First Arts Marketeer Talk

Greetings all!

Its been a while since our last blog post - we have been incredibly busy with Work, Life and Maketeering - a holy trinity that we are sure you are all familiar with!

On April 4th we were lucky to meet the MBA in Professional Business and Arts Management from Trinity St. David and give them our very first Arts Marketeer talk. The students were visiting Wexford for a few days thanks to the fantastic Coracle programme, a programme that without which, the Arts Marketeer would never have been created.

Not only was this talk a great Milestone for the Arts Marketeer but it was also our first time using Prezi - the online presentation tool - which we can gladly report was fun to use, looked great and is fantastically interactive - the possibilities of this tool seemingly endless.

We just gave a brief introduction into who we were, what the Arts Marketeer offers and we also offered our services to the students who are currently underway with their Arts Management Projects.

We also introduced some tools - such as Hootesuite to name one - in order to give them some practical tools that they could use. In the following weeks we will make sure to blog about these tools too.

All in all - the reception we received was a very positive one and leads perfectly onto the official Lauch of the Arts Marketeer which we hope to announce the details of which shortly.

Below we attach our Prezi Presentation we gave on the day to show you what you can do with the very basics of Prezi.

Looking forward to getting back to the blog posts.

The Arts Marketeer

Pintrest for the Arts: Part 1

Are you "Pinterested"?

Pinterest has become hugely popular in the Social Media realm as of late and here at the Arts Marketeer we have become increasingly curious into how Pinterest can benefit Artists and Arts Organisations.

First things first! "What the hell is Pinterest!", you may ask.
Pinterest is an image sharing social media site and also kind of like a visual bookmarking tool.
When you set up a profile you create virtual Pin Boards based on your specific interests/works/areas etc.
If you an Artist and you create paintings for example, you might have as your Boards:

• Current Exhibitions
• Current Works
• Works in Progress
• Previous Works
• My Interests (This is where you can put all your random images, but still in some way relates to your practice)

You then go about "Pinning" images to your board. You do this by uploading photos, images and even video clips you have to your different Boards. These are now your very own "Pins". Congratulations.

Then you go about getting into the more social aspect of Pinterest.
Much like twitter you can follow other people and organisations that have their own Pinterest profiles.
Once you get stuck into browsing other peoples pins you can then "Re-Pin" their image to one of your own Boards. (Just like a Retweet)
Then in true Facebook fashion you can like and comment on other peoples pins.

What you should have now at this stage done is created an online CV/portfolio for your practice or your organisation through just using imagery. And since the Arts sector is more focused on selling a visual experience, a social media site that is based in the "visual", seems like a fitting tool for Artists and Arts Organisations to have.

So how can Pinterest benefit me?

We have found some very interesting examples of how some organisations are using Pinterest to increase the sales of their products.
One very creative way in which we have seen Pinterest being used is by the Chicago History Museum.
They have set up a Pinterest Board where each pin they have included is an item they sell as part of their merchandise. Effectively they have created an online store within their Pinterest profile! Pins can have hyperlinks attached to them to redirect them to websites or other points of purchasing. So when people click on the image, they are sent straight through to that portion of their website where this item is for sale.

The hope is that if you upload an image with a link attached to it and it grabs peoples attention, they will be more inclined to Re-Pin this image to their own Board for their friends to see. This can then increase traffic to your site, facebook page, event page etc. and hopefully create you some sales (which is what we love to see!!)

This is just one example of how you can harness the potential of Pinterest for your practice or organisation.
We'll bring you more examples soon, but we hope you have enough to get you started!

We are definitely "Pinterested".

The Arts Marketeer

Irish Social Media Statistics

                                             

So what are we dealing with here? 

Before taking on any marketing activity it is always useful to place ourselves in some sort of context.
Especially when you are trying to get across just how important Social Media can be for your business or your group, its always useful to have some important facts and statistics to back you up.
We all know at this stage how important Social Media is, but just how important?

Well thanks to Social Bakers, The Arts Marketeer takes a look at up to date Facebook Statistics for Ireland (2013) and gives you some important information that you can use when making strategies, plans, research, presentations and so you can seem like Social Media Pro to your mates in the pub.

Facebook and Ireland

• There are 2,225,720 Facebook users in Ireland (that's 49.6% of the Population)
• The Largest Ages Group is 25 - 34 year olds (29%)
• The 2nd Largest Group is the 18 - 24 year olds (23%)
• Females are the dominating Gender at 53% of total Irish users while Males come in at 47% of total Irish Users

Below is an infographic made by an Irish PR company named Edelman in which we can see that Facebook Users in Ireland are increasing exponentially.

So how does this help our own groups, practices, businesses or organisations?
Well for one, it gives us a framework to begin thinking about our own target audiences.

• What ages groups are we tapping in to? Keeping now in mind that a lot of the audience out there is between 18 and 35. 
• What gender are our posts aimed towards? Are you posting content and statuses that would capture a Male audience while your dominant or most engaged Facebook audience are mostly female?

We would also recommend you check out SocialBakers.com as well as take a look at the infographic above and start taking a look at how the most popular brands, companies and  personalities are marketing themselves through Facebook and perhaps you can pick up some tips and tricks along the way.

Hope that all this information puts things in perspective, and gives you some food for thought!

The Arts Marketeer