 27 members (as well as a few non-members) showed up to debate and discuss how to measure the impact of social media.

Baba Israel, Contact's Artistic Director gave a freestyle beatbox introduction to social media marketing. Not to be missed - view my (not great picture quality) video here. I challenge other AMA network reps to top this for an introduction to a networking event!

Claire Will, Head of Marketing and Communications at Contact then formally kicked off the event, presenting her ideas of how to measure the impact of social media marketing both quantitatively and qualitatively. This set the tone for the evening, which also found members going back to the 'why' and 'how' we should be using social media as a tool for communication. This was raised at the recent AMA Digital Marketing Day i.e. although we need to embrace social media and find out how things work, test things, learn from mistakes - we do need to be strategic and understand where our target audiences are operating online.

Claire recommended measuring impact qualitatively through the following ways (taken from her handout). 1. Conversation - in what ways has social media allowed you to have more meaningful dialogue with rather than just a monologue to customers/audiences? What conversations have you been part of through social media that you may not have had the opportunity to do before? 2. Relationships - what new relationships/partnerships have you developed through social media? 3. Advocacy - do you have many influential followers on twitter? (Use the most influential to strike up conversations with, They could become advocate for you). 4. Perception - how are we being talked about? How are we perceived? What lists are we on? How do people refer to us.

We're never going to be able to robustly track the actual number of visitors through the doors because of social media or the WOM it generates. However, as Claire said, we've got to have some kind of benchmarks and measures in place to justify using social media to our teams, boards and funders. Social media analysis tools such as Klout, Social MediaFirehose, ad.ly and Social Mention at least go some way to helping us justify our investment.

A huge thank you to Claire and the team at Contact for hosting our event. Lots of food for thought. If you'd like to host our next event or have ideas for future topics, get in touch.

NYC research trip (museums, galleries and maybe a couple of cocktails)

I've started planning my trip to New York this week. I'm heading across the pond to meet up with Catherine Mailhac, a friend and ex-colleague of mine from Museums Sheffield. Catherine's been awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to go and research education and outreach programmes in Washington, New York and Paris. She'll be meeting lots of museum staff, visiting lots of museums and galleries and will be blogging all her adventures. Her experiences, case studies and ideas will be shared and put into practise back at Museums Sheffield. The lucky peeps.

Sounds like a great trip....and so I've invited myself along for a few days of the New York leg.

I'm going to be looking at two things. Firstly, permanent provision for sign language users within museum and gallery settings. I want to discover some new ideas and compare provision with what's happening here in the UK regarding permanent interpretation for sign language users (whose first language is not English). This is a growing area of interest fuelled by my involvement in the deaf community and my final few months of BSL Level 3.

Secondly, social media. And digital technologies within exhibitions. As part of Stories of the World, a Cultural Olympiad project, I'll be working with young volunteers who will be curating and programming a series of projects and exhibitions in the run up to 2012. Social media and digital technologies will be at the heart of their work. I was hoping to meet up with Shelley Bernstein at the Brooklyn Museum to talk about how they use social media and digital technologies - having read her recent article in Museums Practise (December). Unfortunately she's off to New Zealand to talk about their social media work - unsurprisingly in high demand but I'll see who else I can catch up with.

I'll be blogging and documenting my trip on here, so check back for pictures and commentary.

And there may be the odd cocktail thrown in for good measure. Would be rude not to really.

Social Media Mumblings

Unfortunately I didn't manage to make it to the State of the Arts conference today, arranged by the RSA and ACE. I followed the emerging discussion and debate via #sa10 on twitter. Social media is still blowing my mind - it was almost like being at the conference itself. What a great idea the hashtag is.

I've been spending a lot of this week focusing on social media - especially for Preston Museums Group who run the family friendly Preston Hands on Gang. I've been trying out a couple of useful tools to track Hands on Gang mentions, followers, fans and to generally find out where families are spending time on social media sites. I've revisited a few ideas discussed at the last AMA Digital Marketing Day. I'd definitely recommend trying out Social Mention, Klout and Social Media Firehose (big up to Jim Richardson and DK for the top tips).

I'm still not sure how we can prove that social media (and the time and hours put into it by staff) drives actual visits to non-ticketed museums and galleries. Does market research on site (if it's being conducted at all) really show the impact that social media has on motivating visits? There's plenty of ways to track online behaviour, but how does this convert into an actual visit? It's all very well tweeting and re-tweeting information about an exhibition, performance - whatever, but do they actually then make the decision to go because of this, and at what stage do they make that decision?

One idea at the AMA day was to communicate your offer purely through social media (e.g. twitter), no other channels - and then assess who turns up. Although I'm not a print-precious marketer (although still very partial to a spot of foil blocking), I'm not sure I'm even ready to take that risk just yet. It would be a great experiment though wouldn't it?

We'll be talking about the impact of social media at Contact, Manchester on Tuesday 9th February at the next Northwest AMA Members networking meeting. £5. All welcome (including non-members). Contact me for more information.

Review of 2009

Not quite sure where this year has gone - it's been a busy one that's for sure. With a growing focus on evidencing the impact of what we do (and spend), most of my work in 2009 has unsurprisingly focused on research projects. I've worked on two audience research projects with Arts about Manchester, including the development of a Partnership post with Renaissance Northwest (aimed at making available research go further, and engaging cluster groups of organisations to use research more strategically) and their Dataculture project. I'm looking forward to seeing how the agency develops with its new regional remit - and hopefully my work with them will continue as part of this process. I was also really pleased to be asked to work with the Communities team at National Museums Liverpool on some specific desk research they needed for their refugees and asylum seekers audience development project.

I've also been working over the Pennines this year with Audiences Yorkshire as part of their Ni11 work, as well as developing content and delivering Strategic Marketing seminars for them.

I was invited back to The Whitworth Art Gallery to manage local and regional press for The American Scene, a touring prints exhibition from The British Museum. Then there's been the ongoing social media marketing work for Preston Museums Group and their Hands on Gang family friendly project, and marketing and PR planning for Global Threads, the Northwest's Stories of the World 2012 Cultural Olympiad contribution. Both of these projects continue into next year.

This time last year I was just about to finish my Press Officer freelance contract with Contact and wasn't sure what work would be round the corner. Luckily I've been busier than ever before - and am still loving the flexibility and variety that freelance work offers. I'm looking forward to returning to Contact on the 9th February to run the Arts Marketing Association Northwest Member Meeting - kindly hosted by their new-ish Artistic Director Baba Israel and Head of Marketing Claire Will. It's an informal networking event taking place from 5.30pm onwards - on the 9th we'll be focusing on the impact of social media marketing. If you're interested in coming along get in touch - it's open to non-members as well as members of the AMA. It'll cost you £5 payable on the door, which covers our hosting costs. Refreshments are provided.

I'm also only a few months off completing my British Sign Language Level 3 qualification. Need to start thinking about how/if I can combine this with the business at some point after May. Lots of business planning to do around this...and maybe registration for Level 4.

Well that's a small snapshot of what I've been up to in 2009. Here comes 2010 and hopefully just as busy a year!