From Bergamo to Turin, passing through Ariccia, we are becoming involved in more and more cultural marketing and cultural management events in the second half of 2016.
The most recent flag on the map (for now) has been placed on Imola, where we’ve spent three days over the last three weeks exploring communication and marketing tools in this sector with the majority of the professionals working in the culture sector at the municipal council.
Working together with Oriana Orsi, curator of the Musei Civici, we developed a course divided into three separate meetings, starting with a general overview of cultural marketing, which gradually narrowed the focus onto digital strategy and social media management as follows:
- Day 1: cultural communication and marketing – from strategy to identifying goals and targets
- Day 2: social networks: which channels for which audience?
- Day 3: digital strategy: from choosing channels to planning contents
During each meeting we presented some national and international best practices, shared support tools and worked in groups to apply the theory to tangible targets. For example, boosting visitor numbers to Palazzo Tozzoni andmaintaining or increasing the audience size at a cultural and culinary event of great importance to the city of Imola: the Baccanale. Another group worked on promoting theatre activities outside the summer season at the Teatro Stignani, another on publicising the opening of a new space for the Biblioteca Comunale and, lastly, Scuola di Musica and the children’s library at Casa Piani simulated the development of a shared strategy for gaining the loyalty of a younger audience, ensuring that these cultural institutions will not be abandoned by teenagers.
How did it end? We all felt enriched and more committed. We learned from the questions asked by our participants, who always inspire us to think about alternative solutions. Those who attended our course were very attentive and actively involved. They promised us that they will carry on working on the development of new strategies, increasingly looking to ensure that they can be shared and apply to the different fields involved. We will continue to monitor them, giving them feedback and answers, supporting them in their creation of a publishing plan that will enable them to calibrate the type, form and alternation of the huge amount of content in the best possible way.
