Social Media Strategies for Arts Organizations

Guest Host: Marc van Bree (@mcmvanbree)
Director of Marketing, Austin Lyric Opera

Did you know?

Facebook’s monthly active users now total nearly 850 million.
There are over 465 million accounts on Twitter with 175 million tweets created each day.
As of February 2012, LinkedIn has over 150 million users.

There is no doubt that social media is gaining momentum by the minute. It is powerful way for arts organizations to reach and communicate with current and prospective patrons, audiences, volunteers and donors. As a result, arts organizations need to engage their constituents by using effective and targeted strategies. In addition to engagement, the arts also have the opportunity to innovate and think about their role as virtual community centers. This leads the discussion to the following questions: are arts organizations thinking strategically about social media? Is it a part of an overall integrated marketing plan? What are arts organizations using social media for? Engagement? Event Marketing? Online Fundraising?

This Twitter chat is dedicated to exploring the above questions, plus diving into more specific inquiries:

What social media outlets do you use at your organization?
What are the main objectives of you social media plan?
Share your success stories (or flops) with social media? What worked or didn’t work?
Is social media effective? How do you measure it?
Which arts organization do you think is innovating in the social media arena?
What social media tips and ideas can you share with us today?

In this chat, we will be joined by a special guest host, Marc van Bree (@mcmvanbree). Dutch native Marc is a well-rounded marketing communications professional with more than 7 years of experience. He currently serves as Director of Marketing at Austin Lyric Opera, where he heads the department responsible for marketing and sales, including subscription and single ticket sales campaigns. In 2010, Marc initiated several highly successful Twitter events at askthemusicians.com with Lacey Huszcza. The inaugural event #askaconductor connected 60 conductors around the world—including former New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel—to fans, followers and first-timers and resulted in more than 4,000 tweets by 500 participants in just 24-hours. Other projects include the 2009 Orchestras and Social Media Survey and an ebook Orchestras and New Media: A Complete Guide. Read His Blog “Dutch Perspective” here.

How can you help right now?

Tune in on Friday, May 11 at 2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Eastern (6PM GMT) and participate in the second round of #artsmgtchat!
Tweet this post and share with friends on LinkedIn and Facebook.
Follow @AllyYusuf_ for questions. You can use TweetChat, Twebevent or your favorite Twitter service to follow the discussion.
Bring a colleague to this Friday’s #artsmgtchat.
Submit questions and ideas to below in the comments section.
Join our LinkedIn group.