1. Commonsense Social Media for Small Arts Organizations:
what the “social media mavens” won’t tell you
•psst… you really can do it yourself

2. 1. Make a skills inventory
Do remember to include all your skills!
Survey your organization’s staff, board, volunteers
who are the best writers?
who are already blogging, on facebook, on other
social media?
who are the photographers, videographers?
who has design skills?
You are artists, for Pete’s sake, you have all these skills in your organization!

3. 2. Do have the confidence to run your own
social media campaign.
The best social media campaign is grass-roots
—just like you started your arts organization

4. 3. Consider voice
Do listen to the tone of the media, but be
authentic.
Social media is, well, social so adopt a
conversational tone
Take time to listen to your followers and other
organizations like your own. Find your voice in
their conversations
Note that various social media have their own
tone

5. 4. Don’t delegate social media
to the intern
They may be digital
natives but do they have
the facts and tools to
represent your
organization?
Being able to Facebook a
keg party is not a
qualification for blogging
your arts season.

6. 5. Don’t turn your Artistic
Director into a sock puppet
If a post says it is from the AD, it
should be.
You can help by sending the AD
questions, or taping interviews
and turning these into posts.
Assigning a staff member to write
under the AD’s name isn’t fair to
anyone.

7. 6. Do use more than one
social media outlet for news
Consider which social media is most relevant
to you: consider tone, demographics, format.
Think of your chosen channels in terms of
synergy, e.g.,
 longer content in the blog (connect through FB &
tweets)
 videos on YouTube (shared to blog & facebook)
 form a community on Facebook for event
promotion
 drive traffic to appropriate channels on Twitter

8. 7. Do be careful with auto-
linking posts
Think before you link your media streams: when
in doubt, don’t connect! Some advice:
 Link low frequency channels to high frequency
channels but not the reverse
 Auto-tweeting your new YouTube videos makes
sense
 Facebooking every tweet will turn off Facebook
followers due to both style and frequency

9. 8. Do buffer to maximize reach
You can use tools like http://www.bufferapp.com
or http://hootsuite.com/ to buffer postings
 space your important announcement over the day
without boring your audience
 time your announcements to hit peak times for your
audience, often after business hours
 economize on the time that staff/volunteers spend on
social media

10. 9. Don’t automate!
Auto-tweets of quotes and random messages are
a turn off and will not secure you a loyal and high-
relevance audience.

11. 10. Do engage your audience.
Social media is social. It is not
one-way
 Take time to check for
comments and messages
 Read your audience’s posts
 Comment back
 Share

12. 11. Do turn your colleagues
and competitors into
assets
Arts organizations have been exchanging program book
inserts and advertising for decades. Use the same
strategy with social media.
 Share a colleague’s non-competing event with your followers.
They’ll return the favour.
 Tweet about your colleague’s news. When they re-tweet, you’ll
pick up followers.
 People searching for news of a competitor’s events will visit
your stream if you post about them and sometimes add you to
their “follow” list or like your Facebook page.

13. 12. Don’t be a broken record.
You wouldn’t invite a friend to a
party today, and tomorrow and the
next day, and the next….
 Remind your audience about events
with new value-added content
 Share interesting news you’ve read
on the internet relevant to your
audience
 Don’t be afraid to share the
occasional joke.

14. 13. Introducing the #tag
Tagging is a way that people find relevant information in
a sea of irrelevant news
 Create your own twitter tag for core followers to find you
 Research what tags are commonly used by organizations like
yours and use them when appropriate in blog posts and twitter
hash tags
 Use local and community tags to help people find events that
are close to them and invite re-tweets from community groups.

15. 14. Getting started
Reach out to your followers through existing
channels and invite them to connect
 Offer incentives for them: discount codes, contests
 Share the benefits you hope to derive for the
organization: saved money, greener operation,
increased reach
 Consider investing in low-cost, short-term social
media advertising
 Don’t get discouraged: growth is exponential

16. 15. Do have an evaluation plan
Have a plan to evaluate and put the tools in place
 Use Google Analytics or other tools to see what social
media campaigns drove people to your website
 Ticket discount codes will indicate the success of
social media campaigns on sales: vary codes on
different social media to see what works best
 Set targets and evaluate strategies for increasing
followers

17. 16. Do remember the goal
You want to deepen the engagement of your existing
audience
You want to increase attendance and financial
contribution.
You want to reach new audiences--while spending less
money
You also want to be able to brag about how efficient and
green your company is in achieving these goals.
That's pretty hot stuff so it's worth some work, right?

18. So let’s get started.