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The Tangled Web: Social Media in the Arts
                           by Devon V. Smith
                                    June 2011
As a sector t
                As a sector that has historically been both underfunded and
                under-resourced when it comes to any sort of technological shift, arts and
                cultural organizations have struggled with how to effectively adopt and utilize
                the vast (and ever increasing) expanse of social media tools on the internet.

                In 2011, Theatre Bay Area commissioned this wide-ranging study looking at the
                social media habits of 207 diverse nonprofit arts and cultural organizations in
                order to understand how arts and cultural institutions were tackling the problem
                and opportunity of social media. This work was done in conjunction with our
                Leveraging Social Media workshops and granting program, which helps Bay Area
                nonprofits integrate social media into the work of their entire staff.

                The comprehensiveness of this report owes much to the researcher, Devon
                Smith, who spent hours combing the social media space to take accurate tallies
                of the metrics she discusses here. As one of the largest studies of the social
                media habits of nonprofit arts and cultural institutions ever undertaken, this
                report paints a picture of a sector grappling with how best to use all of the new
                tools at its disposal. It shows that we are a sector unafraid of substantial
                experimentation, and that that experimentation has begun to lay a groundwork
                of best practices that stretch across disciplines and geographies.

                Theatre Bay Area is pleased to offer this study to the arts and cultural sector in
                hopes that the benchmarks it provides will be useful in helping individual
                organizations and community-level partners to understand where on the social
                media spectrum they sit and what best practices (and technologies) will be most
                useful and actionable in the years to come.

                Best of luck in this brave new media world.




                Clayton Lord
                Director of Communications and Audience Development, Theatre Bay Area



This report was commissioned as part of Leveraging Social Media, a program generously supported by The
Wallace Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Grants for the Arts/SF Hotel Tax Fund, The San
Francisco Foundation, The Koret Foundation, and the members of Theatre Bay Area.
You can find more research and reports at the DataPoint Research Program page on Theatre Bay Area’s website,
http://www.theatrebayarea.org/datapoint.
Cover Photo: “Wet Spider Web” by Brad Smith from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license.




                                                                                                               2
Summary of Findings
                     The vast majority of arts organizations around the country are using at least one
                     social network to connect with their audience and other constituents, but most
                     continue to struggle with how to do so authentically, towards a useful purpose,
                     and with satisfactory results. Especially in times when spare hands and budgets
                     don’t lay idle, it’s important to carefully consider how much time and effort
                     should be put into everything we do, from long-held traditions to new
                     experiments.

                     This study measured the social media activity of 207 nonprofit organizations
                     across a wide variety of artistic disciplines, budget sizes, geography, and
                     experience with social media. This report focuses on aspects of social media that
                     are easy to measure such as frequency and volume of activity, but, like
                     cultivating a donor, maintaining an ensemble or courting a guest artist, the best
                     results from using social media come from building relationships over time, for
                     which there is no cookie-cutter blueprint.

                          •    The average arts organization studied is active on 3 social networks
                               (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), uploads 66 pieces of content each
                               month to a social network (status update, link, Flickr photo, YouTube
                               video, etc.), and receives 162 user responses in return 1 (Facebook likes,
                               Twitter @mentions, Blog comments, Flickr & YouTube views, Yelp
                               reviews, Foursquare check-ins).
                          •    Facebook is by far most popular social network, but arts organizations are
                               spending considerable effort tweeting as well.
                          •    Facebook Pages that update multiple times a day, use a custom URL, and
                               feature a Welcome tab have more fans and a higher rate of engagement
                               than those who do not.
                          •    Twitter accounts that tweet more than 4x per day, and do not link to
                               their Facebook feed, have more followers and a higher rate of
                               engagement than those who tweet less often, or sync their Facebook
                               posts to Twitter.
                          •    YouTube channel owners that upload new video more than 1x per week
                               have more subscribers and views per video than those who upload less
                               frequently.
                          •    Yelp and Foursquare venues that have been claimed by their owner have
                               more user engagement than those that have not been claimed.
                          •    Most arts organizations using Flickr do so as an archival tool rather than a
                               place for engagement.



1
    Assuming linear user response rate over 2 years on Flickr and YouTube, 1 year on Yelp and Foursquare.


                                                                                                            3
•   Arts organizations blogging on a self-hosted platform, at least twice per
    week, have more subscribers and comments per post than those who
    post less frequently, or on a non-branded URL, but overall there is very
    little engagement.
•   Twenty other social networks were mentioned on arts organization’s
    websites, though none by more than 12% of study participants.




                                                                                4
Study Parameters
Theatre Bay Area commissioned the study of all social media activity from 207
diverse nonprofit arts organizations from January to April of 2011. Sectors
covered in the study include film and music festivals, museums, chorus
organizations, dance companies, theatres, cultural centers, and arts service
organizations. Full list included in the Appendix.

It should be noted that the selection of arts organizations included in this study
wasn’t random, and thus can’t be considered a representative sample of all arts
organizations. 39% are located in the Bay Area, 54% from elsewhere in the US,
and 7% international. While the operating budgets of these arts organizations
range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions, it’s estimated
the average budget is around $1 million. All raw data included in this study can
be downloaded free from http://bit.ly/ArtsBenchmark.

Extraordinary effort went into trying to find all 207 of these arts organizations on
each social network, however it’s possible a small number of accounts were
missed, and thus this study should be considered the minimum level of social
activity. Because the usage rate of social media activity varies across the
different platforms, data was captured over varying lengths of time: Twitter data
from the previous 10 days, Facebook 30 days, blogs 90 days, YouTube and Flickr
one year, Yelp and Foursquare from the lifetime of the venue, with all time
periods ending in April 2011.




                                                                                     5
Social Media
                    Social media is no longer the purview of rich, white, college kids. Recent
                    estimates from the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggest at least 150
                    million, 2 or nearly 50% of US residents were active social media users in January
                                                                          2011. The same study shows
                      Number of Social Networks                           people of color have equal
                     Used by an Arts Organization                         or greater usage of social
                                                                          platforms. And in an August
                                                                          2010 Pew study 40% of
                                                                          internet users age 50+ used
                                                                          social media. 3

                                                                        If arts organizations want to
                                                                        reach their traditional
                                                                        audience, they can find a
                                                                        substantial portion of them
                                                                        on social networks. If they
                                                                        want to build new
                                                                        audiences, it’s nearly certain
                                                                        they must connect with
                                                                        them online. But on which of
                                                                        the many social networks
                                                                        should arts organizations
                                                                        focus their efforts? What are
                                                                        the most effective best
                    practices on each of these social networks? How does an individual arts
                    organization’s use of social media compare to the rest of the field? This study
                    attempts to answer those questions.

                                                     96% of these arts organizations were active on at
                                                     least one social network in April 2011. While a small
      If arts organizations want                     handful of arts organizations were active on up to
      to reach their traditional                     nine different social networks, a plurality engaged in
                                                     the three most active social networks—Facebook,
      audience, they can find a                      Twitter, and YouTube.
      substantial portion of them
      on social networks.



2
    http://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2011/Jan/Social-Media-Trends-Among-Communities-of-Color.aspx
3
    http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Older-Adults-and-Social-Media.aspx


                                                                                                              6
% of Organizations Active
             Within Time Period Studied




Active is defined as an arts organization posting at least one piece of content to
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Flickr, and having claimed at least one of their
venues on Yelp or Foursquare. Facebook is by far the most popular social
network used by [these] arts organizations. Only three social networks are used
by a majority of arts organizations.


 Median Monthly Activity Per Arts Organization




                                                                                     7
Arts organizations were more active on Twitter than any other social network,
averaging one tweet per weekday. They updated Facebook every other day, and
their blog once per week. However Flickr and YouTube uploads tended to be
unevenly distributed throughout the year, in batches of many pieces of content
at one time rather than on a regularly scheduled basis.


                Median Network Size




Arts organizations have on average more than twice as many Facebook fans
(“likes”) as Twitter followers, but no other social network community comes
within 1/20th the size of those two. However, it is important to note that the
community of users interacts quite differently on each of the social networks.
The number of subscribers a YouTube channel has isn’t a good predictor of its
most viewed video. Similarly, the number of users reviewing a Yelp venue will
always be a fraction of those that check-in to that same venue, but unfortunately
the number of Yelp check ins at a venue isn’t public data.




                                                                               8
Community members
     Median User Activity
                                   were eight times more
                                   active commenting on
                                   the Facebook posts made
                                   by arts organizations
                                   than mentioning those
                                   same organizations on
                                   Twitter. On average,
                                   there was virtually no
                                   user activity happening
                                   on the blogs of arts
                                   organizations.
Median User Activity (continued)   The average YouTube
                                   video is viewed 17-times
                                   more often than the
                                   average Flickr photo.




                                                          9
Facebook




                  It’s estimated Facebook will reach 700 million users 4 in May 2011. According to
                  Facebook, the average user logs in daily for 55 minutes, likes two new Pages per
                  month, and has 130 friends.

                                                                           The average arts organization also
                                                                           updates their Facebook page
                                                                           daily, while the most active
                                                                           Facebook page was updated more
                                                                           than sixtimes per day. The size of
                                                                           an arts organizations page in this
                                                                           study ranged from 16 to nearly
                                                                           900,000 fans.




4
 http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/21/facebook-climbs-toward-700-million-users-worldwide-with-steady-growth-in-
the-us/


                                                                                                                  10
Arts organizations that updated
                                                                                     their Page multiple times per
                                                                                     day have 5 more fans and more
                                                                                     engagements per post. And
                                                                                     remember these are
                                                                                     multiplicative relationships;
                                                                                     imagine one month of activity
                                                                                     on a hypothetical
                                                                                     organization’s page, as
                                                                                     illustrated on the next page.




5
  While we can’t establish a causal relationship between frequency of posting and page size or rate of engagement, the positive
linear relationship holds true across all four frequency categories and implies frequency is at least a significant factor in
determining page size and rate of engagement.


                                                                                                                            11
Page A is updated 2x per day  286,800 touch points




Page B is updated 1x per month  890 touch points




                                                      12
Type of Facebook Accounts                                         88% of arts organizations
                                                                                           studied were using a Facebook
                                                                                           Page rather than a Group or
                                                                                           Profile. Facebook recently
                                                                                           declared 6 their intention to
                                                                                           “archive” all Groups created
                                                                                           prior to October 2010
                                                                                           meaning that Groups will lose
                                                                                           all of their current Group
                                                                                           members. Additionally, any
                                                                                           business using a Profile is in
                                                                                           violation of Facebook’s terms
                                                                                           of service, and could face
                                                                                           account termination.

                                                                      Since June 2009, Facebook has
                                                                      encouraged 7 the use of
                                                                      custom, or vanity, URLs that
                                                                      appear as
                    facebook.com/yourname. Even though any Page with more than 30 fans can
                    create a custom URL, this study shows that most, but far from all, arts
                    organizations have taken advantage of this. Those who do tend to have more
                    fans, and a higher rate of engagement 8.

                Median “Likes” Based on Type of Page                                       A significant factor in why arts
                                                                                           organizations with a Profile
                                                                                           have so many fans is likely
                                                                                           because these organizations
                                                                                           have been using Facebook
                                                                                           since before 2007 when Pages
                                                                                           were first launched.




6
  http://www.allfacebook.com/news-flash-the-end-is-near-for-old-facebook-group-2011-05
7
  http://www.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130
8
  Though again this isn’t necessarily a causal relationship. Arts organization aware of this best practice are likely to be using
other best practices as well.


                                                                                                                                    13
By default, Facebook users who
          Median Comments/Posts Based on                                          haven’t yet “liked” a Page land on its
                   Type of Page                                                   Wall, however Page administrators
                                                                                  have the ability to change that first
                                                                                  page a new user sees to any of the
                                                                                  Page’s tabs, including a custom built
                                                                                  “Welcome” tab (aka Landing Page).

                                                                                  Results from this study show that
                                                                                  there is no difference in median
                                                                                  “likes” for pages that default to tabs
                                                                                  other than the wall, except in cases
                                                                                  where they’ve created a Landing Page,
                                                                                  where those Pages tend to have twice
                                                                                  as many fans 9.
        Median “Likes” Based on Landing Site
                                                                                  An example of an outstanding Landing
                                                                                  Page is the Yerba Buena Center for the
                                                                                  Arts on the next page.




9
    Yet again, this doesn’t imply causation, and that’s the last time I’ll remind you that no finding in this study does.


                                                                                                                            14
15
Twitter
              An accurate count of active Twitter users is hard to come by, but recent reports
              show anywhere from 20 million to 200 million worldwide, 1/3 of that in the US. 10
              Twitter claims it has over 200 million registered accounts 11 as of April 2011, but
              Twitter tracking service Twopcharts speculates only half of those users have ever
              sent a tweet. 12
                                           From April 2011 Business Insider, Josh Elman,
                                           Twitter’s product lead in charge of user retention
     Many arts organizations               told AllThingsD, “his team has identified an ‘aha
     value Twitter for being               moment’ when a casual user turns into an ‘active
                                           user.’ That moment happens when users follow 30
     able to reach an audience             accounts, and when 1/3 of the people they follow
     beyond typical ticket                 also follow them back.” Our sources show that there
     buyers.                               are 21 million accounts on Twitter following more
                                           than 32 accounts. Some subset of these accounts are
                                           also being followed by 10+ accounts.”

                   At nearly five years old, and a potentially active user base of under ten million
                   stateside, it’s important to understand who is using Twitter, and why. A
                   December 2010 Pew Internet study found 13 that Hispanic and African American
                   internet users were twice as likely as their white peers to use Twitter, 14 and one
                   in three Twitter users in the study checked Twitter at least daily to read tweets.

                   However, anecdotal evidence suggests that many arts organizations value
                   Twitter for being able to reach an audience beyond typical ticket buyers. From
                   developing relationships with local journalists, to networking with colleagues
                   from across the country, to staying in touch with grant-makers, to reaching new
                   audiences, Twitter has become the place to find, and get found by, important
                   constituents.

                   Unlike Facebook, successfully utilizing Twitter requires learning:
                      • A new language of nonsense-sounding words (see: retweet, hashtags
                          shortlinks).
                      • A confusing set of technical protocols (where does the hashtag go? What
                          happens when you begin a tweet with an ‘@’? How do I tweet a photo?
                          What’s an auto-DM? Why would I follow a list instead of a user?).


10
   http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=78597
11
   http://business.twitter.com/basics/what-is-twitter
12
   http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/active-twitter-users_b9205
13
   http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Twitter-Update-2010/Findings.aspx
14
   http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/05/twitter-african-americans-hargittai.html is a fascinating study
about why that might be.


                                                                                                                        16
•   How to find, and be found by, the connections you want to make (from
       third party tools like Listorious, to joining hashtag chats, to the
       importance of keywords in your bio, to #FollowFriday, to an @mention in
       your email signature).
   •   How to think in 140 characters, how to respond to in real time, and what
       exactly to do with what you learn in the stream.




The average arts organization is tweeting once per day and has 726 followers,
though around one in five haven’t tweeted in months, and have fewer than 100
followers.

The arts organization in this study with the largest Twitter following had less
than 200,000 followers, and were tweeting more than 20x per day.




                                                                                  17
As with nearly all social
                                                                         media activity, posting
                                                                         more often is highly
                                                                         correlated with having a
                                                                         larger and more engaged
                                                                         online audience. It
                                                                         appears that there’s very
                                                                         little difference between
                                                                         tweeting once per week,
                                                                         and once per day.

                                                                         There is however an
                                                                         incredible change in the
                                                                         number of followers, and
                                                                         their engagement rate,
                                                                         between an arts
                                                                         organization that tweets
                                                                         three times per day, and
                                                                         one that tweets five times
                                                                         per day. Arts organizations
                                                                         tweeting that often are
                                                                         likely to be responding to
                                                                         their followers, taking part
                                                                         in industry-wide
                                                                         conversations online,
                                                                         sharing links to websites
                                                                         other than their own, and
                                                                         reserving very few of their
                                                                         tweets for self-promotion.

                                                                           Measuring one’s influence
                                                                           on Twitter is a bit of a
                                                                           rabbit hole. Many begin
                                                                           with simply counting the
                                                                           number of followers one
                                                                           has—the more the better.
                    Klout 15 gets more scientific, attempting to measure true reach, amplification
                    probability, and network influence. PeerIndex 16 gets complex with authority,
                    topic resonance, audience, activity, and realness.




15
     http://klout.com/kscore
16
     http://www.peerindex.net/help/scores


                                                                                                  18
This study looks at a one-dimensional metric—the number
                       of “lists” that followers have added an arts organization to,
                       as a percentage of those followers. This metric was chosen
                       because there’s very little an arts organization can do to
                       game the system of lists, and it’s a simple relationship to
                       understand.

                      In the graph above, this ratio holds steady at seven
                      percent, a number remarkably similar to previous studies
                      by the author. A green dot falling far above the line shows
                      that an arts organization has been added to more lists than
                      their like-size peers, implying a measure of influence. What
                      those lists are named, the other Twitter users on that list,
                      and who follows the list, provide a more granular and rich
                      insight into the idea of influence.

                      One of the cardinal sins of social media is “faking it.” As the
                      previous sections of this report have hopefully made clear,
                      Facebook and Twitter are two quite different social media
platforms—different kinds of interactions, different audiences, different
vocabulary, and different user expectations. Nonetheless, one in three arts
organizations studied has linked their Facebook page to their Twitter account.
These organizations tend to have few followers, and less engagement than their
peers who are more authentically tweeting.


                                                                                  19
YouTube
                     In May 2011, YouTube turned six years old, and released the following
                     statistics: 17
                         • More than 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute
                         • YouTube users watch more than 3 billion videos per day

                                                  In February 2011, it was estimated YouTube had 490
                                                  million unique users per month worldwide, the average
     In February 2011,                            user visits the site 14x per month, and spends an average
     YouTube had 490 million                      of 25 minutes per visit. 18
     unique users per month                  Owned by Google, YouTube videos have many of the
     worldwide.                              same search ranking challenges as webpages, though a
                                             significant minority of arts organizations do not use video
                                             descriptions, keyword tags, or categories. While some
                     YouTube users subscribe to channels, previous research by the author suggests
                     the vast majority of views of arts organizations’ videos come from related videos,
                     keyword searches, or from links/embeds on other sites.

                                                                                 38% of arts organizations using
                                                                                 YouTube uploaded a new video
                                                                                 at least monthly, while the
                                                                                 most active uploaded 1.5 new
                                                                                 videos per day. The average
                                                                                 arts organization had fewer
                                                                                 than 50 subscribers, while the
                                                                                 most popular had over 209,000
                                                                                 subscribers, and more than 63
                                                                                 million collective views.




17
     http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/05/thanks-youtube-community-for-two-big.html
18
     http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/02/04/facebook-youtube-our-collective-time-sinks-stats/


                                                                                                              20
The frequency with
                                                           which an arts
                                                           organization uploaded
                                                           new videos to YouTube
                                                           has a distinctly non-
                                                           linear relationship to
                                                           how popular those
                                                           videos are on YouTube.
                                                           Based on the above
                                                           data, it seems as if arts
                                                           organizations would do
                                                           well to pursue one of
                                                           two strategies to
                                                           maximize their
                                                           efficiency: post just a
                                                           few videos each year
                                                           (with the assumption
                                                           that the few videos
                                                           they do post are of
                                                           high quality), or create
                                                           enough new content to
                                                           be able to post several
                                                           videos each week. If an
arts organization is seeking a committed YouTube user base (those willing to
subscribe to their channel), they must pursue the latter strategy.




                                                                                 21
Yelp
                Location-based social networks are those where users engage because of a
                physical location. Most include the option to “check in” to a venue, and share
                                          that information with friends using the same network,
                                          or to share the check in out to Facebook and Twitter,
     The average arts                     and many include the opportunity to review the merits
                                          of that venue. According to a November 2010 study by
     organization has eight 4.5-
                                          Pew Internet, four percent of online American’s use
     star reviews on Yelp. Only           location based services. 19
     5% of venues have less
     than a 4-star average.                   At nearly seven years old, Yelp is by far the oldest of
                                              the location based social networks, although it exists in
                                              just 8 countries. In February 2011, Yelp CFO Vlado
                     Herman discussed Yelp’s recent user statistics: 20
                        • 45 million unique visitors in January 2011
                        • 35% of user activity is from a mobile device
                        • 16 million total reviews
                        • Local entertainment constitutes 10% of reviews

                                                                            The average arts organization has
                                                                            eight 4.5-star reviews. While venues
                                                                            with more reviews had on average
                                                                            fewer stars, only five percent of
                                                                            venues had less than a 4-star average,
                                                                            implying that this quality ranking isn’t
                                                                            a differentiating factor from
                                                                            competitors. Yelp search rankings
                                                                            seem to prioritize number of reviews
                                                                            over quality of reviews, and this study
                                                                            shows that arts organizations with
                                                                            venues that have been claimed by
                                                                            their owner have 4x more reviews
                                                                            than their peers.




19
     http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Location-based-services.aspx
20
     http://mashable.com/2011/02/16/yelp-growth/


                                                                                                                 22
Flickr
                                                                By September 2010, Flickr users had
                                                                uploaded a total of five billion photos to
                                                                the site (compared to six billion photos
                                                                uploaded to Facebook every month 21).
                                                                More than 20 million visitors 22 go to
                                                                Flickr.com every month, and many
                                                                consider themselves “photographers.”
                                                                Flickr faces stiff competition in the
                                                                photo-based social network space in
                                                                2011—Instagram is barely 1 year old and
                                                                already has over four million users, 23
                                                                Color is two months old and quickly
                                                                raised $41 million in venture capital
                                                                based on its innovative location-based
                                                                social graph.

                                                                Arts organizations are by and large using
                                                                Flickr as a repository for archival photos.
                                                                On average, they upload less than 100
                                                                photos per year, often in just one or two
                                                                batches (rather than spread out evenly
                                                                every month). The most active Flickr
                                                                user among arts organizations studied
                                                                uploaded 3,500 photos in the past year,
                                                                and had a single photo that had been
                                                                viewed more than 4,000 times.

                                                                Most arts organizations have zero Flickr
                                                                contacts, and belong to zero Flickr
                                                                groups. A small handful of arts
                                                                organizations are hosting Flickr groups
                                                                for fan photos, curating digital
                                                                photographs from recognized (and
                                                                unrecognized) artists, or digitizing their
                                                                collections.




21
   http://mashable.com/2011/02/14/facebook-photo-infographic/
22
   http://siteanalytics.compete.com/flickr.com/
23
   http://mashable.com/2011/05/26/instagram-likes-comments/


                                                                                                        23
Blogging
                                                   Blogging is often considered the oldest form of social
                                                   media, yet there are estimated to be just 152 million
 Blogging provides frequent,                       active blogs across the web. 24 Though with the blurring
 keyword-rich content to an                        of lines between traditional media moving online, and
                                                   bloggers becoming more mainstream, it’s nearly
 arts organization’s website,                      impossible to count how many people read or write
 and can provide an archive                        “blogs.”
 of information and news.
                                            Wordpress, the second largest blogging platform
                                            behind Google’s Blogger, powers about 13% of all
                   websites, and shows stats for the week of May 15, 2011 of: three million blog
                   posts had a total of 650 million pageviews. 25 A February 2011 article from
                   AllThingsD mentioned Wordpress domains have 517 million unique visitors per
                   month. 26

                                                         Micro-blogging platforms such as Tumblr and
           Blogging Frequency                            Posterous continue to gain popularity, often
                                                         centered around viral internet memes like “texts
                                                         from last night,” “awkward family photos,” and
                                                         “stuff hipsters hate.” Press darling Tumblr hosts 20
                                                         million blogs receiving seven billion combined
                                                         global monthly pageviews as of May 2011. 27

                                                The reason an organization chooses to blog can
                                                extend beyond generating pageviews or comments.
                                                Blogging’s role in Search Engine Optimization
                                                provides frequent, keyword-rich content to an arts
                                                organization’s website. It can provide a historical
                                                archive of information and a place for permanent
                                                links to important news or documents. It is also an
                   opportunity for staff members to express themselves. None of those reasons are
                   captured in the following data.

                   Just over one in four arts organizations studied actively blogged in the past three
                   months. The average arts blog posted an update one time per week, has seven
                   Google Reader subscribers, and received zero comments per post. The most
                   active posted more than one time per day, averaged two comments per post,
                   and had nearly 350 Google Reader subscribers.

24
   http://mashable.com/2011/01/25/internet-size-infographic/
25
   http://en.wordpress.com/stats/
26
   http://allthingsd.com/20110216/posterous-goes-bare-shows-us-all-its-stats/
27
   http://www.tumblr.com/about


                                                                                                           24
A relatively small percentage of
                                                                                   the internet population uses RSS
                                                                                   (real simple syndication) to
                                                                                   subscribe to a blog. Of those, it’s
                                                                                   estimated that Google Reader has
                                                                                   approximately 50% market share
                                                                                   of RSS readers. 28 Blog readership
                                                                                   statistics are one of the few non-
                                                                                   public metrics of social media, but
                                                                                   Google Reader provides the
                                                                                   number of Google Reader RSS
                                                                                   subscribers to any blog.

                                                                                   While this graph represents are
                                                                                   only a small percentage of the true
                                                                                   readership of arts organizations’
                                                                                   blogs, it’s clear that most arts
                                                                                   blogs have very low engagement,
                                                                                   and very low regular readership.




28
     Based on author’s personal knowledge of Feedburner statistics across a small but wide variety of blogs


                                                                                                                    25
Frequency of blogging had a small but positive correlation with the number of
Google Reader subscribers. Blogs with over 50 subscribers posted no less than
twice a week.




Arts organizations have a choice whether to host their blog on their own website
(often choosing URLs such as blog.yourwebsite.com or yourwebsite.com/blog) or
on a blog hosting service such as yourwebsite.wordpress.com. Those with a self-
hosted blog tend to post more often, have more subscribers, and receive more
comments per post.




                                                                                26
Foursquare
                     Foursquare is the smallest of the four big location-based services (including Yelp,
                     Facebook Places, and Google Places), but has the most opportunities for arts
                     organizations to engage with users. It’s two years old, has nine million users, 29
                                                               who are active in 200 countries, with
                                                               90% of activity happening on a mobile
                                                               device.

                                                                       Seventeen percent of arts organizations
                                                                       studied had claimed their venue on
                                                                       Foursquare, meaning they formally
                                                                       notified Foursquare that they owned
                                                                       that particular location, and thus had
                                                                       the opportunity to collect analytics
                                                                       about their users and offer special
                                                                       discounts to those users.

                                                                       On average, 31 people had checked-in
                                                                       to an arts organization’s venue, two
                                                                       times each. The most active venue had
                                                                       almost 29,000 check-ins, and users left
                                                                       more than 100 tips about the venue.
                                                                       Popular tips included recommendations
                                                                       about specific exhibits, special
                                                                       discounts, tasty concessions items, and
                                                                       the best times of the week to beat the
                                                                       crowds.

                                                                       Sixteen percent of claimed venues were
                                                                       offering a special to their users at the
                                                                       time of the study. There was no
                                                                       statistically significant difference in the
                                                                       number of check-ins or unique visitors
                                                                       for those venues offering a special, but
                                                                       there was for those venues that had
                                                                       been claimed. A claimed venue had
                                                                       three times more activity than an
                                                                       unclaimed venue.




29
     http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/12/foursquare-sf-hires-hr-manager-morgan-missen-is-closing-in-on-a-new-soma-office/


                                                                                                                         27
Other Social Networks
Many other social networks were mentioned on arts organizations websites.
MySpace icons were linked to on twelve percent of arts organization
homepages, even though Compete puts the site’s traffic at just 30 million visitors
per month, and based on current trends will have zero visitors by the end of
2011. Other social networks of note include professional networking service
LinkedIn, book marking tool Delicious, information service Wikipedia, and several
different fundraising platforms.

Noticeably absent from this list of other social networks were currently popular
platforms such as Q&A site Quora, photography network Instagram,
microblogging platform Tumblr, presentation service SlideShare, or artist social
networks like ArtLog.




                                                                               28
Appendix

Companies Reviewed
18th Street Art Center                    Creative Clay
A.R.T./New York                           Creative Growth
Adventure Theatre                         CreativeTime
African American Arts & Culture Complex   Creativity Explored
Alliance for Arts                         Cultural Development Corporation of DC
Alonzo King Lines Ballet                  Dallas Children's Theatre
Americans for the Arts                    Dancers' Group
Anna Crucis Women's Choir                 Dancing Wheels
Arthouse at the Jones Center              David Dorfman Dance
Arts and Services for Disabled Inc        DC Short Film Festival
Arts Boston                               Destiny Arts
Arts Council Silicon Valley               di Rosa
Arts Orange County                        Diablo Ballet
Arts Project Australia                    Diavolo
AS220                                     Discovery Theater
Asian Improv Arts                         DiverseWorks
Atlanta Jewish Film Festival              Djerassi Resident Artists Program
Austin Creative Alliance                  Electric Works
Australian Dance Theatre                  Emerald City Theatre
AXIS Dance                                Evidence Dance Company
Barrel of Monkeys                         First Stage
Bay Area Children's Theatre               Folsom Street Fair
Bay Area Men's Symphony                   Fountain Gallery
Bay Area Video Coalition                  Fractured Atlas
Berkeley Art Center                       Frameline
Bill T Jones                              Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
Boston Gay Men's Chorus                   Full Radius Dance
Bric Arts                                 Gallery 16
Bumbershoot                               Gay Men's Chorus Los Angeles
Candoco                                   Gay Men's Chorus of Washington DC
Center for Asian American Media           Golden Gate Men's Chorus
Center for Dance in the West              Grand Performances
Chanticleer                               Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
Children's Theatre                        Hawaii Theatre for Youth
Children's Theatre of Charlotte           Headlands
Children's Theatre of San Francisco       Heartland Men's Chorus
Childs Play                               HERE Arts Center
Chitresh Das Dance Company                Hewbrew University of Jerusalem
Choral Arts                               Hyde Park Arts Center
Chorus America                            Imagination Stage
City Parks Summer Stage                   Indefinite Arts Society
Company Ballet                            Intermedia Arts
Coterie Theatre                           Intersection for the Arts
CounterPulse                              Intuit: Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art


                                                                                          29
Israel Film Center                         Real Art Ways
ITVS                                       Redlands Bowl
Janet Pomeroy Center                       Repertory Dance Theatre
Japanese Cultural Community Center         Resounding Harmony
Jewcy                                      Richmond Art Center
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco   Ritual Project
Jewish Music Festival                      Robert Moses Kin
Joe Goode Performance Group                Root Division
Kala Art Institute                         Roundhouse
Kearny Street Workshop                     Rude Mechanicals
La Pena                                    San Francisco AIDS Foundation
LA Stage Alliance                          San Francisco Center for the Book
League of Chicago Theatres                 San Francisco Film Society
Lesbian & Gay Chorus of San Francisco      San Francisco International Arts Festival
Levitt Pavilion Pasadena                   San Francisco Jazz
lincoln center                             San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Liss Fain Dance                            San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Liz Lerman Dance Exchange                  San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art
london gay men's chorus                    San Jose Jazz
Luminato                                   Sean Curran
Luna Dance Institute                       Seattle Children's Theatre
Malonga Center                             Seattle Men's Chorus
manilatown Heritage Foundation             SF CameraWork
Margaret Jenkins Dance Center              SFCAT Carnaval
Marie Chouinard                            Shen Wei Dance
Mark Morris Dance Group                    Showup.com
Mattress Factory                           Sojourn Theatre
Mill Valley Film Festival                  SOM Arts
Mission Cultural Center                    Southern Exposure
Missoula Children's Theatre                Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
Montalvo Arts Center                       St Ann's Warehouse
Monterey Jazz Festival                     Stage One
Museum of Craft and Folk Art               Stephen Petronio
Nashville Children's Theatre               Stern Grove Festival
National Endowment for the Arts            Stop Gap
Needles and Pens                           Straight No Chaser
New York City Gay Men's Chorus             STREB
Niad Art Center                            Susan Marshall
Other Israel Film Festival                 SXSW
Outfest                                    TED
Outside Lands                              The Black Rep
Parsons Dance                              The Children's Theatre
Philadelphia Cultural Alliance             The Crucible
Pittsburgh Arts Council                    The Jewish Theatre
Power to the Peaceful Festival             The Lab
PS 122                                     The Paper Bag Players
Pure Vision Arts                           The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus
Ravinia Festival                           Theatre Bay Area
Rayko Photo Center                         Theatre Communications Group



                                                                                       30
Theatre Development Fund                   Vocal Essence
Theatre Puget Sound                        VSA Hawaii
Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts   VSA North Fourth
Toronto Jewish Film Festival               Winnipeg Folk Festival
Treasure Island Festival                   Wolf Trap Foundation
Trisha Brown Company                       World Arts West
Turtle Creek Chorale                       Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus               Yerba Buena Gardens Festival
UC Berkeley Art Museum                     Youngstown Cultural Arts Center
UK Jewish Film Festival
Urban Bush Women
Visionaries and Voices


About Devon V. Smith
Devon Smith is currently the Director of Social Media for Threespot, a digital
engagement agency in Washington, DC primarily working with nonprofit and
governmental clients. Prior to this, she worked for nonprofit organizations across
the country including Actors Theatre of Louisville, Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, Mary Gates Foundation, Peter Kyle Dance, Roundabout Theatre
Company, World Science Festival, and Yale Repertory Theatre. She holds an MBA
and an MFA from Yale University, and a BBA and a BA from the University of
Washington. More social media research and reports can be found on her blog,
www.24UsableHours.com.

About Theatre Bay Area
As the largest regional arts service organization in the country, Theatre Bay Area
works to unite, strengthen, promote and advance the theatre community in the
San Francisco Bay Area, working on behalf of our conviction that the performing
arts are an essential public good, critical to a healthy and truly democratic
society, and invaluable as a source of personal enrichment and growth. Through
education, research, audience development, support and advocacy programs,
Theatre Bay Area strives to make the Bay Area’s theatre and dance communities
as strong and sustainable as possible. More information at
www.theatrebayarea.org.




                                                                                31

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The Tangled Web: Social Media and the Arts by Devon Smith, commissioned by Theatre Bay Area

  • 1. The Tangled Web: Social Media in the Arts by Devon V. Smith June 2011
  • 2. As a sector t As a sector that has historically been both underfunded and under-resourced when it comes to any sort of technological shift, arts and cultural organizations have struggled with how to effectively adopt and utilize the vast (and ever increasing) expanse of social media tools on the internet. In 2011, Theatre Bay Area commissioned this wide-ranging study looking at the social media habits of 207 diverse nonprofit arts and cultural organizations in order to understand how arts and cultural institutions were tackling the problem and opportunity of social media. This work was done in conjunction with our Leveraging Social Media workshops and granting program, which helps Bay Area nonprofits integrate social media into the work of their entire staff. The comprehensiveness of this report owes much to the researcher, Devon Smith, who spent hours combing the social media space to take accurate tallies of the metrics she discusses here. As one of the largest studies of the social media habits of nonprofit arts and cultural institutions ever undertaken, this report paints a picture of a sector grappling with how best to use all of the new tools at its disposal. It shows that we are a sector unafraid of substantial experimentation, and that that experimentation has begun to lay a groundwork of best practices that stretch across disciplines and geographies. Theatre Bay Area is pleased to offer this study to the arts and cultural sector in hopes that the benchmarks it provides will be useful in helping individual organizations and community-level partners to understand where on the social media spectrum they sit and what best practices (and technologies) will be most useful and actionable in the years to come. Best of luck in this brave new media world. Clayton Lord Director of Communications and Audience Development, Theatre Bay Area This report was commissioned as part of Leveraging Social Media, a program generously supported by The Wallace Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Grants for the Arts/SF Hotel Tax Fund, The San Francisco Foundation, The Koret Foundation, and the members of Theatre Bay Area. You can find more research and reports at the DataPoint Research Program page on Theatre Bay Area’s website, http://www.theatrebayarea.org/datapoint. Cover Photo: “Wet Spider Web” by Brad Smith from Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license. 2
  • 3. Summary of Findings The vast majority of arts organizations around the country are using at least one social network to connect with their audience and other constituents, but most continue to struggle with how to do so authentically, towards a useful purpose, and with satisfactory results. Especially in times when spare hands and budgets don’t lay idle, it’s important to carefully consider how much time and effort should be put into everything we do, from long-held traditions to new experiments. This study measured the social media activity of 207 nonprofit organizations across a wide variety of artistic disciplines, budget sizes, geography, and experience with social media. This report focuses on aspects of social media that are easy to measure such as frequency and volume of activity, but, like cultivating a donor, maintaining an ensemble or courting a guest artist, the best results from using social media come from building relationships over time, for which there is no cookie-cutter blueprint. • The average arts organization studied is active on 3 social networks (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), uploads 66 pieces of content each month to a social network (status update, link, Flickr photo, YouTube video, etc.), and receives 162 user responses in return 1 (Facebook likes, Twitter @mentions, Blog comments, Flickr & YouTube views, Yelp reviews, Foursquare check-ins). • Facebook is by far most popular social network, but arts organizations are spending considerable effort tweeting as well. • Facebook Pages that update multiple times a day, use a custom URL, and feature a Welcome tab have more fans and a higher rate of engagement than those who do not. • Twitter accounts that tweet more than 4x per day, and do not link to their Facebook feed, have more followers and a higher rate of engagement than those who tweet less often, or sync their Facebook posts to Twitter. • YouTube channel owners that upload new video more than 1x per week have more subscribers and views per video than those who upload less frequently. • Yelp and Foursquare venues that have been claimed by their owner have more user engagement than those that have not been claimed. • Most arts organizations using Flickr do so as an archival tool rather than a place for engagement. 1 Assuming linear user response rate over 2 years on Flickr and YouTube, 1 year on Yelp and Foursquare. 3
  • 4. Arts organizations blogging on a self-hosted platform, at least twice per week, have more subscribers and comments per post than those who post less frequently, or on a non-branded URL, but overall there is very little engagement. • Twenty other social networks were mentioned on arts organization’s websites, though none by more than 12% of study participants. 4
  • 5. Study Parameters Theatre Bay Area commissioned the study of all social media activity from 207 diverse nonprofit arts organizations from January to April of 2011. Sectors covered in the study include film and music festivals, museums, chorus organizations, dance companies, theatres, cultural centers, and arts service organizations. Full list included in the Appendix. It should be noted that the selection of arts organizations included in this study wasn’t random, and thus can’t be considered a representative sample of all arts organizations. 39% are located in the Bay Area, 54% from elsewhere in the US, and 7% international. While the operating budgets of these arts organizations range from hundreds of thousands of dollars to tens of millions, it’s estimated the average budget is around $1 million. All raw data included in this study can be downloaded free from http://bit.ly/ArtsBenchmark. Extraordinary effort went into trying to find all 207 of these arts organizations on each social network, however it’s possible a small number of accounts were missed, and thus this study should be considered the minimum level of social activity. Because the usage rate of social media activity varies across the different platforms, data was captured over varying lengths of time: Twitter data from the previous 10 days, Facebook 30 days, blogs 90 days, YouTube and Flickr one year, Yelp and Foursquare from the lifetime of the venue, with all time periods ending in April 2011. 5
  • 6. Social Media Social media is no longer the purview of rich, white, college kids. Recent estimates from the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggest at least 150 million, 2 or nearly 50% of US residents were active social media users in January 2011. The same study shows Number of Social Networks people of color have equal Used by an Arts Organization or greater usage of social platforms. And in an August 2010 Pew study 40% of internet users age 50+ used social media. 3 If arts organizations want to reach their traditional audience, they can find a substantial portion of them on social networks. If they want to build new audiences, it’s nearly certain they must connect with them online. But on which of the many social networks should arts organizations focus their efforts? What are the most effective best practices on each of these social networks? How does an individual arts organization’s use of social media compare to the rest of the field? This study attempts to answer those questions. 96% of these arts organizations were active on at least one social network in April 2011. While a small If arts organizations want handful of arts organizations were active on up to to reach their traditional nine different social networks, a plurality engaged in the three most active social networks—Facebook, audience, they can find a Twitter, and YouTube. substantial portion of them on social networks. 2 http://www.pewinternet.org/Presentations/2011/Jan/Social-Media-Trends-Among-Communities-of-Color.aspx 3 http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Older-Adults-and-Social-Media.aspx 6
  • 7. % of Organizations Active Within Time Period Studied Active is defined as an arts organization posting at least one piece of content to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, or Flickr, and having claimed at least one of their venues on Yelp or Foursquare. Facebook is by far the most popular social network used by [these] arts organizations. Only three social networks are used by a majority of arts organizations. Median Monthly Activity Per Arts Organization 7
  • 8. Arts organizations were more active on Twitter than any other social network, averaging one tweet per weekday. They updated Facebook every other day, and their blog once per week. However Flickr and YouTube uploads tended to be unevenly distributed throughout the year, in batches of many pieces of content at one time rather than on a regularly scheduled basis. Median Network Size Arts organizations have on average more than twice as many Facebook fans (“likes”) as Twitter followers, but no other social network community comes within 1/20th the size of those two. However, it is important to note that the community of users interacts quite differently on each of the social networks. The number of subscribers a YouTube channel has isn’t a good predictor of its most viewed video. Similarly, the number of users reviewing a Yelp venue will always be a fraction of those that check-in to that same venue, but unfortunately the number of Yelp check ins at a venue isn’t public data. 8
  • 9. Community members Median User Activity were eight times more active commenting on the Facebook posts made by arts organizations than mentioning those same organizations on Twitter. On average, there was virtually no user activity happening on the blogs of arts organizations. Median User Activity (continued) The average YouTube video is viewed 17-times more often than the average Flickr photo. 9
  • 10. Facebook It’s estimated Facebook will reach 700 million users 4 in May 2011. According to Facebook, the average user logs in daily for 55 minutes, likes two new Pages per month, and has 130 friends. The average arts organization also updates their Facebook page daily, while the most active Facebook page was updated more than sixtimes per day. The size of an arts organizations page in this study ranged from 16 to nearly 900,000 fans. 4 http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/04/21/facebook-climbs-toward-700-million-users-worldwide-with-steady-growth-in- the-us/ 10
  • 11. Arts organizations that updated their Page multiple times per day have 5 more fans and more engagements per post. And remember these are multiplicative relationships; imagine one month of activity on a hypothetical organization’s page, as illustrated on the next page. 5 While we can’t establish a causal relationship between frequency of posting and page size or rate of engagement, the positive linear relationship holds true across all four frequency categories and implies frequency is at least a significant factor in determining page size and rate of engagement. 11
  • 12. Page A is updated 2x per day  286,800 touch points Page B is updated 1x per month  890 touch points 12
  • 13. Type of Facebook Accounts 88% of arts organizations studied were using a Facebook Page rather than a Group or Profile. Facebook recently declared 6 their intention to “archive” all Groups created prior to October 2010 meaning that Groups will lose all of their current Group members. Additionally, any business using a Profile is in violation of Facebook’s terms of service, and could face account termination. Since June 2009, Facebook has encouraged 7 the use of custom, or vanity, URLs that appear as facebook.com/yourname. Even though any Page with more than 30 fans can create a custom URL, this study shows that most, but far from all, arts organizations have taken advantage of this. Those who do tend to have more fans, and a higher rate of engagement 8. Median “Likes” Based on Type of Page A significant factor in why arts organizations with a Profile have so many fans is likely because these organizations have been using Facebook since before 2007 when Pages were first launched. 6 http://www.allfacebook.com/news-flash-the-end-is-near-for-old-facebook-group-2011-05 7 http://www.facebook.com/blog.php?post=90316352130 8 Though again this isn’t necessarily a causal relationship. Arts organization aware of this best practice are likely to be using other best practices as well. 13
  • 14. By default, Facebook users who Median Comments/Posts Based on haven’t yet “liked” a Page land on its Type of Page Wall, however Page administrators have the ability to change that first page a new user sees to any of the Page’s tabs, including a custom built “Welcome” tab (aka Landing Page). Results from this study show that there is no difference in median “likes” for pages that default to tabs other than the wall, except in cases where they’ve created a Landing Page, where those Pages tend to have twice as many fans 9. Median “Likes” Based on Landing Site An example of an outstanding Landing Page is the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on the next page. 9 Yet again, this doesn’t imply causation, and that’s the last time I’ll remind you that no finding in this study does. 14
  • 15. 15
  • 16. Twitter An accurate count of active Twitter users is hard to come by, but recent reports show anywhere from 20 million to 200 million worldwide, 1/3 of that in the US. 10 Twitter claims it has over 200 million registered accounts 11 as of April 2011, but Twitter tracking service Twopcharts speculates only half of those users have ever sent a tweet. 12 From April 2011 Business Insider, Josh Elman, Twitter’s product lead in charge of user retention Many arts organizations told AllThingsD, “his team has identified an ‘aha value Twitter for being moment’ when a casual user turns into an ‘active user.’ That moment happens when users follow 30 able to reach an audience accounts, and when 1/3 of the people they follow beyond typical ticket also follow them back.” Our sources show that there buyers. are 21 million accounts on Twitter following more than 32 accounts. Some subset of these accounts are also being followed by 10+ accounts.” At nearly five years old, and a potentially active user base of under ten million stateside, it’s important to understand who is using Twitter, and why. A December 2010 Pew Internet study found 13 that Hispanic and African American internet users were twice as likely as their white peers to use Twitter, 14 and one in three Twitter users in the study checked Twitter at least daily to read tweets. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that many arts organizations value Twitter for being able to reach an audience beyond typical ticket buyers. From developing relationships with local journalists, to networking with colleagues from across the country, to staying in touch with grant-makers, to reaching new audiences, Twitter has become the place to find, and get found by, important constituents. Unlike Facebook, successfully utilizing Twitter requires learning: • A new language of nonsense-sounding words (see: retweet, hashtags shortlinks). • A confusing set of technical protocols (where does the hashtag go? What happens when you begin a tweet with an ‘@’? How do I tweet a photo? What’s an auto-DM? Why would I follow a list instead of a user?). 10 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=78597 11 http://business.twitter.com/basics/what-is-twitter 12 http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/active-twitter-users_b9205 13 http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Twitter-Update-2010/Findings.aspx 14 http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2011/05/twitter-african-americans-hargittai.html is a fascinating study about why that might be. 16
  • 17. How to find, and be found by, the connections you want to make (from third party tools like Listorious, to joining hashtag chats, to the importance of keywords in your bio, to #FollowFriday, to an @mention in your email signature). • How to think in 140 characters, how to respond to in real time, and what exactly to do with what you learn in the stream. The average arts organization is tweeting once per day and has 726 followers, though around one in five haven’t tweeted in months, and have fewer than 100 followers. The arts organization in this study with the largest Twitter following had less than 200,000 followers, and were tweeting more than 20x per day. 17
  • 18. As with nearly all social media activity, posting more often is highly correlated with having a larger and more engaged online audience. It appears that there’s very little difference between tweeting once per week, and once per day. There is however an incredible change in the number of followers, and their engagement rate, between an arts organization that tweets three times per day, and one that tweets five times per day. Arts organizations tweeting that often are likely to be responding to their followers, taking part in industry-wide conversations online, sharing links to websites other than their own, and reserving very few of their tweets for self-promotion. Measuring one’s influence on Twitter is a bit of a rabbit hole. Many begin with simply counting the number of followers one has—the more the better. Klout 15 gets more scientific, attempting to measure true reach, amplification probability, and network influence. PeerIndex 16 gets complex with authority, topic resonance, audience, activity, and realness. 15 http://klout.com/kscore 16 http://www.peerindex.net/help/scores 18
  • 19. This study looks at a one-dimensional metric—the number of “lists” that followers have added an arts organization to, as a percentage of those followers. This metric was chosen because there’s very little an arts organization can do to game the system of lists, and it’s a simple relationship to understand. In the graph above, this ratio holds steady at seven percent, a number remarkably similar to previous studies by the author. A green dot falling far above the line shows that an arts organization has been added to more lists than their like-size peers, implying a measure of influence. What those lists are named, the other Twitter users on that list, and who follows the list, provide a more granular and rich insight into the idea of influence. One of the cardinal sins of social media is “faking it.” As the previous sections of this report have hopefully made clear, Facebook and Twitter are two quite different social media platforms—different kinds of interactions, different audiences, different vocabulary, and different user expectations. Nonetheless, one in three arts organizations studied has linked their Facebook page to their Twitter account. These organizations tend to have few followers, and less engagement than their peers who are more authentically tweeting. 19
  • 20. YouTube In May 2011, YouTube turned six years old, and released the following statistics: 17 • More than 48 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute • YouTube users watch more than 3 billion videos per day In February 2011, it was estimated YouTube had 490 million unique users per month worldwide, the average In February 2011, user visits the site 14x per month, and spends an average YouTube had 490 million of 25 minutes per visit. 18 unique users per month Owned by Google, YouTube videos have many of the worldwide. same search ranking challenges as webpages, though a significant minority of arts organizations do not use video descriptions, keyword tags, or categories. While some YouTube users subscribe to channels, previous research by the author suggests the vast majority of views of arts organizations’ videos come from related videos, keyword searches, or from links/embeds on other sites. 38% of arts organizations using YouTube uploaded a new video at least monthly, while the most active uploaded 1.5 new videos per day. The average arts organization had fewer than 50 subscribers, while the most popular had over 209,000 subscribers, and more than 63 million collective views. 17 http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/05/thanks-youtube-community-for-two-big.html 18 http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/02/04/facebook-youtube-our-collective-time-sinks-stats/ 20
  • 21. The frequency with which an arts organization uploaded new videos to YouTube has a distinctly non- linear relationship to how popular those videos are on YouTube. Based on the above data, it seems as if arts organizations would do well to pursue one of two strategies to maximize their efficiency: post just a few videos each year (with the assumption that the few videos they do post are of high quality), or create enough new content to be able to post several videos each week. If an arts organization is seeking a committed YouTube user base (those willing to subscribe to their channel), they must pursue the latter strategy. 21
  • 22. Yelp Location-based social networks are those where users engage because of a physical location. Most include the option to “check in” to a venue, and share that information with friends using the same network, or to share the check in out to Facebook and Twitter, The average arts and many include the opportunity to review the merits of that venue. According to a November 2010 study by organization has eight 4.5- Pew Internet, four percent of online American’s use star reviews on Yelp. Only location based services. 19 5% of venues have less than a 4-star average. At nearly seven years old, Yelp is by far the oldest of the location based social networks, although it exists in just 8 countries. In February 2011, Yelp CFO Vlado Herman discussed Yelp’s recent user statistics: 20 • 45 million unique visitors in January 2011 • 35% of user activity is from a mobile device • 16 million total reviews • Local entertainment constitutes 10% of reviews The average arts organization has eight 4.5-star reviews. While venues with more reviews had on average fewer stars, only five percent of venues had less than a 4-star average, implying that this quality ranking isn’t a differentiating factor from competitors. Yelp search rankings seem to prioritize number of reviews over quality of reviews, and this study shows that arts organizations with venues that have been claimed by their owner have 4x more reviews than their peers. 19 http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Location-based-services.aspx 20 http://mashable.com/2011/02/16/yelp-growth/ 22
  • 23. Flickr By September 2010, Flickr users had uploaded a total of five billion photos to the site (compared to six billion photos uploaded to Facebook every month 21). More than 20 million visitors 22 go to Flickr.com every month, and many consider themselves “photographers.” Flickr faces stiff competition in the photo-based social network space in 2011—Instagram is barely 1 year old and already has over four million users, 23 Color is two months old and quickly raised $41 million in venture capital based on its innovative location-based social graph. Arts organizations are by and large using Flickr as a repository for archival photos. On average, they upload less than 100 photos per year, often in just one or two batches (rather than spread out evenly every month). The most active Flickr user among arts organizations studied uploaded 3,500 photos in the past year, and had a single photo that had been viewed more than 4,000 times. Most arts organizations have zero Flickr contacts, and belong to zero Flickr groups. A small handful of arts organizations are hosting Flickr groups for fan photos, curating digital photographs from recognized (and unrecognized) artists, or digitizing their collections. 21 http://mashable.com/2011/02/14/facebook-photo-infographic/ 22 http://siteanalytics.compete.com/flickr.com/ 23 http://mashable.com/2011/05/26/instagram-likes-comments/ 23
  • 24. Blogging Blogging is often considered the oldest form of social media, yet there are estimated to be just 152 million Blogging provides frequent, active blogs across the web. 24 Though with the blurring keyword-rich content to an of lines between traditional media moving online, and bloggers becoming more mainstream, it’s nearly arts organization’s website, impossible to count how many people read or write and can provide an archive “blogs.” of information and news. Wordpress, the second largest blogging platform behind Google’s Blogger, powers about 13% of all websites, and shows stats for the week of May 15, 2011 of: three million blog posts had a total of 650 million pageviews. 25 A February 2011 article from AllThingsD mentioned Wordpress domains have 517 million unique visitors per month. 26 Micro-blogging platforms such as Tumblr and Blogging Frequency Posterous continue to gain popularity, often centered around viral internet memes like “texts from last night,” “awkward family photos,” and “stuff hipsters hate.” Press darling Tumblr hosts 20 million blogs receiving seven billion combined global monthly pageviews as of May 2011. 27 The reason an organization chooses to blog can extend beyond generating pageviews or comments. Blogging’s role in Search Engine Optimization provides frequent, keyword-rich content to an arts organization’s website. It can provide a historical archive of information and a place for permanent links to important news or documents. It is also an opportunity for staff members to express themselves. None of those reasons are captured in the following data. Just over one in four arts organizations studied actively blogged in the past three months. The average arts blog posted an update one time per week, has seven Google Reader subscribers, and received zero comments per post. The most active posted more than one time per day, averaged two comments per post, and had nearly 350 Google Reader subscribers. 24 http://mashable.com/2011/01/25/internet-size-infographic/ 25 http://en.wordpress.com/stats/ 26 http://allthingsd.com/20110216/posterous-goes-bare-shows-us-all-its-stats/ 27 http://www.tumblr.com/about 24
  • 25. A relatively small percentage of the internet population uses RSS (real simple syndication) to subscribe to a blog. Of those, it’s estimated that Google Reader has approximately 50% market share of RSS readers. 28 Blog readership statistics are one of the few non- public metrics of social media, but Google Reader provides the number of Google Reader RSS subscribers to any blog. While this graph represents are only a small percentage of the true readership of arts organizations’ blogs, it’s clear that most arts blogs have very low engagement, and very low regular readership. 28 Based on author’s personal knowledge of Feedburner statistics across a small but wide variety of blogs 25
  • 26. Frequency of blogging had a small but positive correlation with the number of Google Reader subscribers. Blogs with over 50 subscribers posted no less than twice a week. Arts organizations have a choice whether to host their blog on their own website (often choosing URLs such as blog.yourwebsite.com or yourwebsite.com/blog) or on a blog hosting service such as yourwebsite.wordpress.com. Those with a self- hosted blog tend to post more often, have more subscribers, and receive more comments per post. 26
  • 27. Foursquare Foursquare is the smallest of the four big location-based services (including Yelp, Facebook Places, and Google Places), but has the most opportunities for arts organizations to engage with users. It’s two years old, has nine million users, 29 who are active in 200 countries, with 90% of activity happening on a mobile device. Seventeen percent of arts organizations studied had claimed their venue on Foursquare, meaning they formally notified Foursquare that they owned that particular location, and thus had the opportunity to collect analytics about their users and offer special discounts to those users. On average, 31 people had checked-in to an arts organization’s venue, two times each. The most active venue had almost 29,000 check-ins, and users left more than 100 tips about the venue. Popular tips included recommendations about specific exhibits, special discounts, tasty concessions items, and the best times of the week to beat the crowds. Sixteen percent of claimed venues were offering a special to their users at the time of the study. There was no statistically significant difference in the number of check-ins or unique visitors for those venues offering a special, but there was for those venues that had been claimed. A claimed venue had three times more activity than an unclaimed venue. 29 http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/12/foursquare-sf-hires-hr-manager-morgan-missen-is-closing-in-on-a-new-soma-office/ 27
  • 28. Other Social Networks Many other social networks were mentioned on arts organizations websites. MySpace icons were linked to on twelve percent of arts organization homepages, even though Compete puts the site’s traffic at just 30 million visitors per month, and based on current trends will have zero visitors by the end of 2011. Other social networks of note include professional networking service LinkedIn, book marking tool Delicious, information service Wikipedia, and several different fundraising platforms. Noticeably absent from this list of other social networks were currently popular platforms such as Q&A site Quora, photography network Instagram, microblogging platform Tumblr, presentation service SlideShare, or artist social networks like ArtLog. 28
  • 29. Appendix Companies Reviewed 18th Street Art Center Creative Clay A.R.T./New York Creative Growth Adventure Theatre CreativeTime African American Arts & Culture Complex Creativity Explored Alliance for Arts Cultural Development Corporation of DC Alonzo King Lines Ballet Dallas Children's Theatre Americans for the Arts Dancers' Group Anna Crucis Women's Choir Dancing Wheels Arthouse at the Jones Center David Dorfman Dance Arts and Services for Disabled Inc DC Short Film Festival Arts Boston Destiny Arts Arts Council Silicon Valley di Rosa Arts Orange County Diablo Ballet Arts Project Australia Diavolo AS220 Discovery Theater Asian Improv Arts DiverseWorks Atlanta Jewish Film Festival Djerassi Resident Artists Program Austin Creative Alliance Electric Works Australian Dance Theatre Emerald City Theatre AXIS Dance Evidence Dance Company Barrel of Monkeys First Stage Bay Area Children's Theatre Folsom Street Fair Bay Area Men's Symphony Fountain Gallery Bay Area Video Coalition Fractured Atlas Berkeley Art Center Frameline Bill T Jones Full Frame Documentary Film Festival Boston Gay Men's Chorus Full Radius Dance Bric Arts Gallery 16 Bumbershoot Gay Men's Chorus Los Angeles Candoco Gay Men's Chorus of Washington DC Center for Asian American Media Golden Gate Men's Chorus Center for Dance in the West Grand Performances Chanticleer Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Children's Theatre Hawaii Theatre for Youth Children's Theatre of Charlotte Headlands Children's Theatre of San Francisco Heartland Men's Chorus Childs Play HERE Arts Center Chitresh Das Dance Company Hewbrew University of Jerusalem Choral Arts Hyde Park Arts Center Chorus America Imagination Stage City Parks Summer Stage Indefinite Arts Society Company Ballet Intermedia Arts Coterie Theatre Intersection for the Arts CounterPulse Intuit: Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art 29
  • 30. Israel Film Center Real Art Ways ITVS Redlands Bowl Janet Pomeroy Center Repertory Dance Theatre Japanese Cultural Community Center Resounding Harmony Jewcy Richmond Art Center Jewish Community Center of San Francisco Ritual Project Jewish Music Festival Robert Moses Kin Joe Goode Performance Group Root Division Kala Art Institute Roundhouse Kearny Street Workshop Rude Mechanicals La Pena San Francisco AIDS Foundation LA Stage Alliance San Francisco Center for the Book League of Chicago Theatres San Francisco Film Society Lesbian & Gay Chorus of San Francisco San Francisco International Arts Festival Levitt Pavilion Pasadena San Francisco Jazz lincoln center San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Liss Fain Dance San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Liz Lerman Dance Exchange San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art london gay men's chorus San Jose Jazz Luminato Sean Curran Luna Dance Institute Seattle Children's Theatre Malonga Center Seattle Men's Chorus manilatown Heritage Foundation SF CameraWork Margaret Jenkins Dance Center SFCAT Carnaval Marie Chouinard Shen Wei Dance Mark Morris Dance Group Showup.com Mattress Factory Sojourn Theatre Mill Valley Film Festival SOM Arts Mission Cultural Center Southern Exposure Missoula Children's Theatre Spielberg Jewish Film Archive Montalvo Arts Center St Ann's Warehouse Monterey Jazz Festival Stage One Museum of Craft and Folk Art Stephen Petronio Nashville Children's Theatre Stern Grove Festival National Endowment for the Arts Stop Gap Needles and Pens Straight No Chaser New York City Gay Men's Chorus STREB Niad Art Center Susan Marshall Other Israel Film Festival SXSW Outfest TED Outside Lands The Black Rep Parsons Dance The Children's Theatre Philadelphia Cultural Alliance The Crucible Pittsburgh Arts Council The Jewish Theatre Power to the Peaceful Festival The Lab PS 122 The Paper Bag Players Pure Vision Arts The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus Ravinia Festival Theatre Bay Area Rayko Photo Center Theatre Communications Group 30
  • 31. Theatre Development Fund Vocal Essence Theatre Puget Sound VSA Hawaii Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts VSA North Fourth Toronto Jewish Film Festival Winnipeg Folk Festival Treasure Island Festival Wolf Trap Foundation Trisha Brown Company World Arts West Turtle Creek Chorale Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus Yerba Buena Gardens Festival UC Berkeley Art Museum Youngstown Cultural Arts Center UK Jewish Film Festival Urban Bush Women Visionaries and Voices About Devon V. Smith Devon Smith is currently the Director of Social Media for Threespot, a digital engagement agency in Washington, DC primarily working with nonprofit and governmental clients. Prior to this, she worked for nonprofit organizations across the country including Actors Theatre of Louisville, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Mary Gates Foundation, Peter Kyle Dance, Roundabout Theatre Company, World Science Festival, and Yale Repertory Theatre. She holds an MBA and an MFA from Yale University, and a BBA and a BA from the University of Washington. More social media research and reports can be found on her blog, www.24UsableHours.com. About Theatre Bay Area As the largest regional arts service organization in the country, Theatre Bay Area works to unite, strengthen, promote and advance the theatre community in the San Francisco Bay Area, working on behalf of our conviction that the performing arts are an essential public good, critical to a healthy and truly democratic society, and invaluable as a source of personal enrichment and growth. Through education, research, audience development, support and advocacy programs, Theatre Bay Area strives to make the Bay Area’s theatre and dance communities as strong and sustainable as possible. More information at www.theatrebayarea.org. 31