Latest / Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt / CI to Eye | Your Social Media Reboot: Cutting-Edge Tips to Inspire Your Social Strategy

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CI to Eye | Your Social Media Reboot: Cutting-Edge Tips to Inspire Your Social Strategy · Arts Unscripted with Monica Holt

0:00
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0:49
Hello everyone, Dan here.
0:50
One of my favorite parts about August is that back-to-school feeling.
0:54
The air is crisp, the pencils are sharp,
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and the notebooks are blank and full of possibilities.
0:59
There's something satisfying about a clean slate, right?
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It's the perfect time to hit the reset button and gear up to conquer the year
1:06
ahead. And in today's constantly evolving, social media-driven world,
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refreshing your social strategy is just as good as buying a fresh pack of
1:13
animal-shaped erasers.
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That's because social is where your organization makes its first impression on
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potential audiences and fosters relationships with existing fans.
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An A+ strategy is key to not just healthy ticket sales,
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but lasting brand loyalty. In today's episode,
1:30
we'll get your social grades up so you can start the 2024-25 season at the top
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of the class. First,
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I'll sit down with CI Consultant Natalie Martinez to talk about advertising on
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TikTok: when it makes sense, how to get started,
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and the kind of results you can expect to see.
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Then I'll catch up with Rachel Karten,
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a social media consultant and author of the popular newsletter Link In Bio.
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We'll discuss ways to elevate your organic strategy and get more out of your
1:55
content. And for extra credit,
1:57
stick around until the end of the episode for a lightning round of our favorite
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arts stories in the news. Let's dive in, shall we?
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So for today's Digital Download, I'm joined by Natalie Martinez,
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a digital marketing consultant and TikTok platform specialist with CI.
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Thanks so much for joining us, Nat!
2:23
Oh my gosh. Thanks so much for having me.
2:26
So a growing number of arts organizations are joining TikTok,
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but not many have started running paid campaigns on the platform.
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Why should we consider adding TikTok to our paid strategies?
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So there's a number of reasons,
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and the first of course is that you're getting in front of newer and younger
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audiences. I know everyone thinks that's where the kids are at.
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And to an extent that is true. From a paid campaign perspective,
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when we kind of give the platform free reign to serve to all of the age groups,
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we do see a number of those impressions skewing to some of the younger age
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groups, whereas on Meta for example,
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we tend to see those impressions skew to 35 and up.
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So if you have a show with a lot of younger audience appeal,
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if you have programs for young ticket buyers like 30 under 30,
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or if you have rush discounts,
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this is a good place to be if you have discounted ticket offerings just because
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along with younger audiences does come less buying power.
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Yeah,
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I think one of the things that TikTok really lends itself to is building brand
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awareness.
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And so by advertising on a platform that does skew a little bit younger,
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you are sort of building that audience that's going to come later in life,
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hopefully.
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Absolutely.
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And because the ads are placed in the for you page where just,
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if you're not familiar with how the TikTok app is set up,
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the for you page is a discover feed.
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It is for people you don't already follow most of the time.
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So people are kind of expecting new things to come across their for you
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pages as opposed to their friends feed,
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and that really helps in terms of the mindset when you're then seeing an ad for
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an organization you maybe have never heard of before.
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And from a paid perspective,
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when we give the algorithm free reign to spend accordingly across ad
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groups,
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despite the fact that we can now also target CRM lists and retargeting pools,
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a lot of the conversion data,
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a lot of the impression share does tend to come from some of those acquisition
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groups. So it's really great for brand awareness.
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And it can also fill the gaps of your digital strategy where targeting isn't
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available on other platforms. Right?
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That's one of the big trends we were chatting about before.
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Yeah, particularly for behavioral targeting. If you recall,
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a couple of years ago,
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Meta really made some changes to their interest targeting segments and
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behavioral targeting to remove anything that may be seen as sensitive
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information that includes anyone interested in health causes.
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And it also included the deprecation of any sort of LGBTQ-friendly
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interests on Meta. But on TikTok, we have all of those available to us.
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So if you have Pride programming, if you have queer icons performing,
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and you want to be able to reach people with some of those interests,
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TikTok is a great place to do that.
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Great place to reach people interested in the holidays. It's really nice.
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We have a lot more flexibility for behavioral targeting here.
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It's also worth mentioning that TikTok campaigns aren't just for these big
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organizations with money to throw at just another channel.
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It's also an efficient way to build an audience if you are a smaller
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organization, as long as it fits into your broader strategy.
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Yeah, it's important to think of it as a strategic addition.
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It's not going to work super, super well with everything.
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But in those situations where you're kind of trying to fill a targeting hole on
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Meta or where you do have the additional budget to be able to sort of
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develop new younger audiences, it's a great place to be.
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But I don't think you need to be advertising on TikTok just for this sake of
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being on TikTok.
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I feel like when it really lends itself to being a good opportunity,
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that's when, especially for smaller organizations with limited budget,
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that's when you should really take the leap.
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I think over the last few years,
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vertical video has become more prevalent and people are just naturally creating
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more vertical video pieces of media right now.
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So that kind of gives you an in, right?
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Yeah. And so in years pasts,
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I feel when there wasn't all of that vertical content,
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it felt like such a burden to then have to add to it just for something like
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TikTok.
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But now it's really great because you can repurpose some of those assets and if
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you're already creating vertical oriented content and you're not already on
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TikTok,
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it's good to keep in mind that you do want to diversify the channels that you're
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advertising on. You don't want to kind of get stuck in a rut in one or two,
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and if you already have the assets, it's a really great place to use them.
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And what kind of ad formats are we looking at here and what should we be
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thinking about when creating TikTok ads?
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We have a couple options. Obviously there's video,
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which we're used to on TikTok, and that's for ads.
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It's anywhere between five and 60 seconds, ideally vertical,
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although you can also run horizontal and square videos on TikTok.
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And of course your caption is overlaid over that video in white.
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So we always want to be mindful of what is behind that text,
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making sure that the white caption is still legible,
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but excitingly, we can also run carousel ads now.
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And unlike I think Meta where we have a maximum of 10 images
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on TikTok, we can run anywhere between one and 35.
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So now we have a bit more variety with the types of assets we can run with
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TikTok ads.
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And what kind of ad placements are available? Where are people seeing these ads?
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The most applicable for arts organizations is going to be your in-feed ads,
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which if you have TikTok, these ads appear throughout the for you page,
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and they're sprinkled in between users' algorithmically delivered
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organic content. These have a CTA,
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so it's great for driving conversions,
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and they appear very native looking to the app,
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so they do resemble the other ads that you're seeing across the platform.
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And it's nice because TikTok did just release a case study comparing some of the
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TikTok in-feed placements with those of CTV and streaming.
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And there's more of an ad recall,
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there's a 23% recall lift with TikTok ads compared to some of those CTV and
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traditional TV placements.
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There was an article a while ago that we talked about on the podcast about
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TikTok being used as a search engine, particularly among Gen Z.
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And as a search guy, I do a lot of SEO.
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I find this super interesting because it's such a useful way to do research.
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Thinking about if you're planning a trip, for example,
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putting in "things to do in Hawaii." The content you
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get is so incredibly useful compared to some of the so SEO
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focused articles you get on Google. Also,
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we can lean into that with ads as well, right?
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Yeah, and this is exciting. This is a relatively new feature from TikTok,
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but if you're running in-feed ads, within that setting,
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you can opt into also appearing on the TikTok search engine results page,
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which is great because when you say search ad,
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your brain goes to a Google search. It's very text-based,
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and it's not always as relevant as you want it to be despite what Google claims.
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And TikTok's search results are very good at being relevant to each
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individual user. So being able to show your visual ads,
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your video ads,
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in the search results feed is incredible. So,
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very excited for people to be able to take advantage of that these days as well.
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So when we're setting up these campaigns,
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what kind of bidding strategies are available? Is it similar to Google and Meta?
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Yeah, it's relatively similar with slightly different naming conventions.
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There are two. So we have maximized delivery,
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which is the same thing as maximized conversions on other platforms.
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And this just means you're maximizing the number of whatever conversion you're
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asking the platform to maximize within your designated budget cap.
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And max conversions is the most widely available bidding strategy on TikTok
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campaigns. It's an option for every single campaign type.
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We also though have cost cap, which is effectively the same thing as Target CPA,
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so it's keeping your average cost per conversion around whatever bid you set.
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So that cost cap bidding strategy is only available with
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app installation campaigns, conversions campaigns,
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and lead generation campaigns.
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Have you run any TikTok campaigns for CI clients? And if so,
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how have they performed? How have they been doing?
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Yeah,
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one of our larger theater clients has spent a fair bit of time
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advertising on TikTok this calendar year with a lot of success,
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which we've been really happy to see.
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They have been advertising productions in their Broadway series,
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and all of them have returned pretty high ROI,
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but with modest investment.
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So there's probably room for this particular client to invest some more.
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What has been interesting though about this theater client is they're testing
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out some broad targeting within their campaign.
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So of course they've got audience segments with very specific criteria,
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but they're also including a broad segment that is only defined by geolocation.
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And what's been interesting is that the cost per conversion for
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that broadly defined audience has typically been the lowest.
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Not necessarily the highest volume of conversions,
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but it's been highly efficient,
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which does tell us that TikTok's algorithm is very good at delivering to the
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people that it thinks are going to convert.
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So when we do things like this and we give it some more room to stretch,
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we can then on the backend see within that who was actually responding that we
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maybe weren't going to be targeting in the first place.
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So the more you are sort of leaning into it, the more you're learning,
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essentially learning about your own audience through TikTok that you may not
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even know about. And there's also a Nutcracker campaign as well, right?
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Yeah, one of our ballet clients this past holiday season,
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so for their Nutcracker 2023 campaign for their first foray into
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TikTok... So this was a very traffic-oriented campaign.
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We were not asking it to drive purchases.
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Spent about $1,400 and returned a just under 200%
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ROI.
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I bring it up because it did well for a first attempt,
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but TikTok has put out some data on
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its user base and where they're making purchases for the holiday season.
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And because we have things like "TikTok made me buy it," because we have things
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like "TikTok shop" and TikTok being used as a very relevant search
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engine, people are going to TikTok for holiday season purchases.
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So 40% of TikTok users who are making Christmas purchases bought at least
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something they found on TikTok,
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which is something to keep in mind as we round into the holiday season.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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So TikTok just rolled out new advertising policies that protect the privacy of
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users under 18.
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How are these new policies impacting our ability to target younger audiences?
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Yeah, this is brand new news as of last month, as of July 2024.
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Breaking news.
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Breaking. But I should say it's a breaking update.
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Back in February,
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TikTok started rolling out protections for users under the age of 18,
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and those included some restrictions on the campaign types that we could
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use to target 13 to 17 year olds.
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So basically no TikTok shop campaigns and no conversions campaigns where we're
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actively selling things to minors. But other than that,
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it was still mostly business as usual.
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There were some minor restrictions on some of the niche behavioral targeting and
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niche interest groups that we were allowed to layer in for
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some of those younger audiences. But as of July 2024,
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you cannot target users under the age of 18 with any sort of
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audience criteria. So if you've run campaigns on Meta,
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you know what I'm talking about. You can still reach people 13 to 17 years old,
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but it's really broad.
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You can include geotargeting and that's basically it. I think it's geotargeting
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and maybe language. And on TikTok, it's the same thing.
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So they're still able to be reached,
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but we cannot be that specific.
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The good news is that it's TikTok and their algorithm is top notch,
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so it's not the end of the world and it's still really the place to be if you're
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trying to get in front of those people.
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But if you want to include 13 to 17 year olds in your campaigns,
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we would just suggest that you break out the ad group with the younger people on
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its own and then have a separate ad group with 18 plus where you can still be
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pretty specific about your audience criteria.
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Are there any new TikTok ad programs coming down the pike that we should look
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out for?
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Yes,
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we're in the exploratory stage with a couple of our clients for a couple
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of programs. One is called the TikTok Creative Exchange,
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and one is called the TikTok Creative Challenge.
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Both of these are different programs from TikTok that effectively make it easier
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for advertisers to work with creators in getting UGC content,
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user generated content,
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without having to work out contracts with those creators.
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So TikTok is paying the creators, they are getting compensated.
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All the advertiser has to do is commit to a media spend.
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So if you're running a campaign and you're interested in working with creators
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and getting some really organic-feeling content from people that do this for a
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living, it's an exciting program and I'm looking forward to hearing more.
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So hopefully I can come back with updates.
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Yes, you'll have to come back on the podcast to update us. Alright,
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one final hard-hitting question. What are some of your favorite TikTok accounts?
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I've been consuming a lot of Olympic TikTok lately,
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and I feel like a lot of people have,
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but I've been a big fan of Ilona Maher who plays on the
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US women's rugby team. She's hysterical and she's very charismatic.
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But also Henrik Christiansen and if you know, you know-but the Muffin Man,
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the Olympic Village Muffin Man, is so funny. He's a swimmer from Norway.
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So I'm excited to see what Paralympic athletes show up on my feed in the next
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couple of weeks since we're coming right up on that as well.
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Have you seen, is it Sammy Sullivan who's also on the US Women's Rugby team?
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She just went full in on converting all of her fame towards getting Legos.
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That's so funny.
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Well, this was super insightful, super helpful.
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Thank you so much for joining us on the pod.
17:13
Thanks for having me!
17:22
So Rachel Karten is a social media consultant based in California,
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and she's worked with social media over the last 10 years and led the social
17:29
media team at some of my favorite food organizations,
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Bon Appetit and Epicurious. And she now writes a newsletter called Link In Bio,
17:36
which everyone should go and subscribe to if they haven't already.
17:39
It has over 60,000 subscribers. Rachel, welcome to the pod!
17:43
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.
17:45
Yeah, excited to chat with you.
17:47
So let's talk about what drew you into a career in social media.
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I mean, I feel like I grew up with social media.
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I wrote one of my college application essays about how I would write Facebook
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captions for my friends' photo albums.
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It's just always been in my blood.
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I had a blog in college that was about food and fashion,
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and I just have always been interested in telling stories on the internet for as
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long as I can remember. And so when I graduated in 2013,
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it felt like such a pivotal time where brands were just discovering social
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media. Instagram had been out for maybe a year or two,
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and so the timing was definitely a huge factor in it.
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Yeah, for sure.
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How has the social media landscape shifted over the years since you started in
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2013?
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Yeah, I think that when I first got into social media,
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it was thought of as a distribution channel for your brand.
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It was just where you can draw new audiences in and bring them somewhere else or
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to your website.
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And I think now people think of social media as the brand,
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and you should give the people the full experience on these platforms and don't
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make them go to a link or make them go somewhere else to experience your brand.
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They should be able to feel it on these social channels.
18:58
So I think that's why social media is so important for brands is
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just it's a place where people discover your brand,
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where people get to know your brand,
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where people build fandom around your brand, everything is happening there.
19:11
And so I think it's so important that brands invest in their social strategies
19:15
and social teams.
19:16
Yeah. So you said that a core part of any brand's social strategy is determining
19:21
shareable universal truths, which I love.
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I love this perspective because that's often so much of where comedy comes from.
19:28
One of my favorite posts you did was with West Elm and you said,
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how many cups can you fit on a nightstand? And that post was just,
19:36
it was genius because it was so true.
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Everyone's nightstand is just filled with a bunch of stuff that we just keep
19:41
forgetting to move.
19:42
Mine is just piles of unread books that I'm ambitiously just hoping just go into
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my brain.
19:47
You'll look so smart.
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So smart, such a trick.
19:50
So can you share a bit more about that perspective of universal truths?
19:54
Yeah, I mean, when you think about social media, it can be a funnel.
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And so if you just talk about your product all day long,
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you're not really going to attract new people to be interested.
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And so I think a lot about what is the bigger universal truth that your brand
20:08
speaks to and how can you bring people in through that? I think about...
20:12
Yeti is a good example. I always think about,
20:14
it's like it's not that they make really durable coolers and tumblers,
20:19
it's that they give you tools to fuel your next adventure.
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And so their social is talking about the adventures that you can go on thanks to
20:27
Yeti's products that are super durable, but they lead with that adventure.
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And I think that all brands should be thinking about:
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what does their product or experience empower people to do that then they
20:39
can speak to? And then there's humorous ways into that.
20:42
I think the West Elm example with the cups on the nightstand,
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there's the clothes that pile up at the end-of-bed bench.
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There's all these things that are universal, and from that universal truth,
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there's a lot of really fun ways in that is relevant to
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anyone who is in your industry or cares about your industry,
21:04
not just your product.
21:06
I think that kind of relates to arts and culture organizations as well.
21:09
Because we are so mission-driven,
21:11
I think sometimes we can get bogged down with trying to promote,
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trying to sell tickets. How do you think arts organizations-like museums,
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ballets,
21:19
theaters-can better showcase the sort of experience they offer on social media?
21:25
Yeah, I think that there are a few ways in for arts and cultural organizations.
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I think about, well, one is the more obvious experience of going to it.
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And so I think there's a lot of universal truths of going to a museum.
21:39
If you go with somebody else and there's one person who zooms ahead and you're
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far behind.
21:43
There's tons of these funny moments of when you go to a museum that you can
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think of, and how can organizations play into those types of universal truths?
21:50
And then I think there's ones that I've seen where...
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I think LACMA might've been the one to really start this a while ago with
21:58
their Snapchat.
21:59
And they would take universal truths but apply them to the artwork.
22:03
I think they were taking memes or just relatable type things,
22:07
but using the artwork to express them.
22:11
And I think that's an interesting way,
22:13
and I think the Whitney has done that as well,
22:15
is taking artwork and applying it to something that's happening in the cultural
22:19
zeitgeist is their art that reminds them of Brat and Charlie XCX.
22:23
There's ways in through art and I think that's another way to bring the art into
22:28
the current conversation.
22:32
A lot of the organizations that we work with have been around for tens,
22:36
sometimes hundreds of years. They are their brands.
22:39
I think often they can be scared to sort of dip their toe into some of these
22:43
more sort of risky content pieces.
22:47
Do you have any tips for how legacy institutions might work towards that?
22:51
Yeah, I think
22:54
bring the experience of going to these organizations to the internet and then
22:59
you can slowly build in like, "Hey,
23:01
when we tried this interview style that's not our usual 'trying to sell tickets'
23:06
style, it did really well.
23:08
Let's try this trend next that's a little bit more of a risk." And you kind of
23:13
ease in. For example, the Met,
23:15
they just interviewed what it is to be a guard at the Met.
23:18
That's really interesting. I've never heard that perspective.
23:21
The video did really well and it's just a simple sort of tiny mic,
23:24
little interview with a guard at the Met.
23:28
Also the Huntington Gardens that are here in Pasadena,
23:32
I think they have this really smelly flower that blooms and it's the
23:36
best time of year.
23:37
It's so fun to watch them live reporting that this thing is blooming and how
23:42
smelly it is.
23:43
And they interview people about how smelly it is and what it smells like.
23:46
And some of these organizations could be nervous that that would make people not
23:50
want to come. No, I want to smell this flower so badly now!
23:55
Is that the rotting meat flower? Is it the biggest flour in the world? Yeah.
23:59
Someone on the SEO team, Selia,
24:01
she recently got a subscription to Huntington Gardens and she was saying she
24:05
went to go and see that because they've got live reportings that it blooms once
24:09
every 12 years or something like that.
24:11
Something wild. And it's the best.
24:14
And I think that once you actually go and experience the place in person,
24:19
you're like, oh, I recognize that from their videos.
24:21
Or that's the person that I have loved following,
24:24
or that's the guard that was profiled by the Met.
24:27
And so I think by filming some of your content instead of building out some set
24:31
or feeling like it needs to feel super polished,
24:34
film it where people will actually be having their IRL
24:38
experience.
24:40
Yeah, for sure. And also sticking with it as well. One of the things [or]
24:45
advice from you recently I read was "stick with the bit." I'm really
24:50
getting into clown in LA. I don't know if anyone else knows this,
24:53
but LA has a huge clowning scene.
24:56
So I've been watching a bunch of clowning shows recently and they do a thing
24:59
where they'll keep doing the joke until it's funny.
25:03
And I love that idea of sticking with the bit.
25:05
Do you see a lot of brands start to take risks and then stop when their content
25:09
doesn't immediately resonate?
25:11
Yeah, I think that's a big issue and I get why that happens.
25:16
It doesn't feel good to post a flop. I've been there.
25:19
It's not fun and especially if it's something that you've worked hard to get
25:22
buy-in for.
25:23
But if you believe in an idea for a social series
25:27
or a new content franchise for your organization,
25:32
stick with it for a little and you never know when it might get picked up and
25:35
find the right audience.
25:36
And do things like tweaking the first five seconds or how can you tweak it to
25:40
then maybe help it find its audience? I think about when I was at Bon Appetit,
25:45
the show It's Alive was not a hit at first,
25:48
but then they just kept posting and figuring it out and then it found its
25:51
audience. And so I think with social media there's a feeling like, okay,
25:55
scrap it. We tried it once and it didn't work.
25:58
And I would love to see, treat it more like YouTube. Tweak it,
26:03
try it, keep at it. I don't know how Hot Ones did at first,
26:07
but that's a huge show now.
26:09
And so I think if you believe in the idea,
26:12
I encourage you to stick with it.
26:14
If you have a manager who goes into crisis management because a post doesn't do
26:17
well, that's a red flag on the manager. Posts are going to flop.
26:22
If you're taking risks on social, which you should be,
26:25
there's going to be things that don't perform.
26:27
Obviously it's different if the audience has a really negative sentiment towards
26:30
it, but if a post just simply doesn't do well, great.
26:35
No one saw it. You're good.
26:38
Yeah. Do you have any advice for people who might be dealing with that?
26:42
With pressure from managers?
26:45
I think it's easy to react really quickly to numbers and just see
26:50
red, bad, green, good. And there's so much more to that.
26:53
And so one of the big things that I've always done is with reporting,
26:57
less graphs and more editorializing.
27:01
Narratives.
27:02
I see this didn't do well,
27:02
but we really took a risk here and I'm really proud of the team for putting it
27:06
together. You can see how amazing the editing was.
27:08
We're going to try editing the first five seconds and see if that helps it and
27:13
put it up again. Editorialize more than just share numbers, I would say.
27:17
Awesome. So let's talk about assessing trends.
27:20
Earlier this year you released a list of brand social trends that you observed
27:24
in 2024. Can you dive into some of your favorites from that list?
27:28
One of the big things in this recent list was the word ownable.
27:34
We're living in a very trend-based social world right now.
27:37
TikTok has really helped with that. There's songs that if you've used them,
27:41
your post will do better. There's sounds and voiceover, all this kind of stuff.
27:44
And so I think always thinking about what's the ownable way into a trend that
27:49
could really set your organization apart.
27:53
Have you seen the trends where it's like copy pasta horny texts?
27:57
There's that style, and I've seen, I think MoMA PS1 did it.
28:02
I forgot what they were promoting with it, but they used that form.
28:04
I thought that was really interesting and funny for an arts organization to take
28:07
that most bottom-of-the-barrel type of text and turn it into-.
28:11
Lowbrow.
28:12
Lowbrow. So I thought that was really smart.
28:15
And just what are the twists that you can take on a format or a trend or if
28:19
you're an arts organization, is there a trend that people would say, oh,
28:22
they would never participate in that? To me, MoMA PS1, that's a good example.
28:27
And then you manipulate it or twist it in some way that feels really
28:32
ownable.
28:32
And so I think another example is if you look at NPR's
28:37
Planet Money on TikTok,
28:39
they have a really specific video editing style that's just so them that as soon
28:43
as you see the video, it's them. And if any brand tries to do that style,
28:47
they're copying them.
28:49
That's an ownable thing that your brand can really say is theirs.
28:53
And so I think with trends it's like, what's our ownable sort of way into them?
28:58
What trends are you seeing on the horizon for the second half of 2024?
29:02
I would say, you know... I would never have ever said this before,
29:06
but I think that LinkedIn is feeling really good right now.
29:10
I am very interested in LinkedIn.
29:12
I've been seeing numbers where videos are weirdly performing really well there
29:15
and I could see arts and culture organizations having a big audience there.
29:20
If you think, I mean, I also just think, thinking about LinkedIn,
29:23
it's-the same people who are on LinkedIn are the same people who scroll TikTok.
29:26
They just have a little bit of different user behavior on that platform.
29:29
And so are there ways to, I don't know, lighten LinkedIn up a little bit?
29:34
Make it not feel so stiff and where you just give company updates? But I dunno,
29:37
I've seen content performing really well there and I'm sort of curious to see
29:40
how brands maybe break the rules of what a traditional
29:45
LinkedIn post should be. For example,
29:47
the Met interviewing a guard who worked there. That could go on LinkedIn.
29:51
What makes that not worth putting on LinkedIn?
29:53
It's about an employee who works at this organization,
29:57
and so maybe you wouldn't typically think of that as a brand post that could go
30:00
on LinkedIn. It's a little bit too TikTok-y, short form video,
30:05
but we're seeing that short form video is actually performing quite well there.
30:08
And people scroll LinkedIn looking to be educated, to be entertained,
30:13
and a lot of great TikTok and Reels already do that.
30:17
So what's stopping you from testing posting that there?
30:22
Interesting. What brands do you follow that you think are doing a good job?
30:26
I love following the Getty Museum on Instagram. They do an amazing job.
30:30
The Whitney on Threads is really good. I follow the Met.
30:35
Milwaukee Public Library. I follow American Ballet Theater.
30:41
And of course the Huntington Gardens.
30:42
Talk about the Milwaukee Public Library. What do they do that's different?
30:46
They again lean into the universal truths of the experience
30:51
of a library and they have their librarians actually
30:56
doing skits. It makes me want to go visit that library.
31:00
And I think another piece of it is just the characters that can be in some of
31:04
these brands' accounts.
31:06
I think I want to go meet the librarian who I love following on that account,
31:11
or I want to go see the rat from the American Ballet
31:16
Theater. I've seen them in TikToks.
31:17
I want to see what they do for real on stage.
31:21
And so it kind of makes you invested in these characters on social that you then
31:25
want to experience and see in real life.
31:29
And I've never met a librarian who doesn't love being a librarian and talking
31:34
about being a librarian as well.
31:35
Totally.
31:36
Same with,
31:36
I have a background in zoology before I moved into marketing and every
31:41
scientist I ever met could talk for hours about their
31:46
nichest subject. I think there was,
31:49
I want to say it was a history museum.
31:51
They had a guy who did snail jokes and snail facts every
31:56
single week for a while in the pandemic.
31:59
And just videos where somebody's nerding out on something very specific is
32:03
really fascinating and fun to watch.
32:06
Yeah. It also reminds me a bit about the peek behind the curtains.
32:09
We have this phrase of,
32:10
"Your ordinary is your audience's extraordinary." There's
32:14
examples of Troilus and Cressida.
32:18
In the play they have a huge bloody scene.
32:21
I think that's the one where someone's eye is removed and they showed exactly
32:25
how that eye was removed and how they cleaned it every night and reset it the
32:28
next day.
32:28
Oh, that's amazing.
32:29
I love stuff like that.
32:30
That's amazing. I love that.
32:31
Maybe it was King Lear, I can't remember.
32:33
All the Shakespeare nerds who are listening to this are screaming at the podcast
32:36
right now, and I can hear them.
32:40
What do you think people misunderstand most about social media management for
32:43
brands?
32:44
A lot of people think that it's really fun
32:49
and we're just on our phone all the time,
32:51
and "how lucky you get to scroll..." I mean,
32:53
I remember a colleague saying that to me like, oh, you just scroll all day.
32:57
And while some of that's true-I do find it fun,
33:00
I obviously work in it for a reason-it's a lot of hard work.
33:03
It's really hard to reach audiences and it's a really,
33:06
really valuable function for a business.
33:09
And while the ROI isn't as numbers-driven as paid
33:14
social or email marketing,
33:18
it's so so important and so valuable. And so I dunno,
33:21
I just think that there's a lot of hard work and strategy that goes into it,
33:24
and it's not just as simple as pressing post.
33:26
Yeah.
33:27
How important is it for social media managers to be passionate about the brand
33:31
they represent?
33:33
I think that having an interest in the industry
33:38
or the organization that you are working for is
33:42
really, really important.
33:44
I say that I am good at social because I work with
33:49
brands where I love and am interested in what they're all
33:53
about. I loved food before I loved social media,
33:58
and I found social media as a way to extend that love.
34:02
And so I think that it doesn't have to be something you're an expert at,
34:06
but it has to be something that you're so curious about.
34:09
I think curiosity is the best quality in a social manager.
34:13
And so you're always looking for new ways in, new ways to tell a story.
34:17
And I think that being curious about the industry you're working in is
34:21
everything.
34:22
Yeah.
34:23
I think that resonates with a lot of our listeners because we work in arts
34:28
and culture for a reason. A lot of people come from,
34:32
especially in performing arts,
34:33
people come from performing backgrounds and work in this because they love this
34:38
industry.
34:38
I think the more we can demonstrate that in organic
34:43
social, the better time everyone's going to have.
34:46
Yeah,
34:46
that makes me think about a TikTok that I saw from American Ballet Theater,
34:50
which was just a video of ballet dancers and you could
34:55
just hear the tapping of the shoes on the stage,
34:58
and it was just this moment that only a social manager who knows the
35:03
arts and knows ballet would be able to see and see that's a good piece of
35:07
content. If I was to go film, I would be like, I don't hear that.
35:10
That's not that interesting to me. The social manager heard that,
35:14
thought that that was maybe ASMR-y in a way,
35:17
and people might want to hear this. And it's a huge video for them.
35:21
So I think that just goes to show that having the person who's behind the
35:25
camera, who's doing the social strategy,
35:27
being really interested and able to see things that maybe somebody else couldn't
35:30
is really important.
35:33
What is important for an organization to consider when hiring for their
35:36
marketing team?
35:37
Especially in roles that heavily focus on social media management?
35:42
I always focus on instincts, ideas.
35:47
I'm less focused on the technical side of things.
35:50
You can teach how to edit a video. You can teach how to write a caption.
35:54
You can teach how to use the scheduling tool. It's like,
35:57
did they come to the interview with excitement and ideas
36:02
and new ways in and accounts that they love to follow?
36:07
That to me is number one.
36:10
Yeah. And finally,
36:11
if you could broadcast one message to executive directors,
36:15
leadership teams, staff, and boards of thousands of arts organizations,
36:20
what would that message be?
36:22
I think it's to loosen up a little bit on social.
36:27
I think that there's, again, a feeling like if we show too much,
36:31
then people won't be incentivized to come.
36:34
Or if we loosen up too much, the prestige will be gone.
36:39
And I would say that to me,
36:44
and to I'm sure a lot of potential customers
36:48
or viewers younger than me,
36:51
that is going to be the thing that makes them want to come.
36:55
Organic social media can be that entry point for a lot of people
37:00
and
37:03
approaching those platforms in a way that feels like how people want to consume
37:07
there, I think is really important.
37:09
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Rachel.
37:13
Where can people sign up for your newsletter or hear more about your work?
37:17
You can sign up for Link ln Bio at
37:20
www.milkkarten.net,
37:25
and you can follow me on social @milkkarten.
37:28
Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.
37:31
Thank you for having me.
37:41
Before we say goodbye, let's wrap things up with CI-lebrity Sightings.
37:45
Here's some of our favorite news stories about CI clients in 60 seconds or less.
37:49
First,
37:50
Taproot News cited Edmonton Symphony Orchestra's efforts to engage the under-17
37:54
set in the article,
37:55
"How arts organizations are working to attract younger audiences." Nice work,
38:00
ESO! Next, the team at Observer caught up with Nicholas Baume,
38:04
Public Art Fund's executive and artistic director,
38:08
to discuss the state of public art in New York. Our favorite quote? "Powerful,
38:12
relevant public art is essential in fostering an authentic sense of community."
38:18
Well said.
38:19
Chicago media company New City interviewed Goodman Theater's lighting supervisor
38:23
Gina Patterson for their nerd-tastic article, "Let there be luminance:
38:28
How lighting designers show us the show." And finally,
38:31
the Apollo was announced as an honoree for this year's Kennedy Center honors for
38:35
its vital role in cultivating new artists and serving as a catalyst for social
38:40
and civic advocacy.
38:42
Please join us in congratulating these organizations and check out the articles
38:46
linked in our show notes. Got a story that deserves a shout out?
38:49
Tag us on social and let us know.
39:03
Thank you for listening to CI to Eye.
39:05
This episode was edited and produced by Karen McConarty and co-written by Karen
39:09
McConarty and myself, Dan Titmuss.
39:11
Stephanie Medina and Jess Berube are CI to Eye's designers and video editors,
39:16
and all work together to create CI's digital content.
39:19
Our music is by whoisuzo. If you enjoyed today's episode,
39:23
please take a moment to rate us or leave a review.
39:26
A nice comment goes a long way in helping other people discover CI to Eye and
39:30
hear from experts in the arts and beyond. If you didn't enjoy today's episode,
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39:54
Until next time, stay nerdy.