If you work in arts marketing and audience development, you will be constantly on the lookout for new ideas on how to attract and engage audiences. As a marketing and audience development specialist working primarily with digital, I and the team at Indigo are often tasked with bringing innovation and thought leadership to projects.
Rich media such as video has long been a key driver for audiences to engage with content, and Indigo has produced video for a number of culture and tourism clients such as National Trust, The Bowes Museum, Alnwick Castle, Gateshead Old Town Hall and Live Theatre.
With the development of better and faster cellular networks, mobile is now a key delivery platform for video. While expectations of quality for longer form ‘produced’ video such as trailers is still high, there is increased acceptance of and engagement with informal, spontaneous and more personal video content.
For arts organisations, this provides a good opportunity to sweat their biggest asset – creative content. Here are two key trends in video we’ve been exploring lately:
Micro Video
Micro video app Vine introduced a whole new paradigm to creating video content. Within a time limit of 6 seconds, sports events, comedy sketches, dance moves and all kinds of arts events were presented in a completely new way to a completely new audience. Although Vine has been discontinued by its owners Twitter, the principle of the micro-clip will live on as a native app within the Twitter platform. We are encouraging clients to experiment with micro-clips as an augmentation to their content strategies. There’s no doubt that video garners more and deeper engagements on Facebook, and by tailoring video to micro format for Twitter, we will be hoping for the same effect.
Live Streaming
Periscope proved the concept of a live streaming app would work and was wanted, at least with 10 million leading edge tech savvy mobile users. With the advent of Facebook Live, the technology has launched itself into the hands of 1.7 billion people. We have had really interesting results from live streaming dance rehearsals, performances and events – reaching hundreds of people from all over the world. We’re now working on integrating live streaming into ongoing creative content strategies. Areas to focus on are:
- Raising awareness of one-off streams in advance
- Developing a regular core audience
- Telling a story through creating an episodic narrative
- Linking live streaming activity to other multi-channel marketing campaigns
Other key ways we’ve been deploying video to develop arts audiences include the increasing use of video in Facebook ads. There is no doubt video is the most effective driver for Facebook ad engagement and arts organisations are missing a trick if they aren’t using it. Video blogging, or Vlogging, is also a key trend. Offering audiences behind the scenes, intimate views of arts venues has long been recognised as a valid way to spark engagement (see Heritage Open Days, and other open rehearsal festivals for evidence). Vlogging allows arts organisations to open up year-round, and can provide a fascinating archive of video content for viewers to explore.
In summary, get shooting!
Caroline Greener
Marketing & Social Media Specialist
caroline.greener@indigomultimedia.com