Ideas

Picture it: An audience member searches for tickets to your organization’s concert or production but can't find your official site page easily on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

This, unfortunately, is common for non-profit organizations. So, what can you do to ensure your organization outranks the competition? Implement a holistic search engine optimization (SEO) strategy!

Just ask McCallum Theatre, a non-profit performing arts organization in Palm Desert, CA, who faced a similar challenge despite leveraging social media and Google advertising efforts to promote their upcoming season programming. We identified the missing piece of their marketing puzzle: a robust search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

Search engine optimization (SEO) has a reputation for being overly technical, but some of the most impactful optimizations rely on user-centric content creation. Adopting a search-first mindset for your website content can increase the volume and quality of website traffic.

Combining keyword research and AI writing tools, we helped Manhattan Neighborhood Network turn their blog into an upper-funnel dream that directly increased impressions and clicks to their website.

Let’s start by acknowledging that SEO content creation might seem like an endless task or writing blog article after blog article. What if we told you that in 2023 and beyond, SEO doesn’t have to be hard if you approach it in the right way?

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…annual holiday programming! Whether it’s The Nutcracker or A Christmas Carol, nearly every arts organization has a yearly tradition that their audience anticipates year after year. And while traditional events are a great way to engage your patrons, you know that using the same digital marketing tactics each year should not be a tradition—iteration is everything!

When you hear the word “blog,” it may evoke the late 90s or early 2000s. In those heady days of the internet, it seemed like everyone, and their dog had a blog they used to change the world.

But what if we told you that blogs are not only still relevant but are also often underutilized? What if we told you a blog could be more than just the centerpiece of the 2009 Meryl Streep and Amy Adams foodie feature, Julie & Julia? What if we told you that blogs could supercharge your SEO efforts and powerfully drive organic traffic?

Creating blog posts focused on what people are searching for will drive users directly to the blog article in question, straight from the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). These types of blogs will introduce new users to your organization. So, how do you get started? We're here to help you!

The past two years have brought turmoil to us as individuals, digital marketers, and arts supporters. Our industry has faced an incredible amount of uncertainty and financial strain, while the happenings of the world around us have taken an emotional toll on our hearts. And yet, we’ve stuck to it. We’ve persevered. Why? Because we know the power of our industry. We know that the arts have the ability to change the way people see the world and their place in it, and that is undeniably worth it.

The arts help us heal from our history, even beyond the past two years. The arts help us remember the importance of connection and regain inspiration amidst the turmoil. The arts make this world a better place. So, we push—the world needs us to.

As we rebuild and reimagine the possibilities of our extraordinary sector, abundance is ripe to think big and beyond what we’ve been able to before, to disrupt the status quo, and to see new potential in our digital strategies.

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.