"Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing but nobody else does." - Steuart Henderson Britt, Marketing Management and Administrative Action
In my last post, I briefly mentioned various tools that we use to add to the arts value chain. Over the next few posts I will be looking at a couple of those tools in greater detail. The Internet is so handy for so many things! A point I briefly brushed over in my first post was that marketing is arguably the hardest and most valuable part of the arts value chain. This week, I want to take a closer look at using social media as a tool for marketing.
My personal favourite social media tool is Facebook. I'm big on the multiplicity of it, you can use it to tell people what you're up to or where you are, share pictures, blogs and videos, integrate it with Youtube, Instagram, Twitter (not that I have a Twitter account. Call it ignorance if you'd like but it really serves no purpose for me personally right now), virtually any sort of media sharing or social media platform that tickles your fancy. As an artist, I find it incredibly helpful when trying to spread the word about shows I'm in or trying to fundraise for. This year I have been studying a Bachelor of Performing Arts in Dance with LINK Dance Company, the honours program at WAAPA, so I will use that as an example of how Facebook can be used. Facebook has been an extremely helpful tool on the marketing side of things. LINK has it's own Facebook page which we use to share information about who we are, upcoming shows, the annual European tour, and any fundraisers we have. Not only can we post these things on the LINK page, but each of the company members along with our likers can share them on their personal Facebook profiles. We achieve a lot of promotion this way and Facebook made promoting our Pozible fund for Europe much easier and quicker than word of mouth or printing flyers. Sharing these things not only allows us to spread the word, but also gives our viewers a behind the scenes look at what goes on in a dance studio, creating interest in us as a company and the industry as a whole.
The company members use a private Facebook group to share information with each other and have conversations about organising upcoming events. This is incredibly useful because when we are all together in a room we are either working with the choreographer or taking class, which really leaves no room for talking about fundraisers. The group means we can bring up important topics like fundraisers or even remind each other of things like, "Don't forget we have ballet today" or, "Remember to bring an object for that task."
LINK also has an Instagram hashtag. Any photos that have anything to do with the company and its activities are posted to Instagram with this hashtag, these photos can then be shared with our Facebook audience with the touch of a button!
Our presence on the Internet helps us a great deal when it comes to Marketing, and by the way if you happen to be in Perth between the 16th and 18th of October, pop down to the West Australian Ballet Centre to see LINK's new show Surge with new choreographies by Liesel Zink, Matt Cornell, and Artistic Director, Michael Whaites.
See what I did there?
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