Due to my longer term contract, I have not been as present lately, but this does not mean that I haven’t been percolating on new topics and ideas. The following are a few ideas that I wish to develop in the future, and if you have any comments before my write-ups, I’d be ecstatic to hear from you!

• I saw yet another survey where the friends/family factor was the highest percentage of how their audience heard about an event and why they attended. Word of Mouth, the old fashioned referral system, is the audience building technique that gets shoved to the backburner due to capacity reasons. I want to explore more about why it is so important now to kick something else to the curb instead so you can focus on these types of strategies. The surveys have spoken!
• The big foundations and agencies are telling us time and again how important data tracking is for better audience building.  I highly agree. However, the small to mid-sized organizations are at a capacity where they one, may or may not be able to afford databases necessary for this endeavor, and two, may not have the staff capacity to keep up with the process of data entry and tracking. What is a small to mid-sized organization to do when all the advice out there is mainly not considering their capacity limitations? I am brainstorming on this very topic to come up with a guide to fill the void. Do you have any helpful protocol you already use that you can share with the rest of us?
• Due diligence, a topic I have talked about before, seems to be in higher focus right now. The diligence of going through the proper steps for audience and fund building (the linked articles are two current examples). I have seen these lists time and again, and I have created a few of these lists myself. Why are we still repeating ourselves? I’m really curious about this. Maybe people need to hear the right voice to finally get the message? What do you think? 
• Yes, we need to invite millennials, but what is really needed are strategies that attract a diverse audience of different ages, backgrounds, etc. My main thought, don’t put all your eggs into one basket. The millennial basket is good, but only the millennial basket will not save the arts. Remember, yet again, there are still kids being born to and raised by Generation X. We need to close this gap!
• Podcasts – what topics would you like to hear about? 

Please do let me know your thoughts about any of these topics. I’d love to work with you on creating deeper posts and conversations to explore these issues further.

Cheers to happy and loyal audiences,
Shoshana

Shoshana Fanizza
Chief Audience Builder, ADS

Do It Yourself (D.I.Y.) education is here!  More to come in the future.