Roger Smith Hotel, NYC

I just got back from a weekend in New York City at the inaugural SMartCAMP, “a symposium on social media use in the arts.” I met some great people, though not everyone I was looking for, and was really happy with the focus of the conference. Finally! This is exactly what I needed.

Judging by the attendance, it seems plenty of people really want to know more about how social media can be used in the arts. For me specifically, it’s not only how to use social media in higher education, but finding the fine line between social media use and fine art. I want to put together a similar symposium during SCAD’s fine art festival in Savannah in the fall and invite some of these speakers to talk to students starting their art careers. It would be a great help. If you’re interested in learning more about this plan or have ideas, and not my number one fan (hi mom!), please get in touch.

Not having come up in marketing, people kept saying “that’s a little too tactical, tell me more about strategy” and honestly I haven’t always been sure what they mean. Simply put, and with thanks to Michelle Shildkret in her Planning for Social Media presentation, strategy is what you want to do, tactics are you you’ll do it. This makes sense to my goals (general objectives) and outcomes (measurable competencies) way of thinking drawn from my work in education.

So what is the strategy for SCAD in social media? It’s to increase involvement, influence and engagment of our diverse audiences within social media channels. We should “make people feel cool and special” for being involved with SCAD through our social channels.

These goals feed into larger institutional goals. We achieve these goals by smart and tactical use of channels and content creation, relationship-building and offering something valuable to those who’ve taken the time to connect with us. Outcomes include increased audience numbers across the board, positive feedback, and a higher level of active interaction with SCAD through the university’s channels. Luckily for me, the Internet comes with a ton of analytic measurements and tools that are a big help.

I think Michelle is also the one who mentioned that social media is not brand, but “relationship marketing.” At least I think it was her, anyway I wrote it down because I liked the idea.

I’ve got a lot more ideas out of the conference, but that was the gist. Most of what I learned I hope I’ll be able to surprise you with sometime soon. I look forward to doing this again next year. Finally a conference not so basic that it’s boring, and not so programming/development oriented that … it’s boring. I’m very solidly on the people end of the computer, and I like it.

Here’s the SMartCamp uStream feed, I highly recommend it:
Free TV : UstreamNext up SXSW! And then back to NYC for 140 Characters conference, also at the fabulous Roger Smith Hotel. Oh and today we crossed 5,000 fans on SCAD’s Facebook page, hooray!

Tags: SMartCAMP, Social Media
Categories: Social Media

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.