Ideas

Email marketing and search engine marketing (SEM). As marketers, you know them both as vital digital marketing channels, and at first glance, one could argue that they don’t have a lot in common. But as you dig deeper, you’ll find these two channels have a lot more in common than you’d think.

Pop quiz: what do you think is the second biggest search engine? Obviously, the top spot is taken by the behemoth that is Google, and for a good reason. Its search engine is strong, and it makes a ton of money by selling ads at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

The second biggest search engine isn’t Bing or Yahoo—it’s YouTube. You read that correctly—it’s YouTube! 

You might not think of YouTube as a search engine since it’s primarily a video/social platform. But anything that uses an algorithm to search a database for a query and display relevant listings can be considered a “search engine.” Any time a search engine is used, we can optimize our content so that it performs well.

March 2020 feels like decades ago, but it was just one year ago the U.S. went into lockdown. We released a blog post to help arts marketers navigate these uncharted waters, but it was uncertain where this pandemic would lead us.

Throughout the course of a year, we saw the sheer resilience of arts administrators in the face of crisis. We pivoted to digital programming to bring art into our audiences' homes. We officially want to discard the word ‘pivot’ from our vocabulary. We explored new ways to keep our audiences engaged. But most of all, we were consistently reminded just how passionate and inventive the arts and cultural community can be.

Hi, CI! is our monthly series featuring the best team we know - the Capacity Interactive team! You will learn more about the people who help arts organizations market smarter. This month, we’re featuring one of our Senior Search Analysts who loves all things ballet and dance, has a newfound passion and talent for pottery, and brings her invaluable teaching skills to work every single day.

CI to Eye is a podcast for arts leaders who want to reach their full potential. Each episode is created to help you become better at your job so you can help the arts move forward.

Ask the Industry features advice from arts marketers in their own words. We hope you that it will spark new ideas for your organization.

This month, we’re asking, “What’s your advice for an organization looking to start and maintain a blog?”

Calvin Dotsey (Houston Symphony), Jeff Fickes (Seattle Shakespeare Company), and Krystina Tran (Stanford Live) discuss everything from how to feasibly create blog content on a regular basis, to the different types of audiences they write for, and the tools they use to keep everything in line.

The Arts Industry Digital Marketing Benchmark Study is available for download and this sixth edition holds a ton of new data to help you market smarter. We rethought our approach to make sure we’re giving you the metrics and key performance indicators that can fuel conversation about growth and help you make informed decisions. It’s double the length of previous versions, since the data’s cut in a couple new ways. Here’s a guide to help you get the most out of it.

At Capacity Interactive, we work with nearly two hundred arts and cultural organizations and have the privilege of tackling challenges in the digital marketing realm with them every day.

Certain questions come up again and again across all organization shapes and sizes, and that inspired us to retool our benchmark. Some of the toughest questions for organizations involve where to put their money, how to staff their teams, and how to set priorities when there is always more to do.

Honestly, we get it...talking about SEO and website tracking can be a bit like talking about the plumbing in a house. We all know it’s necessary- vital! But, who has time when it’s so much fun to pore over Pinterest boards about decor. Here’s a story that will make you turn a loving eye towards your digital plumbing and ensure your marketing designs don’t get soaked by a burst pipe.