The 2amt blog is taking a little longer to post, but we still have our Welcome Wednesday guest blog!  Please join me in welcoming David Dombrosky from InstantEncore.  David has been a champion for educating the arts industry about mobile technology.  He is our guest speaker for our webinar this Friday, Noon ET.  Currently he has been authoring posts for the InstantEncore blog about why mobile technology is important today and how we can use this technology for building our audiences (topic of our webinar too).  To give you a little taste before the webinar, here is one of his latest posts.  Please let us know what you think by replying, and I hope you sign up for our webinar to hear David first hand discuss this topic!

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Engaging Mobile Audiences – Part I: Do You Have To?

by David Dombrosky

You’ve got a website, and you’re using social media to engage online audiences.  Do you really have to engage audiences via mobile devices?

In 2009, researchers at Morgan Stanley released a report forecasting that by 2014 more people will be accessing web content via mobile devices than by laptop or desktop computers.

By the end of 2011, we can see the evidence of this prediction coming to fruition when we look at the average number of minutes per day Americans spend on internet browsing vs. using mobile apps.

So if we acknowledge that people are starting to use the mobile internet as much or more than desktop internet, then it only stands to reason that we need to think about the mobile internet user’s experience.

When smartphone users go to standard websites, they have an experience that is not optimized for them.  The standard website is reduced to fit on screen so that nearly any text on the site is illegible.  The user has to pinch, expand, and slide the screen around in order to read the text and navigate to the content they seek. It makes for a frustrating experience.

Mobile websites and mobile apps isolate the content that is most likely to be of interest to mobile audiences and display it in a manner that is optimized for smaller, touch-based screens.  If artists and arts organizations wish to remain relevant as mobile internet usage continues to grow, they must provide content to mobile audiences in a manner that is designed to provide them with an optimal experience. [:O)]

David Dombrosky brings over fifteen years of experience in arts management and technology to his role as Chief Marketing Officer for InstantEncore. He frequently writes and presents on the uses of technology within arts organizations, most recently for the National Arts Marketing Project, Technology in the Arts, Performing Arts Exchange, Americans for the Arts, TEDxMichiganAve, and The Association of American Cultures Conference. Prior to joining the InstantEncore team, David established an arts and technology consultancy, taught graduate courses in arts management at Carnegie Mellon University, directed Carnegie Mellon’s Center for Arts Management and Technology, and spent eight years at the Southern Arts Federation designing and managing regional and national programs in the visual, performing, media and literary arts. In 2007, Americans for the Arts honored his service to the field with its Emerging Leader Award. David holds a M.A. in Communication Studies as well as B.A. degrees in Psychology and Speech Communications from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his partner and serves on the board of the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture.

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Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza

Audience Development Specialists

https://www.buildmyaudience.com

“Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners.”
~James Stewart

Join us for our next webinar:
March 16th – Noon ET
Working with Mobile Technology to Develop Your Audience
With the rapid adoption of web-enabled cell phones, smartphones and tablet computers, what options are available to arts professionals who want to engage their audiences via mobile devices? How can artists and organizations implement these options cost effectively without taking focus away from the art?

Shoshana Fanizza, Audience Development Specialists
Co-hosted with David Dombrosky, Chief Marketing Officer, InstantEncore
Co-produced with David Weuste, Rosebrook Classical

To Register: Click Here! 

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