Visibility

Elevating the visibility of artists and cultural awareness in our community

Our job as the city’s arts agency is to heighten the awareness and visibility of artists and cultural organizations in the greater Los Angeles community. We have been engaged in efforts like this for decades through curating and publishing festival guides and heritage month celebration guides. As more people expect to receive information online, we work to digitize our communication efforts by disseminating events based information related to Los Angeles-based arts and cultural community. Beyond delivering events information, we could use social media to participate in larger public discourse and advocacy-oriented discussion concerning the role of arts and culture in the local landscape and economy.

Raising Awareness and Visibility Across Geography

We can measure how well we spread information in spatial terms. The geographical distribution of our information reach can tell us how far content that we’ve generated about LA’s arts and culture has across geographical and physical barriers.

DCA maintains two Facebook pages, one for the department’s general informational needs and another one for spreading the awareness of the special initiative LA Islam Arts. Comparing the two Facebook pages, the LA Islam Arts page received higher reach in the past 4 months than the DCA page received in the last 6 months.

The LA Islam Arts Initiative Facebook page has information reach that touches 42 countries and 233 cities across the world.

 

 

Within the United States the Initiative information on Facebook has reached 31 states and 141 unique cities. The total people of 102,170 people were reached in the United States.

In the City of Los Angeles alone 58,473 people were reached.

 

 

 

The DCA Facebook page information has reached 74 countries, 625 cities in the world, and 96,813 individual users.

DCA’s departmental page on Facebook has reached 43 States, 417 unique cities, and 88,717 people in the United States.

 

 

Within Los Angeles 58,085 people were reached.

Recommendation:

When drafting a social media plan, consider the target audience of the information. While some programs and initiatives call for an international audience, others may target a local audience such as the department’s authorizers. Work with DCA programming staff to reach the target audience by identifying local or global partners on social media or using a hashtag with meaningful place-based information. Awareness and visibility are contextual and require thoughtful planning for content development and distribution channels.

 

Twitter Parties as Hubs for Advocacy

The highest reaching moments in the @Culture_LA data history were during the various Twitter parties. (Read about the reach results of two exemplary Twitter parties.) These “parties” are hosted by a group or an individual who poses, in real time, questions that pertain to a pre-established topic to their Twitter community, using a hashtag over a predetermined period of time. To solicit participation and response, the host spreads the word about the event and asks interested users to register ahead of time. Considerable and well-planned coordination certifies good participation. Twitter parties usually yield heightened clusters of participation with a large quantity of retweets, favorites, and replies. For that reason, the reach of content during a Twitter party can be very high.

The #CityLab2014 Twitter party provided @Culture_LA with significantly higher reach — of over 1 million retweet reach — than any other day since the beginning of DCA’s presence on Twitter.

Retweet Reach

Highlighted posts from our participation of the #CityLab2014 Twitter Party include:

In these posts, we highlight the significance of access to creativity, the relationship between placemaking and civic engagement, the value of entrepreneurialism in local creative economy. All of these values reinforce DCA’s mission in supporting quality arts and cultural experiences in the city.

Recommendation:

When resources allow, participate in Twitter parties hosted by members of DCA’s digital community. This will give DCA opportunity to highlight the department’s public mission and arts advocacy. Pay attention to social media events that pertain to DCA’s programming such as placemaking, civic innovation, creative and local economy. Consult DCA staff to plan a strategy that can highlight DCA’s work and align our mission with the work of our community partners and the value of the arts in larger civic conversations.

Work with DCA staff to identify potential topics for hosting a DCA-initiated Twitter party. This may coincide with an existing programming or marketing campaign or the launch of a website and commissioned art. It is also worth considering adopting the format of a Twitter party for crowd-sourcing input from our partners and community.