In progress and under consideration – Journal 5 – Who saw it?
In Progress and Under Consideration is a reflective series prepared for Publishing 201 – the Publication of the Professional Self. This series is in part a fulfillment of a pre-discussed and agreed upon exchange of academic services and goods, and also a personal reflection on where I’m going and whatever it is I’m doing here.
Looking through my Google Analytics I’m impressed (and concerned) by how much information is hypothetically available. In my particular case there’s very little, due to this site’s lack of connections and it’s role as a portfolio/database vs say, a well connected blog. This is because currently, the site isn’t linked to either my Facebook or my Instagram, which means that it’s just not connected. I’ll get around to doing this at the end. While this means that making use of analytics within the context of this course won’t be great, I’m doing it because it’s a portfolio. So I’d rather have it done up and touched up before it goes ‘public,’ It’s my long term quality over speed view.
Looking at the analytics for the facebook event for the SCA exhibit In Circulation, I’m able to reflect on our publicity approach and reveal a lot of deficiencies in our publicity plan, or lack thereof.The event was made by the School for the Contemporary Arts, who set me up as the admin for the (my) event. As admin and basically also publicist for the exhibition I was able to see the spikes in traffic and views, and thus make some observations about my attempts to promote the event.
At least one participating artist started sharing the capture website page before we had a facebook event for the opening. When there’s multiple different pages (Capture, SCA, FB) it becomes necessary to coordinate which are being pushed on Facebook. We had 14 participating artists and a handful of other people helping with the exhibit. Though some shared the event, very few directly invited their friends. You’d think it would be an easy thing to do for an event you’re in, but you literally have to drag people into doing it.The first spike in reach, views, and engagement was from this initial round of invites amongst myself and a handful of the participating artists. These are pretty even, reflecting that we were spot on in our targeting at this point.
The second major spike in reach is largely the result of the SFSS sharing it on their FB page, That this translated into few actual views is noticeable. In part it’s reflective of the SFSS being a larger umbrella organization that’s not as targeted for an exhibition opening. However, it’s definitely also from a deficiency in my social media plan (made on the spot). The event was shared March 22nd and 24th, well in advance of the opening (I forgot to approach them for closer reminders nearer to April 6th). Moreover, the description here is dull and not engaging and more importantly doesn’t really communicate that this was a wholly SFU student organized, volunteer run exhibition part of a major city wide arts festival. So yeah, I missed the audience mark on that one.
The listing I sent in to instant coffee (an e-mail based weekly listing of events and arts opportunities, it’s solely text) didn’t contain a link to either the capture page or the Facebook event, It’s possible its efficacy was thus limited in terms of driving traffic to the event. While not overly common, some listings do include event links. From experience, instant coffee e-mails contain a ton of information and you have to actively be looking for things (like say openings). So name recognition – School for the Contemporary Arts – is thus important here.
There remains the unresolved question about wether the FB event should start with the exhibit, or with the opening (as this opening is ‘before’ the exhibit). A FB event with a start date after the opening (as with the 2017 BFA Grad show) means that the reminder comes the day after the opening and is thus confusing. A FB event that starts with the opening raises the question of when you close the event – when the opening is over? or when the exhibit is? This is something that also becomes difficult when the exhibition stretches beyond Facebook’s event length limits. In this case the event was for the opening, but then that meant that you can’t share the event afterwards for say, a reminder about the exhibition tour.
The drop-off in reach, views and engagement after the beginning is partially a limitation of the invites and audience network, and my limited ability to structure a coherent social media plan. Another option to explore here would have been to populate the event with content. When an event has a two or three week lead-in, you would benefit from constant reminders about it happening. However, this means that you need to have an integrated channel between content production (the artwork and curatorial component of the event) and publicity. There needs to be material for you to post after all. Moreover, what would this material be? Is this of the projects in the show (and what if they’re still being made!), or is it production shots as things are being made? Or is it perhaps installation shots (which require installation to happen several days advance).
The Facebook event for In Circulation was a great opportunity to consider how to actually go about sharing and driving traffic towards an event, particularly since it’s within my work interests, and also since a breakdown of my efforts reveals all the questions that remain and all of my mistakes. In the end I now know that it can’t be an afterthought, I need to have a comprehensive social media and publicity plan that’s well communicated (to the artists for instance) and that it has to be integrated with the exhibition planning and production itself, particularly if you’re going to be promoting the event using actual content.