SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 1 SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM A CASE STUDY OF CHINA ARTS FOUNDATION INTERNATIONAL Shafei Li University of Oregon Master ’s in Arts and Administration Program Research Capstone June 2016 A Master’s Project Presented to the Arts and Administration Program of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters of Science in Arts Management. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 2 SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 3 Acknowledgements I would like to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to my research advisor, Dr. John Fenn, who always gave me generous advice, inspiring guidance, and invaluable constructive suggestions. Secondly, I want to take this opportunity to express my gratefulness to my internship supervisors Yi Liang and Puiking Hui. Their precious guidance was extremely valuable for my study and future career development. This internship opportunity was a great opportunity for learning and professional development, especially in art education and social media marketing. Therefore, I consider myself as a very lucky individual to have an opportunity to be a part of it. Finally, but most importantly, I would like dedicate this capstone to my parents and friends. Their unconditioned love gave me courage and kept me going when I had self-doubt. This research capstone could not have been made without their endless support and love. I love you all. 我爱你们。 SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 4 Abstract This study utilizes the researcher’s internship institution, China Arts Foundation International (CAFI), as a case study to research the use of social media marketing in art education programs in multicultural organizations. Globalization and diversification promote the development of art and culture, and this trend often results in the emergence of multicultural organizations. CAFI is a multicultural organization that promotes Chinese arts and culture in American society. The CAFI Art Education Program is an educational outreach plan that was initiated last year and has the Young Club, Convention and the Internship programs as its three main projects. This study aims to highlight the importance of multicultural organizations, social media, and social media marketing, especially in education programs. Through stressing the research gaps on social media interaction between the business sector and the education field, this capstone project provides a relatively comprehensive marketing analysis in program investigation, organizational SWOC analysis, and social media site exploration. Furthermore, by synthesizing the discussions with the identification of marketing objectives and target audiences, the researcher established an overall marketing strategic plan for the Young Club, Convention, and Internship programs. Keywords Multicultural organization, China Arts Foundation International, Arts Education, Social Media, Marketing Strategy, Audience Engagement SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 5 Tablet of Contents Chapter I: Introduction Problem Statement Conceptual Framework Research Methodology Supportive capstone coursework Chapter II: Literature Review Multicultural Organization Social Media Social Media Platform Social Media Marketing Social Media Marketing in Education Program Chapter III: Case Study of CAFI Art Education Program CAFI Art Education Program Introduction Social Media Marketing Strategy Analysis SWOC Analysis Social Media Study for CAFI Education Program Chapter IV: Limitations and Future Discussion References Appendices SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 6 Table of Figures Figure 1 – The Conversation Prism Figure 2 – Social Media for CAFI Education Program Figure 3 –The primary features of Wechat Figure 4 – CAFI Art Education Program Chart Figure 5 – SWOC Analysis of CAFI social media marketing Figure 6 – Facebook homepage screen shots of CAFI and Asian Society. Figure 7 – Screenshots of Instagram and YouTube homepages of CAFI and the Asian Society Figure 8 – Screenshot of CAFI’s LinkedIn account Figure 9 – Screenshot of Wechat Red Packet application Figure 10 – Screenshot of CAFI’s Wechat official account and post history SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 7 Chapter I Introduction 1. Problem Statement In the United States, arts administration may no longer be an unfamiliar discipline; on the contrary, it has become a relatively well-known field. However, this differs from the situation in China where arts administration is an emerging and developing discipline, lacking a qualified academic knowledge base and steady operational environment. An increasing number of Chinese students come to the U.S. to pursue advanced studies in arts administration, and to obtain related work after graduation. Although lacking experience in arts management, Chinese students still have strong backgrounds in business operations and marketing. The China Arts Foundation International (CAFI) is a cross-cultural, arts non-profit organization that was born under this context. CAFI was established in New York City in 2007 by a Chinese founder who came from a strong business operation background and also had a deep interest in arts and culture. Many kinds of organizations like CAFI exist in the U.S. Most of these organizations, which have cultural outreach as their mission, have well designed projects or extensive social networks but sometimes are not adept at implementing their plans in a foreign environment. Meanwhile, an increasing number of SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 8 institutions are considering integrating social media marketing into business development plans to strengthen brand awareness and increase audience engagement. However, the importance of social media marketing in the arts education industry has not received as much attention as in the commercial field. CAFI’s situation mirrors this phenomenon because despite its dedication to cultivate a better cultural understanding and encourage communications among people and organizations, it has not used social media marketing effectively to further its mission. This study aims to use CAFI’s Arts Education Program as a pilot research program to fill the gap in the research about the importance of social media marketing in multicultural education programs. The starting point of this capstone study is to expand cultural outreach and strengthen participatory arts experience, especially in United States, in order to cultivate a better understanding of cultural differences, to investigate appropriate social media platforms, and to efficiently promote education. 2. Conceptual Framework 2.1 Methodological paradigm As a researcher, I aligned myself with social constructivism perspective, in other words, with those who “hold assumptions that individuals seek understanding of the world in which they live and work” (Creswell, 2014, p. 8). My methodological paradigm influenced my research methods, and I reviewed my research starting from a broad aspect to integrally research social media marketing in organizational education programs. Like Creswell (2014) stated “meanings are varied and multiple, SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 9 leading the researcher to look for the complexity of views rather than narrowing meanings into a few categories or ideas.” (p. 8), I will make use of CAFI education program as a pilot program to do extensive research not only on multicultural organizations use of social media but also on general knowledge of marketing and marketing in education program. Marketing in different fields presents different challenges; for example, commercial-used marketing strategy is different from a nonprofit arts organizational marketing plan. However, marketers can still benefit from learning about strategies used in different fields. I will be cognizant as possible to avoid any restriction on research possibilities and keep an open mind to translate broad marketing knowledge to an art and culture program. In other words, I believe that “the researcher’s intent is to make sense of (or interpret) the meanings others have about the world. Rather than beginning with a theory (as in postposition), inquirers generate or inductively develop a theory or pattern of meaning.” (Creswell, 2014, p. 8). Thus, although the literature review or case studies I referenced were valuable, the most important part of my research was embedding myself in the location of my research site and becoming a member of CAFI to understand its mission and social media marketing strategy. I used a broad literature search, an analysis of CAFI’s database, and a review of related reports to research CAFI on a macroscopic and microscopic level. I left controvertible space for each subtopic and for discussion about marketing, arts education, and social media strategy development. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 10 2.2 Role of the researcher My role in this study is analyzer and explorer. Through two years of arts administration study and summer internship experience in CAFI, I gained knowledge and relevant working experience in the arts administration sector. At the same time, some questions and uncertainties were generated during my studies. Therefore, this study is a type of examination for my graduate study and summer internship. Through my internship, I realized that book knowledge might not always be available or feasible in a real world working environment and that what higher education teaches are strong self-learning abilities, adaptability, and strong communication and good personal skills. CAFI has a unique operation system and excellent programming development plan but sometimes needs more arts and cultural knowledge to put into practical action. I felt so proud to have this opportunity to take part in the art administration study internship and to devote my energies to CAFI’s marketing and programming development. Finally, driven by this internship opportunity, I am motivated to further my studies in my arts management through roles of active analyzer and explorer, AAD student, and CAFI intern. This study also might become a final achievement report on my two-year arts administration study at the University of Oregon. 3. Research Methodology 3.1 Purpose statement The purpose of this study is to gain further understanding of a cross-cultural SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 11 organization’s social media marketing strategies, which furthers their mission of cultural outreach and aspiration for arts education in American society. The cultural wall between America and China has been slowly falling since the 1970s, and increasingly people spontaneously or officially travel to the U.S. as cultural ambassadors, visiting scholars or ordinary students to study and communicate about American and Chinese culture. Generally, an increasing number of intercultural programs and cross-cultural organizations have been established both in China and America. International organizations have unique characteristics that include multicultural backgrounds and unique operation systems, although in some cases they were founded in another country and have broad overseas markets. CAFI is representative of such organizations founded in New York City and open to American society, especially to New York City residents and visitors. Similar to other international organizations, CAFI acts as a cultural bridge to improve cultural understanding and expand American markets. Thus, through synthesizing literature reviews, document analysis, supportive coursework in art education, and a marketing study, I completed a capstone research project on CAFI to determine the use of social media marketing in art education programs in multicultural organization and CAFI’s use of social media marketing as a tool to accomplish its education mission and program promotion. To achieve this purpose with impartiality, I studied various reports and journals and integrated marketing segmentation analysis. I also objectively analyzed the pros and cons of CAFI during my internship with CAFI as a marketing specialist. In addition, I conducted this study through both theoretical analyzes and case studies to develop SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 12 an in depth understanding of social media marketing, cultural outreach, and arts education. 3.2 Research questions 3.2.1 Main Question: How does the China Arts Foundation International use different social media platforms to promote its art education program? 3.2.2 Sub Questions: - What is a multicultural organization? - What is CAFI’s Art Education Program? - What are the education program’s marketing objectives? - What are the program’s target audiences? - What kinds of social media platforms are appropriate for CAFI’s education program? The main question explores the relationship between CAFI’s educational outreach plan and its social media marketing strategy as well as examines how they can support and serve each other. The research approach in this study is based on a literature review, extensive data and information collection, comparative case studies, and the researcher’s first-hand experience and participation. All information resources come from literature, books, journals, reports, CAFI’s internal database, media reports, pictures and videos, comments, and reflections on social media platform. A more detailed approach strategy about how to collect and analyze SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 13 data will be explored in following chapters. 3.3 Definitions - Multicultural organization: Employees have different backgrounds, cultures, ethnicities, and experiences and can contribute freely and achieve their individual potential for their and the organization's benefit. - China Arts Foundation International: An international non-profit foundation in New York City. - Cultural Outreach: An action or idea of promoting arts and culture to service or assist people beyond current or usual limits. - Social Media: One of the products under the era of Web 2.0. Social media creates an interactive community for people who have similar interests to enjoy engagement in information sharing and topic discussion. - Marketing Plan: Based on product and market research, a company-wide plan that describes activities involved in achieving specific marketing objectives within a set timeframe. It generally includes analysis of the current market situation (SWOC analysis) and detailed action programs, budgets, sales forecasts, strategies, and projected financial statements. - Arts Education: Art education includes learning, training and programming based on visual and tangible arts. Art education includes performing arts like dance, music, theater, and visual arts like drawing, painting, and design works. Art education can take place not only in schools but also outside of classrooms. Most arts organizations have their arts education project as a part of the programming plan SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 14 that is mission-based and available for all of their potential audiences and sponsors. 3.4 Delimitations The delimitation has existed since I selected my research study as a Master’s capstone, which could limit the scope of the study. First, as a researcher, I chose my research topic based upon my personal study and work experience by focusing on international arts nonprofit organizations, rather than other types of organization. Second, my focus was on an institution in the eastern United States, and this fact may neglect geographic integrity. Third, I picked a research topic from the organization’s mission statement, emphasizing on social media marketing area rather than other sectors. Admittedly, the conclusion or research outcomes may be different if researched from other angles. However, in order to reduce the amount of time spent in certain areas that may be seen as unnecessary, and perhaps even unrelated, to the overall study, delimitation is a necessary process to control the range of a study. 3.5 Limitations As a researcher and an international student who only has two years experience studying in arts administration field, I objectively acknowledge the limitations of my research study. In addition, I have three months internships experience in CAFI and in marketing and public relation-related positions in New York City. All of my experiences do not make me qualified enough to conduct a comprehensive and totally objective search. Finally, CAFI is still in a developing stage and not mature SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 15 enough to be a prime example for the research study, and I was not available to make perform informational interviews to gain more extensive understanding of audiences’ opinions and ideas during this research process. 3.6 Benefits of the study This study is good preliminary research for my forthcoming career in marketing and public relations. Through the process of mapping the study, I have gained a more systematic understanding of cross-cultural organizational management, especially in social media and marketing. At the same time, it is an ongoing research of CAFI project and a focused overview to solve my uncertainties, assisting my advancement in the arts administration sector. Hopefully, this study will have a reference value for CAFI when planning its next development steps. 4. Supportive capstone coursework In addition to relying on extensive literature, I took two capstone courses to lay a robust academic foundation for both the art education and social media marketing areas: Youth Arts Curriculum Methods and Marketing Independent Study. Youth Arts Curriculum Methods is a workshop-based course which extensively uses both practical and theoretical discussion at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. It is a truly interesting and experiential curriculum, which establishes a foundation of arts education study for my own research. My learning goals for this course were to explore how arts education can be implemented as a program within arts organizations, how to set up specific projects, and how to define marketing SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 16 objectives based on audiences’ needs and expectations. During the whole term, what impressed me were the different workshop topics, including setting, designing, and Visual Thinking Strategy (VTS) learning skills. During class sessions, the instructor set up lesson plans ahead of time to make sure each workshop topic and content matched students’ age, interests, and learning abilities. For example, we learned about origami along with favorite foods, drama performing with script writing, costume designing and photographing, and storytelling about subjects that have significant personal meaning. An experimental course setting like this one involves strengthening the understanding of cultural differences and tolerance, inclusiveness, and cultural diversity. VTS is another theory that I learned from class. Considering the relevance of this study, I decided to directly discuss the observational results of my VTS course experience. The instructor always introduced us to online-based resources, which often have technical support. VTS is a valuable teaching skill and makes learning more active and interactive. It is precisely through the experience of the workshop and VTS that I learned to identify target audiences and their needs and interests in the CAFI workshop project. Meanwhile, the course helped me associate my studies with education marketing in social media usage, including resource sharing and extending topic discussion from inside to outside the classroom. The second course I have taken is independent marketing study. Ten weeks studying in this class made the biggest contribution to my literature review. Guided by an instructor, I redefined my capstone topic and narrowed the research scope to the social media marketing for one program rather than a general marketing SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 17 analysis on the entire organization. I was able to complete most research and reading tasks for my final capstone project in this course. Finally, the academic knowledge I present in this study consists of multicultural organization, social media and social media platform sets, social media marketing, and social media marketing in education program outreach. Most important, I investigated a SWOC analysis, identified marketing objectives and target audiences and evaluated CAFI’s social media site usage through more than thirty articles of literature such as articles, journals, media reports, videos, and infographics. All in all, two supportive courses helped me outline my research direction and develop the main question. I integrated the above subjects into an entire capstone study using a case study and offer a brief conclusion about the limitations and future development in social media marketing and the arts education industry. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 18 Chapter II Literature Review 1. Multicultural Organization Globalization and diversification always promote the development of art and culture, and this trend generally results in an emergence of multicultural organizations. Cox (1991) demonstrated this in his research:, “As we begin the 1990s, a combination of workforce demographic trends and increasing globalization of business has placed the management of cultural differences on the agenda of most corporate leaders. Organizations' workforces will be increasingly heterogeneous on dimensions such as gender, race, ethnicity and nationality. Potential benefits of this diversity include better decision making, higher creativity and innovation, greater success in marketing to foreign and ethnic minority communities, and a better distribution of economic opportunity” (p. 34). The concept of multiculturalism indicates that organizations must be more inclusive of persons from different cultural backgrounds. Cox summarized the characterizations of multicultural organization: “Pluralism; Full structural integration; Full integration of the informal networks; An absence of prejudice and discrimination; No gap in organizational identification based on cultural identity group; and Low levels of intergroup conflict” (p.39). According to Cox’s research SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 19 analysis, there are four types of organizations: dimension of integration, monolithic, plural and multicultural (p. 37). Currently, many societies have reached the last phase, and the establishment of organizations like the China Arts Foundation International (CAFI) represents this realization. “China Arts Foundation International is an international, non-profit foundation that is devoted to cultivating a better cultural understanding and encouraging communications among people, leaders and organizations from the East and West. We achieve this by hosting cultural and artistic events that promote cross cultural exchanges between China and the United States and draw upon the collective experience, knowledge and resources of our board members and CAFI friends who have achieved prominence in a variety of fields and work in partnership towards our mission” (CAFI mission statement on the official website http://www.cafintl.org/). CAFI is a multicultural organization that contributes to the promotion of Chinese arts and culture in American society, and this organizational orientation supports Cox’s proposition: “the multicultural model is the way of the future” (p. 40). “Explicitly mentioning the importance of diversity to the organization in statements of mission and strategy” (Cox, 1991, p. 42) is one way to strengthen multicultural awareness. Furthermore, organization managers also transform traditional operations into a multicultural development mode through initiating training programs like awareness and skill-building training (Cox, 1991). Cox illustrated that awareness helps organizations increase personnel diversification and construct exercises to raise self-awareness among staff members. Skill building concentrates on introducing specific information of cultural differences between different groups and how this SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 20 might affect work behavior (p. 8). Generally, awareness and skills training is an internal management strategy, and education efforts are an external strategy. In order to achieve their multicultural mission at all organization levels, managers create education programs for promotion in the community. Like Cox stated in her article, “A number of organizations have become more actively involved in various kinds of education programs” (Cox, p. 42). From its inception, CAFI has launched and supported many activities and events to increase its organizational multicultural image, like the Beijing Music Festival and the New York Philharmonic Chinese New Year Gala at Lincoln Center. In 2015, CAFI also decided to set up an arts education program to broadly promote its multicultural mission and marketing goals. This study’s objective is to promote an art education program in a multicultural organization through social media platform in order to expand CAFI’s marketing influence and increase audience engagement. 2. Social Media There is a lot of research literature on social media from different perspectives: definition, functions, significance, and advantages. Schlicht (2012) defined social media as a web based system that allows users to create profiles and to share information, photos, and videos with friends. Winchester (2008) elaborated five characteristics of social media: participation, openness, conversation, community, and connectedness. Social media is about sharing, interacting, and community building: “to share ideas, profiles, and contents, SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 21 to interact with connected people, and to create community” (Jaimunk & Sureephong, 2013, p.178). Castro (2012) demonstrated in his research that “social media practices are increasingly woven into the everyday lives of teens and adults, becoming a significant part of how they relate, know, and learn” (p. 152). Social media helps to realize a dynamic learning process and create a participatory cultural environment among users. Based on Horst, Bittanti, and Lange’s theory (2008), participation with and through social media not only builds social relationships but is also actively driven by specific interests of users. “Social media has amplified the ability for many different kinds of people to gather across time and space to share ideas” (Castro, p. 153). Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define social media as media “that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.” Constantinides (2012) determined two major activities of social media usage: social interaction and information seeking. Social media integrates words, images, and videos into online socializing and networking activates. Social media creates a special community to redefine how we relate to each other and how we relate to the organizations that serve us through communication and the sharing of ideas and interests (Solis, 2008; Reuben, 2008). Constantinides and Stagno (2012) concluded that social media has three main functions: a social networking platform, a source of information and a communication tool. Social media plays a hybrid role in the promotion mix that allows organizations to communicate better and intensify their association SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 22 with their audience (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). Social media tools facilitate the creation and sharing of knowledge, information, media, ideas, opinions and insights, and allow people to actively participate in the media itself (Campbell, 2010). Social media “represents a transformation from a ‘passive’ consumer into an active (co-)producer, a ‘prosumer,’” (Hausmann, 2012) to encourage communication interaction between consumers or audiences and organizations. Mangold and Faulds (2009) illustrated a paradigm between traditional media and social media communication. In traditional marketing communication, “marketing managers’ control over the content, timing, and frequency of information”; but in the new stage of social media “consumers are in control; they have greater access to information and greater command over media consumption than ever before”(2009, p.360). Social media, referred to as customer-generated media, “describes a variety of new sources of online information that are created, initiated, circulated and used by consumers intent on educating each other about products, brands services, personalities, and issues’’ (Blackshaw & Nazzaro, 2004, p. 2). O’Reilly illustrated (2005) social media applications (social network sites) as one of three components of Web 2.0, and another two are social effects and enabling technologies. Web 2.0 has been widely seen as the current phase of the Internet evolution. The power of social media has been widely acknowledged and has become an important consideration in buying behavior (Constantinides & Stagno, 2012). As a second-generation Internet application, social media allows interaction, SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 23 one-to-one communication, customer engagement, and user generated content (Constantinides & Stagno, 2012). Constantinides and Stagno (2012) indicated that social media contributes to user-generated content rather than supplier-generated content and that peer-to-peer comments and user experience are more persuasive than experts’ opinion and efficiently encourage users’ engagement and participation. Hence, recommendations, comments, and peer reviews are playing an increasingly important role in the decision-making process because people are more likely to follow a company or talk about their products if they feel they know a lot about them. According to the data cited in Constantinides and Stagno’s research (2012), 84% of Americans consumer decisions are influenced by online product reviews written by other customers instead of the marketer or seller. It is true that more organizations have integrated social media into their marketing strategy because of its influence in decision-making processes. Marketers also realize that social media can increase market transparency and expand communication channels with audiences (Constantinides & Fountain, 2008). According to Mangold and Faulds’s study, social media has become a major factor in influencing various aspects of consumer behavior including awareness, information acquisition, opinions, attitudes, purchase behavior, and post-purchase communication and evaluation (2009, p.358). “Consumers feel more engaged with products and organizations when they are able to submit feedback. And this feedback contributes to a sense of community in which honest, open communications are encouraged and customer engagement is enhanced” (Mangold SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 24 & Faulds, 2009, p.361). Meanwhile, social media also has expanded to education through facilitating learning participation and engagement (Hrastinski, 2009). 3. Social Media Platform: Figure 1. The Conversation Prism Brian Solis, co-founder of the Social Media Club, introduced “The Conversation Prism” (2008), a visual social media tools collection. Solis demonstrated (2008): “As a communications or service professional, you’ll find yourself at the center of the prism – whether you’re observing, listening or participating.” During the process of SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 25 observing, listening and sharing, social media marketing occurs. Through effectively applying one or more social media platforms, organizations and marketers can better gain an understanding of market response and demand. This map (Figure 1) represents a materialized process of how online word-of-mouth marketing or social media marketing works. Social media marketing focuses on creating personalized content to attract customers to participate and share their opinions and thoughts on one or more social media networks, and further helps organizations to strengthen brand awareness and improve service. As Mahaney mentioned: “It is an inexpensive or even free strategy for marketing” (2012). However, selection of which social media strategies to use is important. Like this video stated (https://youtu.be/gza8dvN8Hkc), instead of overloading efforts through use of thousands of social media sites, utilizing just some of the most popular sites can help establish a solid social media marketing plan. The video provides four steps to manage social media, find interested people, deliver quality, capture information, and stay in touch. This video highlights that do not make money with social media but through doing business with people who may know you and willing to trust you to build relationship. Using your limited social media platforms as a search tool to explore audiences’ interests in your products and services; then provide efficient content instead of commercials to attract people and develop brand and customer loyalty. Alexa and Stoica (2012) divided social media sites into following categories: publication tools such as blogs and wikis, sharing tools for videos and slideshows, discussion tools like forums, and social networks and micropublication tools such as SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 26 twitter” (p.6). Brocato, White, Bartkus, and Brocato (2015) also categorized social media sites into three main parts: Twitter as a publishing tool, Facebook and LinkedIn as social networking tools, and YouTube and Instagram as media sharing tools. Stelzener (2015) conducted a social media marketing industry report which summarized that “Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram were the top seven platforms used by marketers, with Facebook leading the pack by a long shot. All of the other platforms paled in comparison to these top seven” (p.24) and “more than half of marketers (52%) chose Facebook as their most important platform, followed by LinkedIn (21%), Twitter (12%) and then YouTube (4%)” (p. 29). According to the above literature reviews, I chose the following six popular social media sites to support social media marketing strategies for CAFI’s education program (See figure 2) . SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 27 Figure 2. Social Media for CAFI Education Program 1) Facebook: “Facebook was originally launched in 2004 for Harvard students, and then was expanded to other Ivy League universities. It then expanded to any university student, then high school students, and now anyone over age 13 can join” (Reuben, 2008). Facebook has six primary components: personal profiles, status updates, networks (geographic regions, schools, companies), groups, applications and fan pages (Reuben, 2008). Initially, people used Facebook to create a personal page to make friends, share videos, and discuss their interests. In November 2007, Facebook started to launch “fan pages,” which are similar to personal profiles, but can be used by businesses, and many universities jumped at the opportunity to create an official Facebook presence. Fan pages combine wall SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 28 posts, discussion boards, photos, videos, and many other applications. When users choose to become fans of an organization and click “like,” this is shown on their personal page for their friends to see (Reuben, 2008). Now social media marketing starts to make a difference. When one user sees his friend has become a fan of certain organization, he can be influenced by his friend’s behavior and is likely to become a fan as well. As for the organization, “fan pages” also offer a promotion channel to communicate with fans through “direct and target messages (such as fans in a specific network or age group) and offers “insights,” which includes detailed statistics on the usage of the organization’s page (Reuben, 2008). This is an example of how social media marketing works through creating a viral marketing effect and using online word-of-mouth marketing. 2) Twitter: “Twitter is a cross between instant messaging and blogging that allows users to send short (140-character) updates” (Reuben, 2008). Users "Tweet" or post a status about where they are and what they're doing (Mahaney, 2012), following their friends, replying to messages, posting questions, or retweeting their current status (Reuben, 2008). There is a blog called “Twitter: Why It’s So Great And How To Effectively Use It” (http://www.lostartofblogging.com/twitter-guide, Social Bookmarking, 2008), which illustrates that Twitter is a powerful tool to build brand awareness, promote content, give immediate feedback, target potential audiences, and do marketing and networking - all areas of interest for marketers in education. According to Zhao, Jiang, Weng, He, Lim, Yan and Li’s study called “Comparing SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 29 Twitter and Traditional Media Using Topic Models,” Twitter as a microblogging service has been widely used to “spread and share breaking news, personal updates and spontaneous ideas” (2011, p. 338). Tweets are compact and fast and act as social sensors of real-time events (Zhao, et al., 2011). Because of these characteristics, it is important to consider how the content in Twitter differs from other traditional media platforms. Does Twitter cover similar topics as traditional news media? Are there specific topics covered in Twitter that are rarely covered in traditional news media? Does Twitter receive more feedback and is it more widely used and read? Finally, Zhao, et al.’s research (2011) gives us the answer: Twitter and traditional news media cover a similar range of topic categories, but the distribution of different topics varies. Twitter users tweet more about personal life and pop culture than world events and political news. “Twitter is a valuable source for entertainment and lifestyle” (Zhao, et al., 2011, p. 339). Also Twitter covers more celebrities and brands than traditional media, which could be more attractive to audiences and users. Finally “retweet” (forward) helps Twitter gain more influence and coverage than traditional news media. 3) LinkedIn: LinkedIn is “the world’s largest professional network with over 120 million members and growing rapidly. LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals” (http://learn.linkedin.com/what-is-linkedin/). McCorkle (2012) concluded advantages of Linked usage are as follows: - Self-Promotion: It allows users to post their personal profile including SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 30 qualifications, employment history, education situation, contact information, interests and others, which is called “resume 2.0” both for individuals or organizations. Once a person finishes filling out personal information, LinkedIn will automatically provide a notifications service once it finds a related position or person. - Social Networking & Job Search: Users can make connections with alumni, professors, and other people who have similar interests or skills. Identifying, reviewing and following those human resources can help users job hunt in current or desired career fields. Users can “like”, share or leave comments under contacts’ posts to keep in touch with them and gain career knowledge at the same time. Users are also encouraged to join special interest groups for discussion and job opportunities. 4) Wechat: Tencent Holdings Limited, providing media, entertainment, Internet and mobile phone value-added services, and operating online advertising services in China (Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent), launched “Wechat” on January 21, 2011. “Wechat is a free social media application, which provides instant messaging services for a smart phone, and free chatting software which provides free instant messaging service similar to Kik” (Tang Min, 2014). Users can send texts, voice, video, images and stickers on their mobile phone, tablet, and web. Besides offering personal accounts, Wechat also provides a public platform for any organization or company to create an office account. Wechat users can add friends SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 31 or find and follow any official account by searching by account number as well as shake and sweeping QR code, functions commonly used on the app. Wechat also created a group chat function for people to have more convenient communication as a group. Here is the list of primary features of Wechat (See figure 3): Figure 3. The primary features of Wechat - Message in a bottle: users try throwing a bottle to send your message to the world or they pick up a bottle to see what someone else has to share. - People nearby: shows others who are also using this function within the user’s area. - Shake: shake to find others who are also shaking or to pull images from a PC browser. - Moments: view photos, links and 10 seconds micro-videos shared by the user’s SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 32 friends. - LinkedIn: LinkedIn profiles shows on the user’s Wechat profile it. -Coupons and Wallet: users can find coupons from companies which cooperate with Wechat. Users can link their credit or debit card to Wechat wallet to pay or send lucky money to any person or institution. Currently, Wechat has become the most popular social media application in China, and Wechat marketing has become an indispensable marketing tool. 5) YouTube: “YouTube is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through the Web. It allows people to easily upload and share video clips across the Internet through Web sites, mobile devices, blogs, and e-mail” (Reuben, 2008). Reuben (2008) conducted research in universities that made videos for 20+ years to stimulate recruitment efforts. With the help of YouTube marketing, universities developed better social media platforms to effectively distribute videos to more students compared with email marketing or CD burning, which just targeted a limited audience and had higher marketing costs. In terms of business marketing use, YouTube also plays an efficient marketing tool. “Dove spent two and a half million dollars on a 30-second ad in the 2006 Super Bowl. Later, they distributed their famous “Evolution” video exclusively on YouTube, which caused a surge of traffic to their Web site, at absolutely no cost” (Charlene Li & Bernoff, 2008). SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 33 6) Instagram: Instagram is a mobile-based photo and video sharing social media application that builds a worldwide community among people who have common interests. Alicia Johnston (2016) emphasized in his study, “at only six years old, the platform has shown significant growth in its overall user base and in almost every demographic group” and “more than 40 billion images shared and 400 million monthly active users, generates an average of 80 million photos per day.” When people join Instagram, an engagement between organizations and followers occurs. “Instagram posts generate a per-follower engagement rate of 4.21%, which is 58 times more engagement per follower than Facebook and 120 times more than Twitter” (Johnston, 2016). 4. Social Media Marketing A recent social media marketing industry report by Stelzener (2015) demonstrates the significance of social media marketing. “This study surveyed over 3,700 marketers with the goal of understanding how they're using social media to grow and promote their businesses” (Stelzener, 2015, p.4). According to the report’s results, 92% of marketers said that social media was important to their business, 64% of marketers are using social media for six hours or more and 41% are using it for 11 or more hours weekly. Of those who spend more than 40 hours per week doing social media marketing, 54% are younger than 40. For most marketers, social media marketing is beneficial for increasing exposure and increasing website traffic; 69% SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 34 of them make use of social media to develop loyal fans, and 68% of them use it to gain marketplace intelligence. More than 91% of the marketers increased exposure for their business with as little as 6 hours per week work with social media. Stelzener researched users who have been using social media for at least 1 year; 64% reported that it useful for building a loyal fan base (Stelzener, 2015). “The 21st century is experiencing communications revolution, and digital and social media marketing is changing the way consumers receive and use messages” (Crittenden. V, & Crittenden. W, 2015, p. 71). The development of social media marketing has gone beyond the business field and made a difference in the daily life of citizens. “The role of marketing in the development of business is intact but the way it was executed is radically changing due to contributions made by satellite communication and extensively developed scientific devices.” (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). Traditional media, such as television, newspaper, radio and magazines, have dominated the market for a long time, but the limitation of traditional media is its “one direction static show” characteristic (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). Social media, however, has changed communication through realizing a two-way exchange of information at any time and at any place. Advertisers do not need to “reimburse publishers or distributors huge sums of money to embed their messages” (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012) nor to follow inflexible patterns, and social media marketing contributes to save marketing costs and provides more innovative space for users to make their own content. As Sweetland and Thomson (2010) stated, we are entering an era of social SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 35 media. Marketing and promotion are two critical goals for social media marketing. “The meteoric growth of community websites, such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, have ushered the world into a new era of social media.” Social media has been seen as a great opportunity to “boost market share figures” to establish a communication channel between customers and organizations or their products (Saravanakumar & SuganthaLakshmi, 2012). Alexa and Stoica (2012) demonstrated the four P’s of marketing elements -“product, price, place and promotion”- and seven P’s of service components -“service product, price, place, promotion, people, process and physical evidence” -in their article, “The Use of Online Marketing and Social Media in Higher Education Institutions in Romania”. This theory supports Kotler and Fox’s opinion: “Marketing involves designing the organization’s offerings to meet the target market’s needs and desires, using effective pricing, communication, and distribution to inform, motivate and service the markets” (1995, p. 6). Constantinides (2010) suggested four prerequisites for effective social media marketing in his research: innovative and high quality products, market oriented organizations, and well-designed websites. “Marketing exists when people decide to satisfy their needs and wants through exchange” (Kotler, Fox, 2002). For example, “universities offer their programs, academic disciplines and a diploma, in exchange for which students offer their time, commitment and sometimes money in the form of tuition fees” (Alexa & Stoica 2012, p. 1). As for my study, CAFI provides education programs, professional network, art and cultural resources; in exchange, CAFI’s audience and members offer their time, SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 36 money and recognition and recognition to the organization. McAlexander and Koenig (2001) demonstrated a concept called “institution relationship marketing” between institutions and customers. Organizations make efforts to build and maintain a relationship of value exchange, and the quality of this relationship is rooted in strong brand awareness and brand loyalty. Constantinides (2010) developed McAlexander and Koenig’s theory and presented that “social media is an ideal extension for relational marketing activities due to their collaborative and interactive nature.” Like Constantinides (2012) indicated in his research, “social media channels as communication tools must be different from the traditional mass media. The focus of social media-based marketing should be on two-way communication, dialogue, and engagement rather than using the social media as broadcasting channels or advertising platforms”(p. 54). Social media marketing changes traditional communication approach from one-way communication to interactive communication. It inspired customers’ enthusiasm and allows organizations to listen to customer voices and not just propel information and advertisements at consumers. Social media marketing reflects the communication effects of viral and word-of-mouth marketing. Hence, social media can be seen as an extension of word-of-mouth communication. People are more likely to communicate through both word-of-mouth and social media when they are engaged with the product, service, or idea (Mangold & Faulds, 2009, p.362). As Mahaney (2012) stated, customers’ inner voices are a significant evaluation criterion for organizations. Marketers and program managers pick up feedback through interacting with SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 37 their audiences in social media platforms and go further to improve and revise their product or services to meet customers’ demands. Generally, with the advance of informational transparency and openness, customers’ satisfaction and engagement will increase as well. “This is what creates the viral spread of brand information: ‘creating informative and entertaining messages to be passed among the consumers in a virtual environment" (“Finding Best Practices for Social Media Health Marketing”, 2014). Viral marketing is a virtuous communication circle to “encourage individuals (customers, users, visitors etc.) to pass along favorable or compelling marketing information they receive in a hypermedia environment” (Hausmann, 2012). Therefore, it is wise for arts institutions to take advantage of social media networking and word-of-mouth referrals to promote and distribute their services. In addition to literature research, using social media to study social media is also a very meaningful. I found two videos in YouTube, which talk about the social media application in marketing and advertising. Although these videos focus more on business marketing, those interested in art-related social media marketing could also learn from them because of some commonalities. One called “Social Media in Plain English” (https://youtu.be/MpIOClX1jPE) stresses the relationship between customers and products. It states the purpose of social media is to encourage customers to “add a tag,” “rate product,” and “post new comment” through social media. The video emphasized that “social media means new opportunities to communicate with people that care.” The more people post messages, the more information businesses will have about their customers, and the better product or service they can provide. Finally, a healthy and loyal customer SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 38 relationship has established. The second video, called “Social Media Marketing in 3 Minutes” (https://youtu.be/gza8dvN8Hkc), listed four steps to social media success: “Find interested people,” “Deliver quality content,” “Capture information” and “Stay in touch.” It also highlighted an important breakthrough “you do not make money with social media, you make money by doing business with people that are likely to trust you.” When businesses consider using social media to market products or services, they should target a group of people who should receive information about products and keep posts updated. If they want to make good connections with customers and expand brand influence, they should not just be satisfied with the number of “Likes” and must assure the quality of their social media marketing. 5. Social Media Marketing in Education Program “Today marketing is facing a new challenge concerning whether its concepts apply in the nonbusiness as well as the business area” (Kotler, 1972, p. 2). Like Kotler (1972) suggested earlier, “marketers do not see payment as a necessary condition to define the domain of marketing phenomena. Marketing analysis and planning are relevant in all organizations producing products and services for an intended consuming group, whether or not payment is required” and “the fact that many of these services are offered ‘free’ should not detract from their character as products. A product is something that has value to someone” (p. 3). Kotler also demonstrated an important point of why we should pay more attention to art education social media marketing, and his theory laid a solid SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 39 foundation for today’s research direction. He illustrated: “The core concept of marketing is the transaction. A transaction is the exchange of values between two parties. The things-of-values need not be limited to goods, services, and money; they include other resources such as time, energy, and feelings. Transactions occur not only between buyers and sellers, and organizations and clients, but also between any two parties. A transaction takes place, for example, when a person decides to watch a television program; he is exchanging his time for entertainment…Marketing is specifically concerned with how transactions are created, stimulated, facilitated, and valued. This is the generic concept of marketing” (Kotler, 1972, p.5). My study is intended to develop a better understanding of social media marketing and how to integrate social media marketing in the CAFI art education program in order to support both the educational benefits and promotional use for the organization’s multi-cultural efforts. It is not only about how to define social media and marketing in the business arena, but also involves how to redefine the meaning of social media marketing in education field. From Stelzener’s social media marketing report in 2015, there is strong evidence that social media has become an integral part of marketing strategies both for business and general public use. Friedman (2014) stated that Facebook has 1.3 billion users; Bercovici (2014) showed that there were 182.9 million Twitter users in 2013, and Bennett (2012) reported that LinkedIn has 135 million users in more than 200 countries. “Given its widespread and growing acceptance, it would seem natural that social media would begin to be integrated into the marketing curriculum.” SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 40 Social media in education is a great marketing resource (Solis, 2008). However, Brocato, White, Bartkus, and Brocato (2015) introduced an important research topic that supports my research objective: “educators are learning new ways to effectively integrate social media components into the classroom, there is still a lack of basic knowledge regarding the extent to which social media content is being taught and has actually been adopted” and “a lack of social media presence in marketing programs would reflect an important gap in curriculum development” (p. 77). The existence of CAFI education program proved the necessity of social media marketing in audience engagement in educational field. However CAFI needs to further social media marketing by identifying social media sites for different projects and analyzing strategic plans to implement social media marketing in education program. Social media gradually has been taken into consideration for promotional purpose from the business arena to the education field. Constantinides and Stagno (2012) stated “the interest of higher education institutions in social media as part of the marketing toolkit is increasing, but little is known about the potential of these channels in higher education marketing strategies” (p. 41). According to Constantinides and Stagno (2012) “literature on strategic issues, case studies or best practices specific to social media as a higher education marketing tools is limited” (p. 44), thus this study intends to fill the gap through using a case study as method to research social media marketing in education area. Waters et al. (2009) also found that “non-profit organizations in general are adopting social networking site profiles, but are not using them to their full potential for relationship cultivation” SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 41 (p. 44). Education may not be regarded as a business. Although educational institutions operate differently than corporations, they both have the same basic principles in delivering a product or service (Mahaney, 2012). CAFI as a nonprofit art organization has outlined an education plan, but it still needs to consider how to market and promote the program. There are many literature resources in business marketing and advertising, but they lack a definitive strategic marketing plan to guide an education program in nonprofit art organizations. Constantinides and Stagno indicated the gap in the marketing communication field between the information students want to know and the information schools can provide in traditional communication mode has been identified and “indicates room for improvement in the field of marketing communication for higher education” (2012, p. 42). Constantinides and Stagno (2012) also emphasized social media engagement as a marketing tool in art education is an attractive proposition because of the successful experience of social media marketing in business field and the high popularity of the social media in younger generations. In this research, Constantinides and Stagno (2012) intended to determine three outcomes of social media marketing: improved communication, increased customer engagement and increased brand loyalty. However, they pointed out “little is known about how future university students will use social media and what impact the social media will have on the decision making process of future students regarding their choice for study and university” (2012, p. 42). The challenge Constantinides and Stagno identified is the same reason for me to research CAFI education program marketing. CAFI lack an integrated social media marketing plan and also needs to SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 42 explore the market reactions to its social media usage of its education program and the effect of social media marketing among CAFI audiences. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 43 Chapter III Case Study of CAFI education program 1. CAFI Art Education Program Introduction I interned with CAFI in the summer of 2015 as an arts administration student to further gain knowledge of marketing and promotion. During the internship, I was involved in doing research for the education program as a marketing assistant and public relations specialist. As a part of CAFI’s programs, the art education program is consistent with CAFI’s overall mission and stresses the educational role of arts and culture. This program seeks to provide students and young professionals instruction by renowned mentors, management and business skills and assistance during critical times throughout their educational and professional career development. CAFI’s education program includes three projects: Young Club, Educational Convention, and Internship Program. (See figure 4) SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 44 Figure 4. CAFI Art Education Program Chart The Young Club includes weekly talks and field trips, a public music festival, and an annual awards ceremony. Weekly talks and field trips are led by renowned mentors from arts, business, and other fields, who share their experiences and deliver unique insights to young students. Mentors discuss students’ career paths while hiking, dining and visiting museums. The public music festival is designed to preserve and support traditional Chinese culture through performances of the CAFI orchestra in different Chinese communities. The orchestra performs songs with Chinese instruments such as the erhu and guzheng, and club members are invited to volunteer at the event. Finally, the annual awards ceremony allows all club CAFI ART Education Porgram Young Club Weekly Talks and Field Trips Public Music Festival Annual Awards Ceremony Convention Seminar Workshop Online Participatory Learning Internship Part-time Full-time SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 45 members to exhibit their skills through participating in fundraising events through art auctions, photography showcases, and more. The educational Convention program provides seminars for younger generations and monthly opportunities to have inspirational conversations with scholars and social elites from all fields through seminars, workshops, and online participatory learning. The seminar guest speakers are business managers, universities professors, and established artists. Seminars also have diverse audiences, including teenagers, college students, and graduates. The CAFI Workshop, the second part of its educational Convention program, aims to provide participants an interactive educational environment by cooperating with local art institutions and educational associations in the New York area. Middle school, high school, college students, and families with kids under twelve years old are all encouraged to inspire positive growth in themselves and others through the CAFI workshop. There are two components of online participatory learning: practical study and theoretical study. Practical study provides recordings from CAFI’s various performances and activities. Theoretical study combines insightful videos of interviews CAFI performers and managers with introductory information about traditional Chinese instruments. CAFI specifically establishes message and discussion boards that allow more people to engage in online study and CAFI programs. The last and ongoing education project is the internship program. This is a worldwide platform for all students and young professionals to obtain extensive learning experience and professional development. CAFI welcomes undergraduates, SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 46 graduate students, and recent graduates who have an interest and passion in cross-cultural communication, international art exchanges, and the nonprofit sector to join the CAFI family. CAFI aims to develop a shared work plan outlining objectives and outputs for interns, offer first-hand knowledge about nonprofit organization and art communities, and to strengthen classroom studies and extracurricular activities. The goal is to stimulate interest in a career in the cross-cultural communication field, building valuable networks and interpersonal relationship by communicating with preeminent artists, producers, curators, consultants, and journalists from around the world. CAFI has two types of internships: a summer full-time internship and a 6-month part-time internship. The intern’s responsibilities include administrative work, marketing research, database management, information technology, fundraising campaigns, project management, and event planning. 2. CAFI Social Marketing Strategy Analysis Given the value of social media marketing in education programs, I decided to develop effective social media marketing strategies for the CAFI education program. Thus, the research objective points to a key question: - How can social media marketing be beneficial for CAFI to promote and achieve its educational goals for art and culture? Then, I used three steps to make a detailed analysis about marketing objectives, audience, social media platforms and social media presence and content. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 47 2.1 Identify marketing objectives and target audience. An organization’s mission statement always becomes a crucial component of social media marketing. Based on CAFI’s education program goals, the social media marketing has three main objectives: (1). To establish a professional social network with mentors from arts and business fields, including business managers, universities professors, and well-established artists; (2). To provide a communication platform for CAFI members and potential audience members to promote the mission of art and cultural exchange and experience. (3). To dynamically present program activities from Young Club, Convention and Internship. The demographic features of CAFI audiences are very multi-cultural, including American, American-Chinese, and International students. There is no age or educational condition requirements for participation. Middle school, high school, college students, and families with kids under 12 are all encouraged to become involved with CAFI’s education program. CAFI also welcomes people from various majors either in art-related or non art-related (science and engineering) fields to engage with CAFI because art is without borders, and even without a shared language, people from different countries can still exchange thoughts and ideas. After identifying CAFI audience components, it is essential to segment CAFI’s education program market. “People like to feel special” (Mangold & Faulds, 2009, p.363), and segmenting markets allows marketers to describe different types of SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 48 homogeneous groups that are present in a heterogeneous markets to better investigate and evaluate market demands and customer groups (Wedel & Kamakura, 2000). Generally, “net generation” or “digital natives” usually labeled the generation born after 1980 who have grown up with social media platforms as an inherent part of their lives (Bennett et al., 2008; Palfrey and Gasser, 2008; Prensky, 2001; Tapscott, 2009). At the same time, students, as a big part of CAFI target group, are not homogeneous and should be recognized as having different needs and expectations as primary school, highschool, undergraduate and graduate students. 2.2 Identify appropriate social media platforms. Once educational resources and audiences are identified, it is necessary to determine how to select appropriate social media sites to promote education programs and increase audience engagement. Using social media marketing industry reports, Stelzener (2015) collated a series of data about changes and trends of different social media activities. Sixty-six percent of the marketers plan to increase their activities on Twitter (p. 31), 65.79 percent of marketers intend to increase their YouTube marketing (p. 32), and 66.69% of marketers plan on increasing their use of LinkedIn, an increase of 64% from 2014 (p. 32). The report shows a decline in the use of Facebook. Seventy percent of marketers plan to increase activities in 2013 by 64% in 2014 and 62% in 2015. However, Facebook is still the most popular social media sites because of its powerful user base. Fifty-two percent of marketers decided to increase Instragram users, which are up 42% from 2014 (p. 32). Based on the literature review in chart two and social media usage SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 49 trends in the above data analysis, I recommend that CAFI consider following the social media platforms as marketing and promotional tools: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Wechat as social networking tools, and YouTube and Instagram as media sharing tools. However, each project should focus on different social media sites according to their specific needs and characteristics. 2.3 Establish a social media presence and keep content vital. In his report, Stelzener (2015) synthesized four contents for social media sites: blogs, visual assets, video, and podcasts. The report shows that nearly half of marketers (45%) chose blogs as the most important form of communicating content, followed by visual assets (34%) and then videos (19%) (p. 45). Visual communication is a key element, and 73% of marketers plan to increase their use of visual images (p. 46). Video is another area that 72% of marketers want to focus on in their next marketing strategy (p. 47). In addition, 69% of marketers aim to increase blogging content (p. 47), but only 26% of marketers plan on increase their use of podcasts (p. 48). From data analysis, it is clear that social media content of CAFI’s education program should keep following the trends and focusing on visual and video. But above all, CAFI should pay more attention on to how to make those visual images and videos more appealing. In general, the education market is becoming increasingly competitive, and educational products are considered to be somewhat similar. Likewise, many organizations initiate their education program by building organizational clubs, setting up membership-based marketing, providing workshops, sharing various SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 50 instructional resources, and offering online studying resources. Therefore, CAFI should differentiate their education program from other competitors. Organizations should also encourage audiences to respond actively and stay engaged long term. I list three points to help CAFI keep their audience, make sustainable contributions to social media sites, and ensure the efficiency of their defined social media marketing objectives. (1). Establish a consistent presence on each social media site, which means keeping the site updated to maintain a sustainable relationship with audiences. CAFI has created an account on each social media site but has not always kept posts updated and has generally disappeared from public view. (2). Build talking points into its education program. When CAFI gathers club members to hold activities, conducts academic forums or gives workshops CAFI should support ongoing communication between the participants and the mentors, professors, artists and other participants after activities or workshops have concluded. Talking points are an extension of program activities. Sometimes, audiences just lack talking points to build relationship with organizations. CAFI can act as a bridge to network with audiences, lead them to places of interest, and create a space to let them discuss, review, and even debate different subjects and ideas. (3). Use the power of stories. “Stories can be memorable. The more memorable they are, the more likely they are to be repeated” (Mangold & Faulds, 2009, p.364). CAFI is a multicultural arts organization that aims to strengthen the exchange and development of Chinese art and culture. Cultural and art heritage are often SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 51 spread by tales, legends, myths and historical stories. This is a good point for CAFI to utilize in its education program. For example, compared with a memory of the meaning of chopsticks for Chinese people, a story about the role chopsticks play in a specific Chinese family would be more influential and understandable. Telling a story about your topic is more attractive and powerful for audiences. 3. SWOC Analysis SWOC analysis is a good method for CAFI to do evaluations internally and externally in order to develop a marketing plan to promote brand awareness and expand audience involvement with less cost but with more active market response (See figure 5) SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 52 Figure 5. SWOC Analysis of CAFI social media marketing Strengths: CAFI was founded in 2007 and is located in New York City, one of the political, financial and art centers in the world. As a cross-culture arts organization, CAFI has strong administrative support from the Chinese government and consulate. CAFI has strong support from the Chinese government, which allows CAFI more SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 53 opportunities to undertake international activities. For example, on July 6th, with the Consulate General of The People’s Republic of China in New York, CAFI hosted the Summer Soirée to welcome the National Ballet of China to perform at the Lincoln Center Festival 2015 in New York City. On July 24th, invited by the Counselor at the Permanent Mission of Jordan to the United Nations, Adi Khair, CAFI interns took a tour of the United Nations Headquarters. In addition to political support, CAFI has culturally diverse board members and staff team that is comprised of American, Chinese, and Chinese Americans, including Nicholas Platt, Washington SyCip, and Andy Serwer. Therefore, CAFI has a wide social network and many interpersonal relationships especially in the media and in political, business and finance arenas (See appendix B). These various networks establish distinct external resources for the CAFI internship program. For instance, fellow board member and Editor-In-Chief of Yahoo Finance, Andy Serwer, invited the CAFI intern team to take a tour of the Yahoo Finance Office in New York City. Interns were welcomed by Yahoo staff members and were provided with the opportunity to closely observe behind-the-scenes action and filming of Yahoo’s live web show, “Midday Movers.” They were also introduced to the Yahoo workspace, including the studio, media center, monitor room, and office. This was a valuable opportunity for interns to experience the coordination of important events by a leading financial press. As a very young and energetic multicultural organization, CAFI is more receptive to new things and is open to innovation. CAFI has an open-minded SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 54 attitude toward cultural differences and follows the trends of pluralism in the United States. Finally, CAFI is planning to explore and create more programs to expand brand awareness and increase audience engagement; the Education program, is one of these programs. CAFI’s Education program is open to diverse audiences and welcomes people from different cultures, regions and various backgrounds. Whether you are a high school student or graduate, majoring in arts or interested in arts, whether you want to take workshop to experience Chinese culture or attend forums to expand your social network, CAFI always be a positive choice and make dedicated efforts for you. However, it is worth mentioning that arts managements is a new field in China but is more established in the United States, so some international students who want opportunities in the states may face a challenge. CAFI’s internship program especially opens doors for international students who study arts management and are eager to gain internship opportunities. Weakness: Although CAFI was founded in 2007, its effective operation began in 2012. CAFI does not have a powerful and steady administration team and lacks efficient management tools. CAFI also needs a social media marketing analysis and a performable strategic plan. Based on my internship experience, CAFI should increase the financial allotment for marketing and promotion to elaborately prepare and support a social media marketing plan. Because CAFI’s administration team comprises people almost solely from finance and business fields, it is reasonable SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 55 that CAFI lacks knowledge about art education and public service and needs to pay more attention to building and maintaining a social network presence. Finally, gaps in the comprehension of education and marketing take the focus away from the organization’s main objectives and its mission. CAFI has had accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wechat, Instragram and YouTube. However, CAFI does not keep content updated and lacks social media management. The last post on Facebook of CAFI on March 25, 2015. A similar organization, Asian Society, however, posted its latest update today, always keeps in communication with its audience, and interacts with followers below posts and on its discussion board (See figure 6). Meanwhile, Asian Society linked another social media account, Instagram, on their Facebook page, and this measure was a good tactic to expand organizational image and awareness. Thus, it is no wonder Asian Society has many more followers than CAFI (See figure 7). SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 56 Figure 6. Facebook homepage screen shots of CAFI and Asian Society Besides issues with post updating, CAFI also needs to maintain presence on social media, including putting consistent information on different social media sites and ensuring the quality of pictures and videos. For example, does each social media site link to the CAFI homepage? Can audience search CAFI news through key words? What about the quality of news releases? For example, Asian Society has its own YouTube homepage and most videos are high definition with subtitles. On the other hand, CAFI hasn’t created a YouTube account and just has few videos without subtitles, and the quality of image needs improvement. (See figure 7) SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 57 Figure 7. The screen shots of Instagram and YouTube homepage of CAFI and Asian Society I have collected CAFI’s social media sites’ information and created an evaluation chart in appendix A to illustrate the current status of CAFI’s social media presences. Opportunities: Although CAFI has a lot of problems that need improvement, the organization has realized its shortage of social media management. First, CAFI utilized its social network resources and location advantages to recruit volunteers, especially for marketing and promotion purposes. Then, as program participants, CAFI interns SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 58 drafted a whole education program. CAFI allowed interns to conduct programs, manage social media sites, and directly communicate with one of its target audiences: international students. CAFI created a comfortable climate for its education program by using peer-to-peer rather than experts-to-public communication to make its program more accessible and approachable. Additionally, CAFI’s workshop mainly focuses on experience and promotion of Chinese arts and culture, which is different from other organizational workshops. CAFI prefers to offer family-based and Chinese folk art workshops, such as paper cutting, Chinese opera mask, and calligraphy, because CAFI targeted the American Chinese, an audience group who were born and grew up in America with both Chinese and American family members. Therefore, due to this growing multicultural environment, American Chinese may have more demands on self-identity cognition. Hence, CAFI’s workshops are a product of the trend of cultural pluralism. Besides, for students and young generations who have ambition for business leadership or social networking, CAFI young club and convention give those young students and professionals a chance to practice their management ability and set up interpersonal networks. Abundant human resources are great opportunities and serve as attractions to expand audience participation especially in New York. Challenges: CAFI’s location and strong social network are both opportunities and challenges. Generally speaking, the larger the city the more intense competition exists. There are so many similar organizations in New York that all have education SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 59 programs, such as Asia Society and Committee 100. This similarity results in the sharing of resources but also leads to fierce competition. CAFI’s target population and social network have overlapped with similar organizations. For example, New York Philharmonic usually collaborates with such organizations even though CAFI is one of the cooperating companies. Thus, social network with New York Philharmonic is not a unique advantage but a challenge for CAFI. Another challenge is that CAFI cannot assure consistent implementation of the education program; for example, CAFI offered its internship program last year but did not continue this year due to a decreased number of activities and budget problems. If the management of social media sites relies on mostly interns, this year CAFI will face a shortage of human resources. 4. Social Media Study for CAFI Education Program 4.1 Young Club Current Snapshot & Marketing Strategies CAFI’s Young Club mainly focuses on social activities; it has three projects: weekly talks and activities, a public music festival, and an annual awards ceremony. Considering that the Young Club’s audiences are young professionals and students from art and business fields, Facebook is the most ideal place to establish a community to let club members engage in club activities and build social networks with business managers, universities professors, and artists. There is a 2015 social media report written by Maeve Duggan, Nicole B. Ellison, Cliff Lampe, Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden that presents the percentage of social media users on Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instragram and Twitter. The results are based on 81% SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 60 of American adults who use the Internet. The report shows that “52% of online adults use multiple social media sites. Facebook acts as ‘home base’ — it remains the most popular site for those who only use one, and has significant overlap with other platforms” (2015). The report also reveals that among all American adults over the age of 18, 58% people use Facebook, which has more usage than all the remaining social media sites. Based on the popularity of Facebook, CAFI should create fan pages called “CAFI Young Club” and link it to CAFI’s organizational Facebook page and official website. On fan pages, CAFI could post a portfolio for the Young Club on wall posts and list possible guest speakers along with their Facebook page to attract students. Once the club starts to hold activities or salons, like dining, hiking or cocktail receptions, a discussion board should be kept open to everyone, and photos and videos should be updated promptly. It is worth noting that not everyone is likely to click CAFI’s website, and most Facebook users would be more likely to find information directly on the Facebook site. Thus, in addition to the project description, CAFI would benefit from making more content available on the Young Club’s fan page; for example, the organization should post the requirements of club membership and selection criteria for scholarships. Besides allowing organizations to provide content, Facebook is also a perfect tool to promote brand awareness and expand cooperation. Because the Young Club also intends to initiate field trips to headquarters of the top 500 companies, like Yahoo, and arts organizations, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and public music festivals to promote CAFI’s cultural outreach and communication, it is a good SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 61 opportunity to list sponsors and cooperate with companies to represent CAFI’s social networking ability and its wealth of resources. CAFI has had collaboration with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year since 2012; the organization’s association with groups like New York Philharmonic or Yahoo should help audiences take note of and trust CAFI. Finally, CAFI should utilize Facebook to initiate a social involvement plan. Because CAFI’s Young Club is an activity-based project, photos and videos would make a better presentation of the activities than a written message. Visual and acoustic stimulation are more attractive than a news release. Through research, it has become clear that CAFI has strong social networks but lacks opportunities to expand promotional activities. I would recommend CAFI to link its Instagram account with its Facebook page to increase the quantity of followers on Instagram. CAFI’s Instagram account has not been updated since June 1st of last year. Therefore, the followers have decreased substantially. Sometimes, an Instagram account is not very easy to find; for example, CAFI’s Instagram account is called “chinaartsintl,” and this abbreviation is hard to find for those in the general public who are not familiar with CAFI. If CAFI could link its account on its Facebook homepage, Facebook users could visit Instagram, increasing media exposure and potential followers. 4.2 Education Convention Current Snapshot & Marketing Strategies Compared with the Young Club, the Convention program is a more academic project that includes seminars, workshops, and online participant learning. When a program is related to academics or universities, Facebook should immediately pop SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 62 into people’s head. Without doubt, Facebook is a unique community that gathers almost all university students and faculty in one place to communicate and share photos, videos, thoughts, and news. The more academic resources CAFI can provide, the more appealing a seminar will be. In essence, listing more names of universities and professors and entering more topics and informative content on an organization’s Facebook page increases the chances that more students are likely to be interested in, investigate, and even attend the event or institution. CAFI’s could cooperate with universities in the area for its Convention program. Therefore, more page views and hits would be generated from students from the cooperating university, and further, more views would come from the friends of those students. Furthermore, I strongly recommend that CAFI make use of LinkedIn for the Convention project. CAFI has various internal social networks with business managers, mentors and talented artists and student leaders; however, CAFI has trouble bringing those resources to CAFI members and audiences. As can be seen on figure 8, there have been no recent updates for 12 months ago, resulting in little interest among followers and vistors, and the external or shareable resources are limited. CAFI should build connections with mentors and community leaders on LinkedIn, and the users could follow any person, in essence, gaining access to CAFI human resources that seemed out of reach before. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 63 Figure 8. Screen shot of CAFI LinkedIn account Online participant learning is also a good platform to do social media marketing. CAFI should make video trailers on YouTube about its activities, like the New Year Concert and the Community Music Festival, to promote both programs. CAFI has so many cultural performances about Chinese instruments, like erhu. Relying on email marketing or word-of-mouth might not be appropriate to promote visual products, and sometimes people would prefer to see images and videos rather than read tedious text on culture-related items. As for online study, social media provides real-time interactions and immediate responses necessary to facilitate learning. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube all have free discussion sections that allow audience to ask questions and leave messages. CAFI’s workshop is another program that needs attention. CAFI wants to create workshop topics about, but not limited to, Chinese cultural heritage and art SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 64 experience Thus, in order to promote workshops and their inner spirit, CAFI marketers should maintain its focus on cultural marketing. I would suggest promoting workshops from by creating a story about the topic on Facebook. The marketing content is not just a commercial; it is about history, passion, and spirit of the product or service. For example, if the next workshop topic is Chinese food in the Spring Festival, CAFI should use its three main channels to do promotion and marketing. First is Facebook. Instead of editing a long and boring article about “what is Chinese food,” it might be more interesting and innovating to write down stories about Chinese food. This is called soft advertising or a heartwarming story. For instance, if the topic is Chinese dumpling, a story can be created around chopsticks and the Chinese Spring festival. Chopsticks carry Chinese culture from one generation to another. Every Chinese person learned how to use chopsticks when he or she was a child, and just one stick contains culture, family love, and memories. Meanwhile, it is a Chinese custom for adults to give red packet to children or their seniors during the holiday to represent good luck. Humanized stories are more impressive than factual articles. During Chinese New Year, it is customary to give and receive red envelopes filled with crisp banknotes. In today's China, the form of traditional customs of red packet has been changed because of the emerging market of wechat business. It is a clever combination of Chinese tradition into e-commerce platform. Wechat promotes a new trend of Wechat Red Packet (See figure 9). Red packet not limited to children and anybody or organization could also participate in Red packet custom SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 65 through Wechat. In addition, the meaning of money changed and the amount of red packet is more flexible than before. You could choose any amount in Wechat Red packet to send to your friends, and institutions could send a large Red packet for all audiences to express their gratitude support and dedication. Figure 9. The screenshot of Wechat Red Packet application The third social media channel is YouTube, a free public film lab. A good story pitch can be acted out as a video trailer. CAFI could learn from a Coca-Cola advertisement to create a short microfilm. The Chinese Spring festival with dumplings and childhood memories are good design conceptions to promote Chinese culture. Another good idea is to recreate these traditions in a CAFI workshop with international individuals and families. YouTube can help reach marketing goal with fewer costs. However, according to research, I found that CAFI doesn't have an official YouTube homepage, and it’s only videos are news releases SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 66 retrieved from another media account. Creating an organizational YouTube homepage is a sound method to ensure the quality and accuracy of released content, provide proactive control over the publishing date and frequency, and instantly respond and give feedback to audiences. The last channel is Instragram, which is a collection of photos from all over the world. Instagram users have grown at a fast rate recent years. Culture and tradition are abstract concepts to understand, but Instagram could help make these items tangible and concrete through pictures and artwork. The “hash tag” function helps users easily find what they like and what they want. CAFI could record workshop activities by taking photos and adding precise hash tags. Therefore, CAFI followers could see the photos, and people who are interested in any of the organization’s tags, like dumpling and Chinese Spring festival, could also find and share them. During this process, the brand awareness and the workshop have been promoted extensively, and the exposure rate of CAFI has also increased. 4.3 Internship Current Snapshot & Marketing Strategies CAFI’s Internship program has been in the execution stage since spring 2015. The social media report (appendix A) reflects an integrated status of CAFI’s social media marketing, including Wechat, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube. I set up a series of standards and star-ranking method to asses the usage of every social media application. The assessment criteria include photo quality, video quality, language, content (originality, clarity, creativity, and richness), update frequency, audience identity, engaged audience (number of followers), number of SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 67 Likes, number of reposts or “retweets,” page views and comments. The chart shows CAFI has various social media accounts, but the management of these platforms is not very good. Sometimes CAFI just creates one account without any posts or content or just uploads information but fails to follow up with users and questions. In addition, some of the videos and photos are of inferior quality. These issues are found in the internship program, although it is better administered. Due to CAFI’s unique background, most interns are international students; most are Chinese and come from an arts administration background. Wechat is the most popular social media platform among Chinese, and therefore, Wechat is an appropriate platform to do promotion. Most of the interns received CAFI internship recruitment information from Wechat or through word-of-mouth, and CAFI got a good market response through Wechat marketing. When I began my internship program at CAFI, I was responsible for marketing and publication. I noticed the Wechat account was updated frequently only from April to June when most interns were working for CAFI (See Figure 10). CAFI’s Wechat account has a total of seven posts only in Chinese. However, this does not mean CAFI has had no activities since then. We did a lot of work during the summer but these accomplishments were not uploaded to the Internet. As such, we can conclude that the purpose of Wechat marketing is limited to one or two activities for CAFI, like internship recruitment, but the organization has not considered mapping an integral marketing development using this application long term. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 68 Figure 10. The screenshot of CAFI Wechat official account and history posts CAFI is aware of the importance of social media marketing but lacks management. However, CAFI currently has a good opportunity to promote its internship project because CAFI is located in Manhattan and more students are studying arts management but have difficulty in finding internships, especially for international students. CAFI has the opportunity to s open a door to meet students’ demands. Wechat is one of good channels to help students find CAFI and help CAFI to expand its market competitiveness. CAFI should keep expanding its Wechat presence to continually promote the program, properly categorize social media contents for different projects, and avoid piling up much information everywhere. For example, CAFI should map out a complete social media marketing plan for its internship project. For Wechat, the organization should post more information about the content of internship activities. CAFI should collect photos of activities SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 69 and other visual or video materials to post on Wechat from the viewpoint of interns. Because young people are more willing to seek colorful images and creative soft advertisements, it is necessary to use different design styles to make posts more appealing than CAFI’s other official accounts. CAFI should create Facebook page for its internship program and link a Wechat account to homepage. On its internship page, viewers could find every intern’s information and see their work. Social media marketing involves making information easy to find and read and avoids disturbing audiences with endless advertisements. Here is an issue that deserves notice; since Wechat is a Chinese-based social media platform and Facebook cannot directly link to Wechat application, CAFI should generate Wechat account QR code and post into Facebook page. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 70 Chapter IV Conclusion and Discussion 1. Limitations and Future Discussion: 1.1 Limitation in study There are four limitations associated with this study that should be emphasized. First, this research only analyzed and examined six social media platforms which could be useful for attracting and interacting with CAFI target audiences. My suggestions do not take the place of an integrated and comprehensive plan, and each platform may needs to be researched further. Today, the speed of social media applications is becoming faster and faster, thus marketing strategies need to constantly adapt to market development and the needs of audiences. Furthermore, it is noted that today’s market orientation is starting to move to live broadcasting online, and social media might no longer popular. Second, my research only focuses on one case study and does not consider other educational industry situations; it is possible that different art organizations have different educational outreach plans. CAFI has its unique operation mode and background and has its particular advantages and problems; thus, the marketing plan for its education program might not be appropriate for other organizations. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 71 Otherwise, this marketing plan is largely based on people who live in New York or international students who studied arts administration or are interested in related majors. Because New York is the financial center of the world, people who live in other states or study in other fields might have different opinions and needs. When generalizing the results to different areas, cultures, and communication habits, the conclusions might be distinctly different. Every program has different market segmentations and target audiences. My study specifically investigates Chinese American or international students, a specific group for CAFI education program, so my conclusions might not be relevant for other institutions serving different populations. Thus, CAFI’s education marketing strategy may not be appropriate for other arts organizations or the education industry as a whole. 1.2 Limitations in social media marketing Social media marketing has become a core competence both in business and art field marketing. Creating attractive social media content and keeping in communication with audiences is a challenge for marketers. It requires time and financial resource allocation, appropriate organizational operation of the marketing departments, and reasonable social media-based policies including social media involvement monitoring, applications updating, and leading discussions with participants. Compared with complex marketing theory and expensive advertising costs, social media is economical and available for everyone . However, some limitations on the use of social media in CAFI should be discussed. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 72 First, lack of management can prohibit successful use of social media. There are hundreds of thousands of social media platforms and accounts in the market. Gradually, some marketers overlook the quality of their promotions on social media. Customers do not like unimaginative text and ungraded photos. Marketers should stop repetitive and tedious content, and add juicy and informative posts on Facebook. Additionally, social media marketing is a kind of online word-of-mouth marketing; thus users will receive positive, neutral, and even negative feedback from customers. Marketers’ particular management skills are needed to to properly deal with negative evaluations, audience complaints, and even unreasonable abuse. Second is the shortage of human resources. Social media marketing involves a high time commitment to keep sites constantly up to date. Adding social media into the marketing mix might result in additional pressures on staff to manage it effectively. The organization will have to make target users aware of the existence of the posts and to encourage them to proactively contribute content. If an organization has limited staff and budget, social media marketing can be an over-utilization of human resources. CAFI sometimes has encountered this problem, and the use of volunteers or interns is a good solution. Young people need an opportunity to study and practice their talents, and social media also needs intelligent, creative people to instill new blood and energy. Like Reuben stated, “If you are willing to join the conversation and embrace social media in some form, create strong and effective policies for their use, and assign staff members with specific monitoring and contribution tasks, establish only those sites and tools your staff will really have the time to commit to” (2008). CAFI should accept that SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 73 internship-based social media management is not a long term or consistent plan for a social media marketing plan. CAFI should realize the importance of marketing and promotion, and it is essential to allocate some of the education program’s budget for marketing use, and to consider hiring a professional specialist. The active usage of our social media sites still is a big challenge, which needs to be overcome in the future. A third item to consider when using social media is privacy protection. With the popularity of Internet, an increasing number of resources become accessible, and there is increasing transparency of organizations’ activities. Therefore, privacy leaks have become an important issue. Organizations need to obtain permission from individuals and institutions before posting information about them. If an organization wants volunteers or interns to manage social media, it is necessary to mandate a training class for them to ensure that they follow policy and protect information. In general, the larger the program, the greater the need for information security. Overall, the power of social media has just begun to be discovered, and its use in art organizational education industry still needs to be discussed in the future. SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 74 Reference Alexa, E. L., Alexa, M., & Stoica, C. M. (2012). 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Website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent http://www.cafintl.org/ SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 81 Appendices Appendix A SOCIAL MEDIA STUDY OF AN ART EDUCATION PROGRAM 82 Appendix B