During SMartCamp (Social Media Art Camp), nonprofits, artists, arts organizations, bloggers, strategists, and a bunch of other really really interesting people gathered to talk about the intersection of Arts, Culture, and Technology.

As part of SMartCamp, we also ran a 4 hour Social Media Bootcamp. The workshop, which was limited to 20 participants (broken up into smaller groups of 5), allowed attendees to develop the foundations of a social media strategy, or workshop an existing social media strategy in a small group setting with one-on-one support from workshop leaders.

The workshop leaders included
Farra Trompeter
Maryann Devine
Damien Basile
and me, Jaki Levy.

Each facilitator gave a short 10 minute presentation, and then led a conversation within the small groups. All 4 presentations are included below (for even more SMartCamp presentations, go here).

We also took participants through a series of questions and shared resources (which were gathered by all the facilitators in a google doc). For your reference, I’ve also posted those resources below.

Enjoy!

GENERAL RESOURCES

NTEN: We Are Media
http://www.wearemedia.org
Case Foundation: Gear Up for Giving
http://www.casefoundation.org/social-media-tutorials
Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media
http://beth.typepad.com
The A-to-Z of Social Media for Brands
http://econsultancy.com/blog/3965-the-a-z-of-social-media-for-brands
5 Must-Read Social Media Case Studies
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/5-must-read-social-media-marketing-studies/
A List of Articles on Social Media
http://www.arrowrootmedia.com/tag/social-media/

Audiences

Social Technographics
http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2010/01/conversationalists-get-onto-the-ladder.html
http://www.arrowrootmedia.com/2009/05/10/the-pyramid-of-engagement/
The Conversation Prism http://www.theconversationprism.com
Social Media Demographics http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/2009-social-network-analysis-report/
Museum 2.0 http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/
Twitter Directory (search, find Twitter users) http://wefollow.com/
Twiangulate (Relationship analysis tool) http://twiangulate.com/search/

Strategy (including staffing)

The POST Method
http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2007/12/the-post-method.html
Nonprofit Social Network Survey Report
http://nten.org/research/2009-nonprofit-social-network-survey-report
(participate in this year’s survey here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/R8PL9RB)
How much time does it take to do social media?
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/10/how-much-time-d.html
Should CEOs and Executive Directors Use Social Media
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2010/02/should-ceos-and-executive-directors-use-social-media.html
How to Deveop A Small-Scale Social Media Plan
http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-develop-small-scale-social-media.html

Monitoring and Listening

Frog Loop: Build Your Own Listening Dashboard… http://bit.ly/3JIwZ
A Recipe for Social Media Buzz http://nten.org/blog/2010/02/17/recipe-social-media-buzz

Metrics

Nonprofit Social Media Benchmark Study
http://www.e-benchmarksstudy.com/socialmedia/
Nonprofit Text Messaging Benchmark Study
http://mobilebenchmarks.org/
How To: Measure Social Media ROI
http://mashable.com/2009/10/27/social-media-roi/
Using Social Media to Meet Nonprofit Goals
http://www.idealware.org/sm_survey/download.php?key=14586454

Policies

Social Media Policies
http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php
What’s in a Social Media Policy and Why You Might Need One
http://www.bigducknyc.com/blog/?p=228
Nonprofit Communications – Weekly Roundup
http://www.bigducknyc.com/blog/?tag=roundup
Sample Policy for Responding to Comments (US Air Force)
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/01/usaf-blog-respo/

Relationship/Community Building

Online community building: Gardening vs. landscaping
http://www.socialbrite.org/2009/08/06/online-community-building-gardening-vs-landscaping/
5 Tips for Creating Non-Profit Online Communities
http://mashable.com/2010/02/12/non-profit-communities/

Twitter

Twitter Guide Book
http://mashable.com/guidebook/twitter/
Twitter: I think I get it. Now what do I tweet?
http://www.bigducknyc.com/blog/?p=329

TOOLS

Tweetdeck monitor conversations + posts on twitter : http://tweetdeck.com
Hootsuite.com helps you manage twitter accounts online: http://hootsuite.com
Facebook Page Analytics (find similar pages + fans) : http://fanpageanalytics.com/
Mailchimp (some of the best email marketing software around) : http://mailchimp.com

This weekend, I’ll be participating in SMartCAMP with a host of very distinguished folks. Tickets are going quick, so you can read on, or just go to the site and register (I’ll be leading a Social Media Bootcamp session on Sunday). 1/2 day passes are still available.

ABOUT SMartCAMP

Taking place during art fair week, SMartCAMP will be tackling some of the most important topics in social media as it relates to the cultural sector. Designed to give an overview of how professionals working in the arts can put these new communications tools to work for them, SMartCAMP will be offering a series of panels, presentations and case studies to help artists and arts professionals put together a course of action. For those already familiar with the social web, it will be an opportunity to deepen their knowledge, hone new skills, refine social engagement strategies and gain inspiration from distinguished peers and colleagues working at the intersection of art and social media. For social media professionals who are looking to connect with arts organizations, SMartCAMP offers an opportunity to learn about the challenges and possibilities unique to the cultural space.

“Social media is changing the way people share and discover content, the way they consume information, the very essence of modern-day communication itself,” says Julia Kaganskiy, ArtsTech founder and SMartCAMP program curator. “No industry, especially one as socially significant as the arts, can afford to ignore the social web.”

SMartCAMP will address a variety of topics; social media strategies, technology art start-ups, emerging trends and measuring social media success. The program will begin on each day with keynote speeches from Marc Schiller, Founder of Wooster Collective and CEO of Elecrtic Artists, and Maria Popova, founder and editor-in-chief of Brain Pickings, respectively. The remainder of the day’s agendas will include case studies from artists and institutions, a mobile media presentation, an online ‘video kit’ instructional and a bloggers panel.

In addition to this agenda, several top social media and branding strategists will lead a small group workshop entitled Social Media Bootcamp. The workshop, which is limited to 20 participants broken up into groups of 5, will allow attendees to develop the foundations of a social media strategy, or workshop an existing social media strategy in a small group setting with one-on-one support from workshop leaders.

For full symposium schedule click here
For full speaker list click here
Website: socialmediaartcamp.com

Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/SMartCAMP

Friend on Facebook: facebook.com/SMartCAMP

REGISTER FOR SMARTCAMP

This winter, I’ll be teaching a series of classes at 3rd Ward. The first part of the series will be a workshop focused on setting up an ecommerce store. We will look at live sites and multiple ecommerce platforms. This will be a great class and flexible enough to meet your needs. Read below for more

REGISTER HERE

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Running an online store enables you to sell your works and products without the constraints of time and space. This seminar serves as a crash course in running your own online business. Two main topics will be covered:

The basic mechanism of e-commerce: who’s involved in transacting online? What are the roles of different parties? What happened when users click the “Submit Order” button?

Steps to set up and run your own online store. Get an Internet merchant bank account. Find a reliable host. Learn how to go about your ecommerce technology. Consider buying an off-the-shelf solution, renting technology from a 3rd party provider, or using open-source or free shopping cart software packages. Learn about payment processing with PayPal, 3rd-party hosting and doing it yourself. Get familiar with shipping methods, managing inventory and your products, securing online transactions, designing your store appearance, and basic search engine optimization (SEO).

Instructor
Jaki Levy founded Arrow Root Media, a New Media Production and Consulting company. Jaki has worked with multiple non-profits, including: Issue Project Room, The Field, Dance/USA, Rockaway Waterfront Alliance, Queens Council on the Arts, DanceBrazil, and Soundstreams.  His online initiatives and work with Misnomer Dance Theater helped the company secure over $1.25 million in grants from the Doris Duke Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation to help develop new initiatives for the arts online. He was also the recipient of Cisco’s $25,000 Digital Incubator grant. In 2010, he will be officially launching elastic-city.com, a full ecommerce site devoted to artistic walking tours in NYC.

Location
573 Metropolitan (btw Lorimer & Union), Brooklyn

REGISTER HERE

The first week of February is Social Media Week in NYC. Along with Little Big Pictures, we’ll be co-hosting this month’s #artstech event, which is exploring the creative overlap between social media and the arts.

Instead of the usual discussion of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, we wanted to take a look at some of the most inventive implementations of social media we’ve come across: social media art experiments. We’ll be taking a look at how artists are incorporating social media in their art-making practices. You want to talk about creative community engagement strategies? Look no further than this round-up.

The speakers:

Nic Rad is a Brooklyn based artist working with traditional materials focused on social media concepts and conflicts. His project “People Matter” is comprised of 99 media figures at varying degrees of fame, influence, and recognizability. The works will be given away freely on the closing night of his solo show at Rare Gallery in April.
http://www.nic-rad.com
http://www.peoplematter.info

Adam Smith is the Marketing Manager for Dance Theater Workshop and an ensemble member of the New York Neo-Futurists. He produces online video for both organizations. Through the Dance Theater Workshop Twitter account (@dancetworkshop), he & dance artist Jillian Sweeney created the Twitter Community Choreography project, a program that “tweet-sources” dance movement that are performed for the camera.
Community Choreography # 1, Jillian Sweeney
Community Choreography #13, Lauren Sharpe
Community Choreography #16, Tyler Ashley

An Xiao uses social media like Twitter and Facebook as a performance and public art space. Her work has been featured with the Brooklyn Museum, Yale/Haskins Laboratories, The New York Times and ARTNews. She founded and directs @Platea, a global online public art collective, and blogs on art and social media technology for Art21.
www.anxiaostudio.com

William Powhida is a visual artist and art critic born in 1976 in New York. He is known for controversial subject matter that addresses thecontemporary art industry itself as well as combination portraits drawn entirely from memory. In a satirical way, Powhida constructs work deliberately about growing his own fame, addressing the major obstacles facing emerging contemporary artists. Controversial topics have included creating an “enemies” list as well as letters addressed to famous contemporary curators (such as Zach Feuer Gallery), collectors and critics, requesting recognition. He is known for staging acts of destruction to his own work, creating his own press coverage and promoting his shows as being curated under duress.
www.williampowhida.com
williampowhida.blogspot.com
@powhida

Rachel Perry Welty was born in 1962, in Tokyo, Japan. She holds a BA from Connecticut College and a Diploma and Fifth Year Certificate from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Recently Welty participated in group shows at The Drawing Center, New York and at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts where her video “Karaoke Wrong Number” has entered the permanent collection. She has had solo shows at Barbara Krakow Gallery (Boston), Yancey Richardson Gallery (New York) and will open a solo show next month at Gallery Diet (Miami) in 2010 with work she created as a MacDowell Colony Fellow this past Fall.
www.rachelperrywelty.com
http://www.icaboston.org

Yanira Castro has made dance installations for theaters, warehouses, bathrooms, a cellar, a former bathhouse, a confessional. She is interested in constructing scenarios for people that engage different ways of experiencing live performance. Past performances include Center of Sleep, which placed audience and performers together in an aural and physical installation of mirrors and platforms at Dance Theater Workshop. Her work has been presented by PS122, The Chocolate Factory, XØ Projects Inc, and HERE Arts Center, among others. Her latest dance installation, Dark Horse/Black Forest, has been presented in the public bathrooms of the George Bacovia Theater in Romania; the Daile Theatre in Latvia; the tanzhaus nrw in Germany; the Zoellner Arts Center in Pennsylvania and the Gershwin Hotel in New York City. Yanira is the instigator and director of a canary torsi.
http://acanarytorsi.org

Congratulations, Kevin!

Today marks the 3rd year of business for Gott Advertising.

Gott Advertising provided solid support and help on ISSUE Project Room’s google grants. Kevin setup multiple adcampaigns, focused keywords, and monitored all results to heelp drive traffic to ISSUE Project Room’s site.

From their site:

We build, manage and optimize online advertising campaigns for non-profits, charities, and progressive organizations.

We improve and complement your current fundraising, list-building, and advocacy efforts, via online advertising, search, social media and multivariate testing.

Our web media experience includes advertising, marketing, strategic thinking, buying, selling, consulting, negotiating, analysis, optimization and much more.

We take pride in our ability to study and navigate the rough, rocky, ever-changing world of online advertising. We sail nimbly through: CPC, CPM, CPA, CPNM, ECPM, ROI, IOs, ASPs, SEM, SEO, SMO, emails, blogs, banners, open rates, conversion paths, landing pages, added value, underdelivery, optimization, reporting and trafficking.

Here’s to many more years!

“Failing to plan is planning to fail”
- someone who planned

Whether you’ve got an existing site, or need a new one, you need to plan either way. While a web designer or programmer can help you build a site, it’s up to you to figure out “What do I need?”

(via Julie Blitzer @ Advomatic)

So what’s been happening down at the barn?

Well, glad you asked…

We just recently launched a new site: Hudson Valley BarnHouse

The site was built for a rental property in Warwick, NY offering rentals to vacationers and people who simply want to get away. The site features a full lightbox gallery, fully customizable font colors, and is completely mobile friendly (so people on the go can navigate to the property).

I’ve included a few pictures below, but go ahead and see the site for yourself. Heck – who knows – you just might find a great new deal for your next winter vacation!

(thanks to the Elegant Themes community for great support and great themes)

Watch the video below for a glimpse on how the web is touching people everyday.
(via Gawker)

(thanks for the video Mitch!)

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberger recently announced that Privacy Policies will be changing on Facebook.

Here is an excerpt from the facebook blog:

Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

Still with us? Okay – this is the “good” stuff:

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

Ok – everybody got that?
Make sure you review and update your privacy settings when the time comes.

In other facebook news, Facebook has also updated its policies on sweepstakes. For more on what that might mean, read this great article on TechCrunch about spamming people and making a shitload of money on facebook (written by Dennis Yu, a former spammer).

Ok – now you can enjoy Eddie Izzard’s Cake or Death in Lego Stopmotion

Note: This post was written for participants in an ecommerce seminar. Please feel free to leave questions + comments below

To sell items online, you need:
a payment gateway (like paypal) to process payments
a good shopping cart solution
an SSL seal (if you’re processing credit cards on your website)

If you’re starting from scratch, don’t have the support of a developer, or just want an online store, consider Shopify. They have beautiful templates, and can help your online store get up and running quickly. Review pricing and take a tour of what
Shopify offers. They’re great!

Below is a “short” list of payment gateways and shopping cart solutions.

PAYMENT GATEWAYS

A payment gateway processes the payment for you. Paypal is by far the most popular payment gateways. Here is a list of other payment gateways.

Paypal
The current leader in processing sales online. They have a great list of resources for shopping carts here.

Google Checkout
Take a look at their merchant center – it’s chock full of resources

ejunkie
A fantastic solution, starts at $5/month. Take a look at their pricing)

Authorize.net
If you want to process credit cards with your own bank, authorize.net is the way to go. Fees usually start at $20/month. You will need to purchase an SSL seal to use Authorize.net.

SHOPPING CARTS

NOTE: If you’re running your website with Wordpress, use WP-ecommerce. If you’re running your website with Drupal, use Ubercart. Otherwise, there are these other solid solutions.

FatFree Cart (run by the ejunkie folks)

FatFreeCart is a free shopping cart developed by the team behind E-junkie shopping cart. It works inside your website, your blog and will even work from your MySpace page. It is simply a copy-paste cart and does not require you to register with us or install anything.

It works with PayPal and Google Checkout. It supports product variations, shipping, handling and sales tax.

FastCommerce
This is a fully supported e-commerce solution. It’s a great way to get up and running if you have lots of products and little time. From their site: “Fastcommerce.com provides business management software to small businesses, delivered on demand as a service via the web on a free or paid monthly subscription basis. We provide small businesses with a complete fully integrated package that run their entire operations, from inventory control, sales, marketing, support, online catalog, e-commerce, backend order processing and built-in UPS and Fedex shipping tools.”

Site Ground Web Hosting has a nice list of open source shopping carts

osCommerce is a free, open source online shop software. The default installation includes a large number of features that you can easily enable and configure. You can easily install osCommerce on your website with the help of the Fantastico auto-installer.

With osCommerce shopping cart you can add multiple products on your site, organize them in categories, set discounts and special promotions. osCommerce allows you to set your prices in different currencies and accept all popular payment methods: PayPal, credit cards, cheques. osCommerce has a built-in shipping and tax functionalities.

CREloaded project is built on the source code of osCommerce but it has extra contributions installed. It offers powerful shopping cart solutions in Standard, Pro and Pro B2B editions. With CREloaded you have the ability to distribute coupon codes, the template system is better, and you have an affiliate manager.

Zen cart is being developed by a group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants who have first-hand experience in e-commerce. Zen Cart is the outcome of their continuous mutual work. It is a free and user-friendly shopping cart, and is distributed as an open source software.

CS-Cart is paid shopping cart software written in PHP & MySQL (The license is a one-time fee of $265 and includes 1 month of free technical assistance at CS-Cart). The CS Shopping Cart is easy to install, has an intuitive template management system (compared to osCommerce) and user-friendly admin area. By default, CS-Cart is integrated with more than 35 popular payment systems such as PayPal, 2CheckOut, GoogleCheckOut, WorldPay, etc. It includes 5 professional templates and their 20 color schemes in all. CS-Cart is a fully multilingual software with multicurrency feature. It has also an advanced Order management tool, Affilate add-on, Product configurator, Feature comparison and Gift Registry modules.

CubeCart is an eCommerce script written in PHP & MySQL. With CubeCart you can setup a powerful online store as long as you have hosting supporting PHP and one MySQL database. CubeCart is very powerful and easy to connect to various payment gateways.

Magento is the latest open source eCommerce platform on the web. It offers professional features, flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of the online shop. With Magento you can establish an e-business with convenient product and catalog browser options, extended customer management, advanced analytics, reporting and marketing promotions tools, and much more. Magento has an intuitive administration interface, it is completely scalable and backed by an extensive support network.

ONLINE MARKETPLACES

If you don’t want to bother with setting up your own site, or want to extend the reach of your products, consider looking for online marketplaces. There are different marketplaces for different kinds of products. Here is a shortlist of some of the more popular ones.

Etsy.com (a place to buy and sell handmade items)

CD Baby (sell your music + CD’s online)

ebay (sell anything online)

Amazon (one of the largest ready-made marketplaces)

Craigslist (If you want to deal locally, craigslist works well)

If you’re looking to track traffic on your site and monitor how your shopping cart is doing, use google analytics. Below is short video from Google that gives you a simple overview:

Do you use any of these services and have feedback? Or Have I missed a resource? Leave a comment below and let me know… Thanks!

NOTE: This post was published for participants taking an online marketing seminar at 3rd Ward. I will be fleshing this post out with actual descriptions and summaries. In the meantime, I hope you find this list useful.)

“What can be measured doesn’t always count and what counts can’t always be measured.”

- Einstein

Running a business, organization, or freelance operation in the new economy requires you to be savvy online (if you want to survive). Below is a list of online tools I use and/or recommend.

Online Publishing : Wordpress, Posterous, Tumblr, SquareSpace, BusinessCatalyst

I use Wordpress to run this site. For more wordpress resources, visit my wordpress archives.

Sample Blogs:
http://unclutterer.com/
http://www.getstoried.com/
http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/

Social Networks : Facebook, twitter, flickr, youtube
Some sample facebook pages:
http://www.facebook.com/issueprojectroom
http://www.facebook.com/brooklynmuseum

Online Communities : Ning, Meetup.com

Some sample ning communities:
Radiohead’s Ning Community
Dance-Tech.net

Email Marketing : Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Vertical Response

Tracking Online Activity : Google Analytics or Clicky

Communication : Setup Google Apps on your own domain for business email + google docs for collaboration. Setup an account here

Web Hosting: Bluehost

Organizing Yourself : BackPackIt, Basecamp

Bookkeeping + Invoicing : QuickBooks or Freshbooks (online invoicing)

CRM (customer relationship management): Salesforce, Tactile CRM, HighRise

Publicity : PR Newswire