Get ahead of the curve – be content ready!
The digital landscape is constantly evolving, and for arts, heritage and culture organisations, staying ahead of these changes is critical to engaging and growing audiences effectively. As we approach 2025, it’s time to take stock of the latest trends shaping digital content and social media strategies, ensuring your online presence not only remains relevant but thrives in an increasingly competitive environment.
Here, we explore emerging trends in digital content creation and social media management, offering insights to help arts marketers future-proof their strategies.
Advice on reducing your site’s carbon footprint
At our recent webinar, Holly Close, Digital Consultant and Co-Founder of Good Egg provided us with some quick and easy tweaks that can make websites more eco-friendly and some tips for sustainable email management.
In the webinar below, Holly discusses:
- Website hosting – you can find out how environmentally friendly is your website via sites such as websitecarbon.com. Where and how your website is hosted is a key factor in how environmentally friendly your site is. The GreenWeb Directory is a useful resource if you are looking to choose a greener hosting provider.
- Optimising your site – minimising the amount of data on your site will minimise digital pollution
- Image management and optimisation:
- Pick the correct image format (jpeg, png, svg)
- Resize your images – 2000px wide is generally a safe bet. Use an image compressor eg. TinyJPG
- Image management – delete duplicate or redundant images from your image library
- Videos – Holly advises that we try to use video sparingly on websites. Aim to optimise them as you would an image (try HandBrake.fr to bring the size down and use embed sites like YouTube and Vimeo where possible)
- Embrace Mobile responsiveness – Mobile phones have a lower carbon footprint as they have smaller screens.
- Emails – Try to replace attachments in emails with links to your website or Dropbox or Canva to make them more sustainable. Unsubscribe from mailing lists that aren’t useful and delete old emails.
- AI – Be thoughtful about your use of this technology
You can take a look at Holly’s presentation here.
Creating authentic content
Content marketing specialist Candace Chan advises that it is useful to identify your organisation’s tone of voice or your brand’s personality. The way you communicate with your audience should reflect your values through the use of style and emotional tone.
Tone of voice
- Your organisation’s personality
- How a brand communicates with their audience
- Reflection of your values
- Style, words, emotional tone
- Consistent but adaptable to different channels, content types and audiences
Creating content that feels true to your organisation – like ‘behind the scenes’ allows you to:
- Take your audience behind the scenes is a really great way to build trust and humanise your brand.
- Show the people behind the work
- Share knowledge and practices
- Increase your brand’s transparency and trustworthiness
Using humour
- Builds emotional connections and trust
- Makes content and messages more accessible, memorable and relatable
- However – it may not work for every organisation or situation
- Ensure that the humour is connected to your purpose
- Find the right kind of funny
Have content pillars in place
Content pillars are the main topics or themes you post regularly about on your channels. They help you stay focused and stand out from competitors and can increase your content’s relevance for your followers. Things to consider when thinking about your content pillars:
- Organisation goals and audience needs – What are you trying to achieve with your social media presence?
- Your content analytics and performance – find out which content performs best
- Keyword research – use Google Trends or Answer the Public
- Audience feedback
Use a content calendar
A content calendar helps you plan content for the week or month ahead. It can help with:
- Consistency – helping to ensure consistent publishing
- Organisation – can help keep content organised and ensure timely publishing
- Repurposing – and maximising content across all of your channels
Watch the webinar for more advice
More resources to explore:
Here, we’ve rounded up some invaluable resources designed to streamline your efforts and enhance your impact, covering everything from digital channel strategy to accessibility best practices. These tools will empower you to optimise your digital platforms and better connect with your audiences.
Deciding your digital channel strategy
Digital media channels are increasing and the pressure to be everywhere means you can end up spreading yourself thinly. Here is our advice to help you decide where you should be. We’ll help you identify and prioritise the right digital channels for your organisation with this comprehensive guide.
Online audiences – a toolkit
Understand your audience’s online behaviours and preferences with this guide. We’ll take you through what is meant by online audience engagement, how to approach digital distribution, dos and don’ts for creating great social media content and provide advice on how to give your content the best chance through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), social media algorithms and seeding strategies
Best practice for digital accessibility
Make your digital content inclusive and accessible for all audiences with this essential guide. Working with our Accessibility Working Group, we’ve pulled together some best practice guidelines and documents from existing sources. These notes follow the rough chronological process of designing and delivering a digital arts project, acting as a source of knowledge that will drive and support your creative work to be as accessible as possible.
Integrating digital content production into your work
Creating digital content takes time and planning. So how can busy artists and cultural organisations get creative with digital when busy with their day-to-day work? This article will guide you through steps to start integrating digital content production into your everyday practice.
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