Arts Organizations and Digital Technologies

Pew Internet released a report this month titled "Arts Organizations and Digital Technologies".

Here are some of the findings that I thought were interesting:

• The most common activities on arts organizations websites are content creation, sharing, and comments.  These activities include posting photos (94%), allowing users to share content (90%), streaming & posting video (81%), streaming or posting audio (57%) maintaining a blog (50%).
• The other major activity on websites is event promotion and management.  These activities include maintaining an online calendar (74%) and selling tickets online (72%).
• I was surprised to see that not many arts organizations have online exhibits (20%) and have educational/instructional content (22%) on their websites.
• The three social media platforms used the most are Facebook (99%), Twitter (74%), and YouTube (67%).
• The most common thing they do with social media is to engage with member before, during, or following an event (82%). The second most common thing is monitoring what people are saying about their organization (77%).

2013 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report

The 2013 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report was just released. Here are some of the findings:

• The three most important goals nonprofit communications strategies are acquiring new donors (57%), engaging our community (52%) and general brand awareness (45%). Creating website traffic was at 22% and building print or e-mail list was at 18%. 
• Websites, social media other than blogging, and email marketing are the most important tools. 
• The three most important social media sites are Facebook (94%), Twitter (62%), and YouTube (42%).
• Nonprofits are most likely to add or experiment with Pinterest this year.
• Nonprofits expect to spend the most time this year producing content for Email newsletter articles (52%), Facebook updates (49%), event marketing (38%), and website articles (36%).  Producing content for blog posts was at 20%,  Twitter updates was at 18%, and infographics was at 6%.
• The biggest challenge nonprofits expect to have is lack of time to produce quality content.