In the middle of awards season, major announcements in the media and entertainment industry defined February’s news. While Spotify prepares to ramp up its product offerings, new AI-powered tech is winning Grammys and helping make magic happen on the big screen. All this takes place in the shadow of some major policy announcements regarding copyright and AI.
As technology reshapes employment, artists face particular financial challenges, earning 30% less than their peers while lacking traditional benefits. This article examines how cities and organizations are testing new solutions—from guaranteed income programs to innovative pension schemes—to provide artists with greater economic stability.
Educators are grappling with the challenge of integrating AI into classrooms, fearing that these systems might replace traditional learning methods rather than enhance them. This brings us to the question: what barriers prevent educators from implementing artificial intelligence into their curriculum, and how can they be addressed?
January ushered in a new year with sweeping disruptions in media, journalism, and public humanities. Technology-driven partnerships, staff cuts, and mergers have redefined the online media landscape kicking-off 2025, calling into question journalism’s position in an age of generative AI. Read the highlights below.
The grant narrative has become one of the most high-stakes tools of communication in the nonprofit fundraising space, driving more than $150 billion in global expenditures. As grant writers adapt their appeals in response to changing funder values, this narrative network gives shape to the nonprofit ecosystem in which many arts organizations operate.
Google Analytics is an indispensable tool for any business to better serve its customers, achieve business goals, and build successful marketing campaigns. Used by itself, analytics is a powerful tool that can help an organization optimize its website and customer pathways. However, integrating additional tools within the Google Suite of tools offers more nuanced and informative means of maximizing data integration and your understanding of your institution’s website connections and conversion. This research report gives a how to for 7 critical Google Suite tools to maximize Google Analytics impact.
Though often used to analyze traffic and commerce, Google Analytics is a powerful tool whose applications are near-limitless. In this new handbook, AMT Lab contributor Kathleen Grennan illustrates a number of ways in which arts managers of all types can use Google Analytics to make data-driven decisions in operational settings. From obtaining new audiences to bolstering fundraising efforts, this is a good introduction to this flexible tool. Click here to find the full report.
Many arts organizations are constantly struggling to both bring in new patrons as well as maintain engagement among their existing base. Unfortunately, research shows that this hurdle is not going to disappear anytime soon due to a number of factors, as arts attendance has been on a steady decline in recent decades. Fortunately, Google Analytics gives arts managers the power to answer questions about their current audience demographics based on website traffic in order to both understand demographic trends and how best to target new audiences.
Arts organizations today face a host of challenges, ranging from traditional issues like budgetary constraints and limited staff to more recent concerns, such as shifting patron demographics and increased market disruption caused by the social media frenzy. How can Google Analytics solve these problems, and more? Read Kathleen Grennan's guide here.
Whether working in digital or traditional channels, quantifying impact and engagement is a challenge. Often, it is difficult to find the causal link between marketing efforts and programmatic success. It can also be confusing to figure out how to effectively use Google Analytics, which, when mastered, can be used as a tool to identify successful communication strategies and observe user behavior.
Our latest publication, From Strategy to Analysis: A Guide to Navigating Google Analytics, gives arts managers a potential solution. Drawing parallels to the scientific method, this paper gives a complete step-by-step process using a theoretical case study organization to illustrate how an arts manager can use Google Analytics to achieve their organizational goals.
Today the news is buzzing with Google as they launch their Sidewalk Labs initiative in an effort to improve urban life. But here at AMT Lab, we have spent years dedicating posts to the many ways that Google products and services can improve arts management practices. This installment of Throwback Thursday will share several of them, drawing on posts that span as far back as 2008.
Google Analytics dashboards help users efficiently review important metrics and dimensions, like traffic sources or social media shares, quickly generate reporting tools, and create data-friendly cultures through easy sharing and visually storytelling. Learn about how dashboards can not only help managers process website information, but also how they can effectively communicate that information to a broader audience.
In November 2012, NTEN and Idealware released the results of a survey studying nonprofit’s data use. Surprisingly, “outreach” data, or data relating to marketing, fundraising, and general communication activities, was commonly collected but infrequently used to inform future decisions. For instance, NTEN and Idealware discovered that 71% of those surveyed tracked the number of people on their mailing lists, yet only 23% used that data to inform spending and budgeting decisions.
Google Analytics - Boot Camp for BeginnersTuesday, March 8, 2011
2:00pm - 3:30pm Eastern
Register today for $25
Presenter: David Dombrosky
Google Analytics is by far the most widely used website analytics software, and it's free. Yet many artists and arts managers pay little attention to what the analytics data is telling them about their websites. Very few of us actually use the data to inform decisions about the design of our sites and the content that we post on our sites.
In this 90-minute webinar, we will:
Explore the various types of data captured by the Google Analytics service
Review methods for charting traffic to your site driven by your social media accounts
Discuss what the numbers actually mean and their implications for your site and your visitors
Articulate strategies for utilizing Google Analytics to make decisions regarding website design and content
David Dombrosky is the Executive Director of the Center for Arts Management and Technology (CAMT), an applied research center at Carnegie Mellon University investigating ways in which arts organizations can use online technology to more effectively meet their goals. He frequently presents technology and social media workshops for arts conferences – most recently for The Association of American Cultures, Performing Arts Exchange, Chorus America, Opera America, College Art Association, and Grantmakers in the Arts.
Arts organizations, especially in this economy, rely heavily on positive reviews and audience raves to generate ticket sales and interest. As technology improves, so has the speed and reach of these review: one voice can be heard across an infinite distance, and one individual's bad experience can be heard around the World Wide Web.
Damage control, clean up in the wake of widely-disseminated destructive commentary, is never as good as the kind of real-time management that is possible when an organization is able to react and engage as the conversation is developing. Even better when the conversation takes place in a forum that is controlled by the organization and populated by unaffiliated supporters who can voice unsolicited positive defense of the organization.
This is one of the most powerful elements of Web 2.0, and one that seems to strike the most fear in the hearts of arts managers. The NAMP Conference was an eye-opener: arts managers are really afraid of relinquishing control over the conversation. From the keynote to the final session three days later, attendees at every Q&A expressed concern about allowing organization-related conversations to publicly occur with outsiders and audience. (For example, allowing user-generated comments on a blog on the organization’s website, comments on the YouTube channel, Twitter conversations, Facebook dialogue.) The question asked by managers time and again: "What if 'they' say something negative?"
The reply? “They’re saying it anyway.” Would you rather they said it behind your back?
Imagine that your organization begins to open up the conversation. Great examples of this can be found by looking at the Mattress Factory Museum'sFriendship 2.0 page, or Misnomer Dance Theater's blog, which links to a variety of other interactive possibilities (though Misnomer's Chris Elam would like to improve upon this even more, by having an aggregate feed that pulls in the conversations happening in various forums and making them accessible in one place on the site). Perhaps you have a way for visitors to post publicly from the venue, or link to articles that have been written about your organization and allow users to comment. Maybe you have a Flickr page to which your audience can contribute, or a YouTube channel. People start commenting on a piece or an interview, a post or an exhibit.
Let’s look at the positive outcome of enabling and encouraging audience participation online.
It is generally accepted that people are more likely to complain than they are to express happiness about something. That changes as social media and Web 2.0 enable people to easily share thoughts and feelings, and so they do not have to make the same kind of effort to offer praise. They can take five minutes (and feel good about) publicly expressing to you how good they feel.
Remember, “everyone wants to be an insider.” When they can express themselves on your site, or engage in dialogue with your organization and its other supporters, that person feels like they are special. They are being included and being respected as a participant--which givees them a sense of ownership. And they will hopefully keep returning to their conversation, see who has responded to their opinions, and continue to engage with your organization and with other supporters. This builds loyalty, especially when you acknowledge them, and your relationship may lead to this person's friends also getting involved.
But certainly the fear of negative public feedback is not unfounded. Along comes a disgruntled patron. This unhappy patron lambasts your organization for the offenses you have, in his estimation, committed (dirty bathrooms? Offensive scene? Maybe they just thought the work was garbage?). This person comments angrily on your blog, and complains on your Facebook wall. Your organization can now fully benefit from the power of Web 2.0.
If this person posts to your sites, count yourself lucky (if not, you can keep tabs on what is being said about your organization elsewhere with Google Analytics, and respond on your site, thereby directing the traffic to your organization) . This negative view now can be addressed directly by you—both publicly and personally—and a conversation can occur. You can find out the real source of this person’s vexation, and you can demonstrate that your organization is invested in the experience of its audience.
You are also aware of something that has fallen short of an audience member’s expectations. Sure, maybe that person was just having a bad day, but perhaps there is a greater issue there that you can now work to solve. If you were not involved, it is possible you never would have known of their dissatisfaction. You might have missed them renewing their membership, or you might have lost friends of theirs. But you might never have known why.
New visitors to your sites will see this dialogue and appreciate your honesty. (Who isn't skeptical about something that NEVER receives negative feedback? It smacks of censorship, and seems disingenuous.) Your loyal followers may also have gotten involved and expressed positive opinions in your defense. By endorsing both the positive and negative views, by demonstrating your appreciation and value of both sides of a situation, your organization gains credibility for its honesty and forthrightness.
Elam urges organizations not to avoid something out of fear that might prove a most powerful tool. “If you don’t open the floodgates you have zero comments. If you do open them and you get 100 comments and three are bad, you are building energy around your work.” But be aware: “If you have 98 that are bad, that tells you something about your organization.”
Remember, opening the conversation can be incredibly powerful, but you must not just sit back once you have made available the possibility for user-generated content. Your engagement is important to keep the conversations relevant and to connect your organization to the discussions being had.
