Social Media Marketing Plan

-------------Situational Analysis------------The Ames Community Arts Council is a non-profit organization of

artists and supporters of the arts striving to build a sense of
community and help local artists succeed since 1976. The Arts
Councils social media pages will be used to increase community
interaction and engagement, remind followers of Arts Council events
and to be a constant resource to not only Arts Council members, but to
the general public.

Current Posts: We currently understand that our blog and social

media followers are very busy people. It is important for us to keep
social media and blog posts concise to increase the probability of our
followers taking the time to actually read them. We also want to
continue to keep posts fairly casual in language in order to keep the
Ames Community Arts Council inviting and to help stimulate
conversation within the community.

Current Statistics: As of September 9, 2015 current Facebook

statistics (according to Facebook insights) were:
-

Total page likes: 386 likes

Post reach: 436
Newsletter subscribers: 526

On February 18, the statistics are:

Total page likes: 458 likes

Post reach: 484
Newsletter subscribers: 571

------------Objectives and Goals------------(As of September 9, 2015)

-Increase Facebook likes from 386 to 500 within six months and to 750
within one year.
-Further establish and strengthen the Arts Councils brand image.
-Be a constant resource for followers regarding the Arts Council, its
members and relevant events.
-Increase the amount of newsletter subscribers by 50 within six months
and by 100 within one year.

-------------Strategies and Tactics----------

Hashtags: Every post to social media should contain the hashtags:
#AmesArts #LocalArt #AmesCommunityArtsCouncil #Ames

Focal Points: Social media posts should focus on events, Arts Council
members and their work/workspaces and any other important
information regarding the Arts Council. It is important that relevant
hashtags listed above are used in every post to allow people to find
them easily.

Call to Action: Whenever possible, posts should contain a call to

action for our members to follow. Posts should ask memers to like or
share the post to show support, comment with their own ideas, or to
survey members opinions on a topic.

Poster Identification: It is not necessary to indicate who posted each

individual post on social media. The posts that are being created
should be cohesive enough that it seems as though everyone posting
to the Arts Councils social media is a single entity; however, photo
credit should be provided.

Responses: Responses should be made on all social media outlets

within 24 hours of the question or comment being posed. Timeliness is
key.

Engagement: We should be acknowledging when someone comments

on or shares our posts, to the best of our ability. If we show our
members that we appreciate them, they will feel like they matter and
will be more likely to engage in the future. Similarly, by keeping up
with followers posts in the Pages Feed, we can stay up to date with
what our members are doing.
Each post should contain a call to action. We should be asking
our followers to like, share or leave their comments on our posts. This

is a great way to spread word of what the Arts Council is up to and

recruit more followers and members.
Other ways to get followers engaged is by asking questions!
Conduct polls or surveys for our followers to answer. Ask what people
are working on, if they prefer a particular media or what they thought
about a certain event. This is a great way to create a community-wide
conversation, which is our overall goal.
-------------Audience------------The target market for the Ames Community Arts Councils social
media profiles varies greatly. Demographics of our target audience
include:
-

A wide variety of ages.

Mostly located in the Ames and Des Moines area.
78% female and 21% male.
Age demographics include 25-34 (25%), making up the majority,

followed by 35-44 (21%), and 45-54 (17%).

Middle to upper class.
At least some higher education.
Those who are interested in many different forms of art.
They are typically very busy people.
Mostly use facebook between 8am and 9pm.

** You will notice that the 25-34 age group is the highest in terms of
likes, but one of the lowest in terms of engagement. This could be due
to the oversaturation of younger users newsfeeds.

-------------Measurement and Evaluation------------The internal Facebook insights should be used as the primary
measurement tool for Facebook activity. Special attention should be
paid to the total number of page likes, post reach and user
engagement. The number of newsletter subscribers should also be
documented. Statistics for other social media outlets (Instagram,
Twtitter, etc.) should be measured using external measurement

software such as Google Analytics, Hootsuite, etc. assuming internal

measurement is not available.

-------------Budget------------Because the Ames Community Arts Council is a non-profit

organization, there is an incredibly limited budget. The majority of the
Arts Councils budget will go toward printing costs of promotional
materials for major events. Social media should be kept inexpensive, if
not completely free. Facebooks paid post-boosting is a possibility at
the discretion of the Arts Council director. In the image below, you can
see the effectiveness of paid post-boosting through Facebook. Leading
up to the Ames Art Studio Tour, the paid post-boosting more than
doubled our post reach.

-------------Weekly and Biweekly Facebook Posts-----------Posts should be created on the Ames Community Arts Councils
Facebook page at least once a day, but no more than three times a
day. It is important to post enough for the Arts Council to remain in
followers minds, but to not over-post and cause a loss of page likes.

Monday: Member Monday will focus on a different member of

the Arts Council each week. This will be posted directly on Facebook
and should be very brief. It should be a brief description of the artist,
what they do and should contain photo(s) of their work and/or
workspace. There should also be a link to the artists professional
website, if available.

Thursday: TeachMe Thursday is a biweekly post. It will focus

on ways that artists can promote themselves and how that will benefit
them as an artist. These could include ways to promote themselves
online, around Ames, or places they can promote/sell their work both
online and offline. The post should be fairly simple and should be an
easy task for followers. This will also be a blog post that gets shared on
other social media outlets.
Friday: Friday postings should be kept light. Use this as an
opportunity to direct members towards our calendar or newsletter to

find exciting events for the weekend! This post is to be posted directly
to Facebook or Twitter, not a blog post.

Social media posts that arent blog posts should include

information regarding one of four things:
1)
2)
3)
4)

Reminders of Arts Council members upcoming events.

Members in the news.
Interesting goings on in the art world.
Reminders of the Arts Councils events.

Only the social media coordinator or the Ames Community Arts

Council director should be making these posts, but all Arts Council
members are encouraged to forward anything interesting they find.

-------------Pages to Watch-----------Some pages that would be important to watch are local pages
that are trying to achieve the same results within the community as we
are. Some of these may include, but are not limited to: Ames Public
Library, Maximum Ames, Ames Historical Society, Ames Main Street
Farmers Market, and Ames Convention and Visitors Bureau. Following
these pages could provide ideas on ways to generate hype within the
community and to keep up with current events that may be affecting
our members. Non-local pages to follow could include any art related
pages: Creative Capital (Facebook), Artforum (Facebook),

www.artnews.com, and www.walkerart.org. These pages can also be

used for interesting articles for weekly blog posts.