Communications
The Paper Trail
What are the dos and don’ts for the look and feel of your print? and How can arts organisations make the most of print distribution? Angus White from Direct Distribution along with Fiona Garry from Tartan Ink facilitated an information-packed discussion on what role print plays today, in the digital age at October’s #1stWed. Here’s what you need to know…
Celebrating Diversity with our team
We all see the world differently and that’s a good thing. Sharing ideas helps us grow as individuals and as a collective group. Our ‘Learn with Us week’ series has been all about celebrating the diverse nature within the arts and culture world – diversity in our audience, diversity in our message and the rich diversity […]
SEO Best Practice
It’s day 4 of our Learn from Us Week series. Today the topic is SEO Best Practice. You may be surprised to learn that you are already well on your way. Let us help you to understand SEO and how to streamline your own approach with confidence. What is SEO Engine Optimisation? Is the implementation of strategy and […]
Content Hacks for the Win
When the imperative for innovation is constant, how can you keep things fresh and still deliver on your content strategy? We’ve got tips.
Social Media Engagement
Get some digital skills and drills that will hopefully send shock-waves through your social media channels and set up your organisation in flashing neon lights. Has your Facebook engagement dropped? Wondering how you can better engage with your fans? Look no further, help is at hand!
Getting more from Google Analytics
Day 1 of our Learn from Us Week series. Today the topic is getting better with Google Analytics. How can your business change and change again fast with these top tips.
The Learning Week Audience Development Series
The Learning Week series is an opportunity to open up to fresh ways of thinking from global audience development expert Matt Lehrman.
We’re on Facebook!
Here are some top tips that we’ve found useful on Facebook so far #sharingiscaring 😄
Families Population Profiles: The Essentials
There are over six hundred thousand families with children living in Scotland and many of them are looking for positive, enriching family experiences that they can share.
Live from your mobile!
Streaming video has gone mobile, just like everything else in the digital world. Now it is a viable marketing option for businesses of all sizes. Learn how and why you might want to use live streaming for audience engagement.
Augmented Reality: May’s First Wednesday
May’s First Wednesday for Culture Republic Partners explored augmented reality. Trevor Jones and David Oxley of Creativtek explained how arts organisations can use the technology to connect with their audiences and boost engagement.
Podcast production
How do you get your audience to lend you their ears and listen to your story? For more and more brands today, podcasts are the answer. For the second in our series of Know How events we were joined by expert trainers at Inner Ear who showed us to create a podcast.
How to get started with Marketing Automation: April’s First Wednesday
Marketing Automation allows you to communicate with your clients in ways that are responsive, and build trust and loyalty amongst your users. But how does it work, and how do you get started? For April’s First Wednesday we invited digital marketing experts from Whitespace to show us how.
‘Accessibility is everything, but so is communication’
The Glasgow Refugee Asylum Migrant Network (GRAMNet) film series is a celebration of diversity in Scotland. We spoke to Poppy Kohner, who co-ordinates the series along with Rebecca Kay, to find out more about the aims behind the project and how they attract such a varied audience.
The recipe for success in 140 characters
According to the latest research from Culture Republic 95 percent of Scotland’s arts organisations are now active on Twitter. But how do you make the most of your tweets and ensure that your content stands out? For the first in our series of Know How events we invited Stephanie Lindsay, Head of Marketing at Dog, to show us how.
Podcast – Building Youth Participation in Scotland’s Arts
This month the Culture Republic podcast is looking at how Scotland’s arts organisations are connecting with young people. Ageing is something we all do, so it cuts right across other kinds of categories like race or ethnicity, income levels or geography. Working with young people means reaching out to people who are growing up and becoming more independent along with their family, teachers and carers.
Is your website working hard enough? February’s First Wednesday
When it comes to improving the performance of a website, finding where to start is often the hardest part of the process. At February’s First Wednesday Brian Tait took us through some of the most common questions and issues that trigger thoughts of a new website.
What’s the plan Stan? 2016 marketing calendars to plan your work
At the start of the year, tactical marketers will be looking for opportunities and inspiration to liven up the year’s marketing plan. Look no further as these resources will bring you a bit of both.
Older People Population Profiles: The Essentials
In 2011 there were one million people of pensionable age in Scotland, and that number is growing. Our Population Profile on older audiences provides facts, figures and case studies to support arts organisations working to engage Scotland’s older population.
How to REALLY use Google Analytics
At our second Marketers’ Masterclass we were joined by Brian Tait, Founder and Director of Aillum Limited. This practical, hands-on session provided an overview of some of the more advanced, and often under used, features and tools available within Google Analytics.
Podcast – Reaching Out to Scottish Audiences with Disabilities
January’s podcast looks at how Scottish arts organisations are serving audiences with disabilities and what you can learn from some of the great practice that’s taking place across the country.
Cultural Marketing in 2015: four trends from around the world
We highlight four big themes that influenced arts marketing practice across Scotland and beyond in 2015, together with examples of the inspired and inspiring campaigns that emerged in response to them – at home and further afield.
Embedding equalities in the arts: Signdance Collective
Signdance Collective (SDC) have an impressive track record when it comes to access, inclusion and cultural diversity. We spoke to Isolte Avila, Dance Director at SDC, to find out more about how the organisation has managed to embed these principles in their work.
Horizon 2016 – five digital marketing trends to watch
As audiences become more digitally dependent audience engagement practice will need to keep evolving in order to stay relevant. Read our top five digital trends for 2016.
Google, Facebook and Twitter 2015 roundup for marketers
The big three digital companies have been busy innovating, so don’t get too comfortable. Even if you think you know what you’re doing on Facebook, Twitter and Google make sure you keep up to date.
Deprivation Population Profile: The Essentials
Deprivation happens when people or places face a series of problems including unemployment, poor education, low income, poor housing, high crime or ill health. These PDF fact files are designed to help you understand and connect with socially excluded audiences in Scotland.
A Masterclass in Digital Engagement
At our Marketers’ Masterclass we were joined by Jasper Visser, who shared how arts organisations can refine their approach to digital engagement and make their online efforts work better.
Culture Republic secures funding from Creative Scotland
Culture Republic has received a welcome boost for the year end having been selected as one of five development agencies to secure guaranteed funding from Creative Scotland for 2016/17.
Visual Arts Scotland: grow your audience with our new research project
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This new pilot project to map, measure and grow audiences for museums and galleries in Scotland launches in January 2016. Now’s the time to get involved! Start the New Year with new audience insights, and compare your visitor profile with peer venues throughout the UK.
Mapping Scotland’s Audiences
We’ve combined data from the Scottish Household Survey, Scotland Census and TGI Surveys to create an interactive map that reveals at a glance the differences in demography and cultural engagement across Scotland’s 32 Local Authority areas.
Embedding equalities in the arts: The Fruitmarket Gallery
Creative Scotland has asked that all Regularly Funded Organisations should have an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion plan in place for April 2016. The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh set up their action plan in February 2014, and so we spoke to the Gallery’s Equality Officer Caitlin Page, to find out what we could learn from their approach.
Email marketing: what we learnt at November’s First Wednesday
November’s First Wednesday for Culture Republic partners was all about email marketing. Stephanie Lindsay of Dog Digital explained how creative and well planned email campaigns can produce significant results and be a complimentary channel for your marketing mix.
Celebrating partnership with Creative Lives
At the latest Creative Lives meeting, participants came together to share community focused practice. The examples highlighted some of the inspirational partnership work taking place across Edinburgh today.
Transcript – Access All Areas
Electronic notes taken at the Access All Areas conference 29 October 2015 – this transcript is an encapsulation of the day but not a verbatim transcript.
New Partnership for Wider Engagement – Access All Areas
This video features the first Access All Areas breakout session, New Partnerships for Wider Engagement. Chaired by Culture Republic Board member Sue Crossman and featured short talks from: Kevin Harrison of Artlink Central, Jackie Shearer of Platform and Dr. Rami Ousta of BEMIS Scotland.
Access All Areas
Video from the Access All Areas conference is now available for delegates to revisit and for those who weren’t able to attend to benefit from the archived content.
New Approaches to Community Engagement – Access All Areas
This video features the second Access All Areas breakout session, New Approaches to Community Engagement. Chaired by Culture Republic Board member Nick Parr and featured short talks from: Sarah Drummond of Snook, Amanda Brown of Glasgow Life, Jan-Bert van den Berg of Artlink Edinburgh.
How digitally capable are Scotland’s arts?
Culture Republic is undertaking an ambitious piece of research looking at public facing operational functions carried out by arts organisations – things like whether or not an arts organisations’ website is optimised for mobile browsing, if they offer online ticket sales or if they are doing online fundraising.
Accessing the Arts – October’s First Wednesday
Disabled Access Day is all about highlighting the accessibility of your venue, encouraging more people to visit and learning what you could do better. Antonia Lee-Bapty of Euan’s Guide was at October’s First Wednesday to talk about how arts and cultural venues can get involved, and why they should!
Making a Splash with online sales
Using targeted social media Pauline exceeded her sales targets and built a loyal social media fan base that has put her freelance artist’s enterprise on firm financial footing. Here’s how she did it.
Efficient target marketing
Asking the right questions and gathering useful information is key to creating efficient market segmentation. PatronBase were our Future of CRM & Ticketing event sharing their knowledge and experiences of audience segmentation for target marketing and getting the best use out of CRM systems.
Implementing new data systems
Introducing any new system of data capture and management can feel overwhelming. Circle Interactive will be at our upcoming CRM event to discuss how to avoid the common challenges of database implementation.
CRM and the future of fundraising
Membership schemes can offer a sustainable funding stream, build a community of supporters and provide a source of regular repeat visitors for arts organisations. Successful membership schemes, however, need a strong CRM strategy behind them.
Is print dead? August’s First Wednesday
Historically, print has always been a major part of marketing spend in the cultural sector. But does it still have a place in the new digital age?
Introducing the Culture Republic Conference: ACCESS ALL AREAS
Access All Areas is a one-day conference from Culture Republic, bringing speakers from across the UK to show that when cultural leaders, artists and entrepreneurs act in the interests of everyone, creative inspiration and engagement grows.
Edinburgh | 29 October | #CRConf15 | #OneAudience
Innovative approaches to accessibility in the arts sector
This July we attended an AMA network meeting looking at accessibility in the arts. The session highlighted some of the creative ways Scottish organisations are responding to the challenges of serving a diverse audience.
Access advice for arts organisations from Euan’s Guide
According to Euan’s Guide, many arts and cultural organisations are already doing a good job of making their spaces accessible to a range of audiences. Unfortunately, in many cases, arts organisations are doing a poor job of letting these audiences know about the resources that are in place to serve them.
UX Matters: key learnings from July’s First Wednesday
Designing products and services based on what your users need has a huge impact on customer engagement and satisfaction. For July’s First Wednesday we invited Wojtek Kutyla and Jason Kennedy of Storm ID to talk about the philosophy behind user-centred design and its potential business value to arts & cultural organisations
VIDEO Intro to CRM (Thinking Out of the Box 2 of 5)
This video summarises Thinking Out of the Box’s first session of the day. It introduces and demystifies data collection techniques.
VIDEO Realistic Data Collection (Thinking Out of the Box 5 of 5)
The Realistic Data Collection video includes a workshop session on data collection techniques and highlights some of the pitfalls that can result from poor data collection or flawed assumptions.
VIDEO Data Utopia (Thinking Out of the Box 4 of 5)
The key issues in Data Utopia were how arts organisations could put the data they are holding to work, how and why to join up data.
VIDEO Dispelling Myths and Defining CRM (Thinking Out of the Box 3 of 5)
This video highlights that CRM is really about the audiences that arts organisations are serving. It is about people not about systems or technology.
Thinking Out of the Box event videos
Five videos summarising the content from Thinking Out of the Box, Culture Republic’s CRM and ticketing masterclass with Andrew Thomas of The Ticketing Institute.
VIDEO Thinking Out of the Box Trailer (Thinking Out of the Box 1 of 5)
A three minute video that summarises the key issues and learnings from Culture Republic’s Thinking Out of the Box event. It includes perspectives from the participants and highlights from the day’s events.
Top three tips for data cleansing – June’s First Wednesday
Data is one of your most precious resources and assets – but only if you look after it and make sure you keep it in good working order. June’s First Wednesday was all about cutting out the noise that surrounds data marketing, and making the right decisions to keep your database in order.
Marketing that Works – the brains behind the campaigns
On 12 May 2015 Scotland’s marketers heard from six leading practitioners who shared the stories of their success, provided behind-the-scenes insights into the campaigns they ran and the tactics they used to achieve the right results.
Remarketing & retargeting for cultural organisations – May’s First Wednesday
For May’s First Wednesday we were joined by Stephanie Lindsay of Dog Digital, who spoke to Culture Republic partners about remarketing and retargeting for cultural organisations.
Uist Wool
This year Uist Wool ran a CPD course offering participants in-depth understanding of work practices in the wool production sector. As part of the course Culture Republic delivered a bespoke workshop focusing on communications development, channel marketing and storytelling.
Coming soon to a venue near you – four workshops from Culture Republic
We’re delighted to introduce our 2015 programme of practical touring workshops, bringing essential training and networking opportunities to a venue near you.
Thinking Out of the Box
Our recent CRM and ticketing event was to convened a full day event to look practically at customer relationship management systems use to find ways for organisations to use the systems and information that they already have better.
Unexpected bedfellows – how 80s hair metal and a Scottish library twitter account are the perfect combination
When we look at the Orkney Library’s Twitter statistics in context its clear that what they are doing is working. The Orkney Library account is significantly out performing the average Scottish arts or cultural Twitter account.
Six questions for the man behind Orkney Library’s Twitter success
After looking into Orkney Library’s phenomenal performance on Twitter we wanted to know more. We reached out to the library’s Tweeter-In-Chief Stewart Bain to understand the library’s motivation as well as learn more about what Twitter success means for the library.
Staying ahead of the social media curve
Social Ogilvy were the company that correctly predicted Facebook Zero in 2014. So when they shared their 2015 predictions, top tips and insights, we tuned right in …
Shaping the future with Creative Lives
On 14 January 2015 Culture Republic hosted a session with the Creative Lives participants, inviting them to feed back on their experience of the project and to take an active role in shaping the vision for Creative Lives’ future development as we head into 2015.
This Cheat is a Winner
If you’re a marketer or an audience engagement professional who uses social media to connect with your community you should check out the Social Media Cheat Sheet.
New Mosaic For The New Scotland – February’s First Wednesday
If you want to understand your audience, you need to understand the population that your audience is drawn from. February’s First Wednesday event for Culture Republic partners explored the new Mosaic classifications, revealing how getting to know the new groups and types can help you design your programming and activity to meet and match the needs of specific population groups around you.
Event Evaluation 360 for events & festivals
In response to increasing demand, we’ve created the Event Evaluation 360 package: an affordable four-part research solution developed with the specific needs of Scotland’s events and festival producers in mind.
Top trends in digital engagement for 2015
Audience engagement professionals have seen a range of new tools and techniques come into their field over the past several years. 2015 will be the year to consolidate skills and start implementing new practice to get better results for your efforts.
The Centre for the Moving Image’s Understanding Cinema Programme
Understanding Cinema is a creative learning project from the Centre for the Moving Image in Edinburgh. The project worked with almost 500 young people between the ages of 9 – 19 in eight Scottish local authorities.
National Theatre of Scotland’s Tin Forest Digital Engagement
The Tin Forest was one of the National Theatre of Scotland’s (NTS) most ambitious projects to date. Part of the Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme, it invited the people of Glasgow to retell the city’s story and to reimagine its future.
Glasgow Life’s Festivals 2014 Digital Marketing Case Study
In summer 2014 Glasgow hosted the Commonwealth Games. In parallel with the Games an ambitious line up of cultural events and activities was programmed, supported by creative digital communications from the team behind the scenes.
Video Content Creation Resources
All of AmbITion Scotland’s video creation resources gathered in one handy place, to support you in getting started with video production.
No box office? No problem.
Catherine Wheels is a great example of a touring company that have found effective ways of getting to know their audiences without having their own box office.
Cross Channel Communications – September’s First Wednesday
Julie McGarvey of 3×1 Public Relations on effective cross channel communications and the importance of message consistency.
Fresh Thinking from #FreshCreations
The West Dunbartonshire Youth Arts Hub, #FreshCreations, is getting young people intimately involved in the devising and delivering of their own youth arts activities from the project’s outset.
Content Matters
Success in content-driven marketing comes to organisations whose communications campaigns concentrate on the channels where they know their customers are active, and make the very most of those channels through the creation or curation of content that’s developed with the channel in mind.
Festival facts: spotlight on East Neuk Festival
We talk to Svend Brown, Artistic Director of the East Neuk Festival, about audience data and what it means for him.
Digital strategy tools – planning for better online communication
If you want to get started right away on building an effective digital strategy here are three top online tools to start with.
Starting Up a Twitter Strategy – how the Tate did it
The Tate are often used as a best practice case study in how to connect a communications strategy to digital practice and effective analytics . But even the best practitioners still have to get started somewhere.
Timespan – Digital Engagement in Sutherland
Sutherland’s Timespan Museum and Arts Centre is leading the way in digital audience engagement practice. Learn about two inspiring recent projects.
More than 1000 words – visual engagement on social channels
MoMA PS1’s communications director tell arts organisations how to use visual materials on social channels make connections with their audiences online.
Not just bums on seats – CRM & Ticketing masterclass
Everything you always wanted to know about the power and potential for customer relationship management tools from the experts at the Ticketing Institute.
What’s the chemical formula for clever?
The Periodic Table of Content Marketing resource breaks down the basic components of Content Marketing into seven categories – mix and match elements from the table to create the perfect marketing plan for you.
Who lives in a house like this?
Accessing really good quality, reliable information about the population around your organisation or venue is not as difficult as you might think.