GET CREATIVE THIS SUMMER!!!
Paperkite Creative Workshops for Kids

Paperkite Creative Summer Workshops are a fun and creative way to spend summer vacation. Workshops are available for grades 1-6 and offer a variety of activities from arts and crafts to creative writing and imagination workshops. All classes meet at the Smithy-Pioneer Gallery classroom, 55 Pioneer Street, Cooperstown, NY and include a healthy snack. All work will be exhibited and presented at an end of season celebration. Check out our schedule of classes.

Special Thanks to the Smithy-Pioneer Gallery for Sponsoring the Summer 2010 Season!

We’ve just returned from the annual Museums in Conversation conference where Upstate History Alliance announced the results of a six-month project with Paperkite Creative Communications to change its name and visual identity.

Why change?

Upstate History Alliance is an organization that serves museums and heritage organizations throughout New York with best practices, regular professional development and a popular regranting program.

In short, they had a name that not only was inaccurate, but actually limited their reach. Staff and board members constantly found themselves explaining that the organization was all over the state – not just upstate. And membership was open to all types of museums, not just history museums and historic sites.

They have as much to offer people working in a children’s museum in Westchester as they do a historic house in the Catskills.

How we approached it

Changing a name is probably the most dramatic and potentially nerve-jangling activity that any organization can undergo. Our hats are off to this organization’s leadership for being so engaged and hands-on in this process. Without the kind of genuine collaboration we experienced in this project, there is no way we could have done the work we did and come to a conclusion that pleased as many people as this one did.

We kicked-off this project at the board’s annual retreat at Great Camp Sagamore, and that set a tone for the relationship like nothing else could. We spent a full day in a beautiful setting that allowed creativity to flow, ideas to flourish and conversation to happen.

It was hard work, but by the end of the day, we had a DNA chart that spoke to the essence of the organization. That chart served as the basis for determining whether anything else we did on the project was successful. We were always asking whether we were hitting the truth we had identified in the beginning.

The result

As of April, 2010, Upstate History Alliance has become Museumwise. The name reflects both the constituency and the character of the organization while remaining inclusive and welcoming. Museumwise’s executive director and board president, Catherine Gilbert and Andrew Kitzmann,  unveiled its name Sunday evening at the opening reception of the Museums in Conversation conference, and board members handed out lapel buttons with the new graphics and the words “I Am Museumwise.”

We are so happy for Museumwise and everyone involved. Our work isn’t quite finished, as we’re moving forward now to update the Museumwise website. Stay tuned for the website launch in May!

In the process of creating and launching the Coop Kids Facebook page, there were a lot of questions about how to let people know about events that were happening.

In the process of creating an event on a Facebook page, you’ll be asked whether you want to publish the event to your wall. When you publish it to the wall, it appears on the Page’s wall, and your fans will see it in their news feeds – ie their “home page” feeds, and it will come from the page itself – not from your personal profile.

The third and final step when creating an event is to “Invite Friends”

Administrators suddenly find that, although everything else they do on the page publishes in the name of the page (not their personal profiles), this prompt brings up their personal friends, and the invitation goes out from their personal profiles. It’s confusing, and I’m not sure why the last step isn’t “Update Fans,” which would appear in fans’ “Updates” queue.

It’s not quite logical, and it may well change – as so many things do with the Facebook interface.

In the meantime, what should administrators do?

Invite your friends – but with caution.

When people connect with you personally on Facebook, they’re probably not signing up to receive all your work- and cause-related marketing. Don’t send these kinds of invitations indiscriminantly to all of your friends. And don’t use this as a way to show your colleagues/business prospects/other clients what you’re doing. That’s what LinkedIn is for.

Invite only people who will be interested in the event itself.

Update Fans

You can send an update to all fans of the page by going to the Events tab, clicking on the name of the event, and then clicking “Update Fans” in the menu under the event image.

This update won’t appear in your fans’ Messages (like a personal invitation from your profile will), but it will appear in their Updates tab, which is in the Messages submenu.

It’s important to go beyond just creating the event and update the page fans and invite friends (responsibly), because otherwise fans will miss the initial publication of the event, unless they take the time to go to the page itself and look up the events.

It’s also alright to send more than one update to fans about an event. Send one when the event is created, and then send more as the event draws closer. Just be sure that the updates aren’t spammy. Give more information about the event. Provide links about performers or pertinent subject matter.

Like all social marketing, it will work best if you keep it relevant, expected and interactive.

is not to spend your day reading about what other people are having or lunch or – MUCH WORSE – reading their self-aggrandizing micro-press releases.

Last week, I worked with a client to figure out whether Twitter is a good fit for them. This is an organization with a small, incredibly dynamic and energetic staff. On one hand, Twitter could be an excellent tool for connecting with their membership and further illustrating the face that is already on their organization. On the other hand – they have absolutely no time to waste on a tool that can, admittedly, be a time-suck if you just walk into it without a goal or strategy.

Like any form of communication, Twitter is a medium, and its value (or lack thereof) lies in how you employ it.

Many organizations have rushed into the medium without a plan or even a definition of success. Even the (largely self-proclaimed) experts, consultants, marketing agencies, etc., have been guilty of spreading the gospel of the technology without supporting it with a strategy.

That’s probably why more than half of CMOs surveyed in a report published last month by Marketing Profs* weren’t sure of the return on their investment in the social web.

Another full 50 percent didn’t even know how to measure the return of a business blog.

(*To access the full article, you’ll have to register for a free account. Go ahead – it’s a good resource.)

As The Brandbuilder himself, Olivier Blanchard, keenly asserts: ROI is always measured in $$$. Money goes in, money comes out, and a profit or loss can be calculated.

So, if you have to make money with this thing, you look at your participation a little differently. The question changes from whether you should be on it, to whether it solves a problem that effects the bottom line(s). (For those who honor the triple bottom line.)

When you create a new membership brochure, make your website easier to use or expand the stock on your shelves, you have a financial goal in mind. More members. More conversions on the site. More sales. More money.

Whether it’s Twitter or a blog or Facebook or any other mode of communication, you should go into it knowing what problem you want it to solve and how you will measure its success.

Brian Solis gives the following examples of some problems Twitter/the social web can help solve:

I believe this is the direct result of a disconnect between social media activity and a clearly defined end game. We must establish what we want to measure before we engage. By doing so, we can answer the questions, “what is it that we want to change, improve, accomplish, incite, etc?”

Defining a clear strategy can help us reach our social media goals, including:

- Sales
- Registrations
- Referrals
- Links (the currency of the social web)
- Votes
- Reduction in costs and processes
- Decrease in customer issues
- Lead generation
- Conversion
- Reduced sale cycles
- Inbound activity

Those are all things that can be measured, and they all impact the financial health of your business or organization.

Cooper the Fox, Mascot for Coop Kids

We are lucky enough to be part of a group of local organizations who have come together to create a community calendar hub called Coop Kids.

The page quietly launched last night after a few months of preparation and meetings and response was pretty swift. Within half an hour, we had enough fans to secure a user name for the page, so that we could give out an address that looks like this: www.facebook.com/coopkids rather than like this: http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/Cooperstown-NY/Paperkite-Creative-Workshops/183742475331. (PS – if you’re reading this, why don’t you slip over to the Creative Workshops page and fan us up so we can get our custom user name).

Today, it has twice that number, and I expect it will continue to grow as we begin publicizing it in earnest.

This is one of those grassroots projects that grew organically out of a sincere desire to do something useful for the community: Namely to provide a place where families could find comprehensive listings of kid-oriented events, and where all the various organizations in town who offer children’s programming can communicate to find greater strength in collaboration.

Paperkite was involved on two fronts, both as a programming provider (because of our creative workshops) and as a communications facilitator.

Representatives from the initial organizations met last fall to begin the dialogue. Everyone was enthusiastic about the project, although there were reservations about getting involved in something that would add another layer of responsibility on already busy schedules.

After collecting notes, ideas, concerns and other thoughts from the group, we explored different directions the project could go.

Should it be a print calendar? A combination print and online calendar? How would we handle costs and responsibilities? Could the whole thing live online? If so, who would administer the site? How would we build it? Who would pay for hosting and design and day-to-day maintenance of the site?

We quickly dismissed the idea of a print-only piece as being both too costly and labor intensive to be sustainable. And since the goal was to create a truly comprehensive resource, we acknowledged that we could never do that in print.

Instead, we would use small printed promotional fliers (design donated by one affiliate and copying donated by another) to publicize the online space.

We explored different logistics for getting online, and ultimately decided that Facebook was a good way to start, since a Facebook fan page had all the functionality we wanted (multiple admins, events calendar, discussion forum, interactivity with the audience), it was free and – this is the best reason of all – people are there already. We don’t have the challenge of instilling a new habit of checking a new website.

I hope that this idea grows over time and eventually perhaps even outgrows Facebook. For now, it’s an excellent example of grassroots collaboration that benefits both the collaborators and their audiences.

We would like to thank all of the collaborators who have made this happen:

The Farmers’ Museum

Fenimore Art Museum

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

The Clark Sports Center

Cooperstown Art Association

Cooperstown PTO

The Brookwood School

The Smithy-Pioneer Gallery

Friends of the Village Library

Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival

Cooperstown Performing Arts

Paperkite Creative Workshops

Google Wave logo

My very, very first impression of Google Wave is that it called to mind a conversation I had back in 1994 or ‘95 about the difference between e-mail and the Internet. I was the one who wasn’t totally clear on the subject. This was back when the two things could be and often were separate. My brother was away at college, where he had access to e-mail, but not always access to the Internet.

My friend, who was one of those nerdy first-adopters (and an IT person at the company where I worked), explained the Internet to me in very technical terms that made it seem like a very closed system created for and populated by the technical elite. But I remember thinking, “well, sooner or later someone’s going to come up with a way that just anyone will be able to put things on the Internet just like creating a document, and the world will get a lot more interesting.”

I worked at a newspaper then. Things got a lot more interesting.

Anyway, I’ve been trying out Google Wave this week. I’m not going to give you a tutorial, because there are plenty of other places you’ll find that. And I’m not yet equipped to give it anyway. Try Lifehacker for a good overview. And for a little funny, try Pulp Wave Fiction. (via Chris Brogan.)

What struck me was the idea that Wave is an approach to online communication that asks the question, “How would e-mail be different if it were being created today, with all our current technical capability and emerging online culture?”

And the resounding, joyful answer is that it would be collaborative and nimble and conversational.

Good for you, Google Wave Team. And good for us.

I think this is going to make things interesting.

Not long ago, the prevailing wisdom about online strategy was to use your blogs, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., to increase searchability and ultimately drive people back to your sales-machine of a website. It was kind of like dropping lines all over the lake so you could pull all the fish back to the boat.

In essence, the strategy was an online version of real-world strategies – a high-tech version of running an ad in a newspaper in hopes of drawing readers off their sofas and into your store.

The social web can work that way, but what happens when you make a point of going to your customers (clients, donors, etc.)?

Look at Best Buy’s Facebook page. They go beyond using it as a gateway to their home site. They even go beyond using it as a customer service tool.

With a custom “Shop + Share” tab, they invite fans to both shop and interact without ever leaving Facebook.

When you consider the growing number of people who use social sites like Facebook as their home pages, it behooves anyone with a social web presence to include this kind of engagement in their strategy.

What would your fans like to do on your Facebook page? What can you give them that they wouldn’t be able to resist sharing? Is there some way you could offer an authentic platform where your fans want to interact?

This Friday, millions of people around the country will throng to big chain stores to buy $12 plasma TVs and stock up on 50-cent cashmere sweaters.

We don’t begrudge anyone who wants (or needs) to save money this holiday season. We’re right there with you. But the long-term cost of throwing the better portion of your economic weight behind chain stores far outweighs the short-term savings.

For example, one local-first study showed that when you spend $100 at a locally owned business, $68 stays in your community. When you spend the same amount at a chain store, only $43 stays in the community.

OK – no one wants to hurt local businesses, but we’re all watching every penny. How does keeping that $25 in your community directly benefit you?

It makes for a stronger economic ecosystem. Dollars spent at the locally-owned retailers support the shop owners and allow them to offer their employees competitive wages. More importantly, your financial support enables them to be more responsive to your needs and stock the kinds of things you would otherwise buy at the big chains.

If you want a different view on that stuff, have a look at this fast-paced little film:

The Story of Stuff

The folks here at Paperkite are passionately committed to vibrant, sustainable local economies. Over the next few months, we’ll be talking a lot more about this subject and about how we’re working to make a difference in our own community.

In the meantime, have a great Thanksgiving and think local as you head into the holiday frenzy.

A few years ago, when I was in the market for a new digital camera, I went to Cnet to research my options, then I went to Pricegrabber to find the best deal. I found the camera I wanted for a good price (plus free shipping – woot) from an online retailer. I was so happy with the whole transaction that, a couple years later when I wanted a new camera, I went back to the same retailer.

Again, I got the camera I wanted at a very good price. I also started getting about four marketing e-mails a day from the retailer. Yes, I had opted in to receive news of special promotions, etc., but I had no idea that meant signing on for a deluge of irrelevant noise.

Making matters worse, when the second camera malfunctioned within the warranty period, and I e-mailed the customer service address at the retailer with a question, I never got a response. That afternoon, I did get a handful of “special” promotions for products that weren’t related to photography or cameras in any way.

I unsubscribed. And I decided that my next camera will come from another retailer.

I’m not alone, either. A recent study by the CMO Council and InfoPrint Solutions Company found that 41 percent of consumers say they would consider ending a brand relationship due to irrelevant promotions, and an additional 22 percent say they would definitely defect from the brand.

E-mail marketing efforts can be enormously powerful. When approached correctly, they have the power to engage your constituents in a lasting and personal way. Done incorrectly, however, they have the power to actually repel the very people you’re trying to attract.

The key is relevance and valuable content. Sometimes that means a coupon or sale promotion, but not necessarily. In the case of my online electronics retailer, no amount of screaming e-mail promotions would convince me that I needed to order a 46-inch LCD television.

Why couldn’t they send me real information that I could have used, such as tips and tricks for using my new camera, links to amateur photography contests, an invitation to share photos I have taken with my camera … the options are limitless.

When brands deliver that kind of value, they create more than repeat customers – they start building a community of fans.

Over the weekend, Paperkite was lucky enough to be part of an event in our community that brought together local arts and recreation groups who offer programming for children and families. Close to 200 people gathered at the Fenimore Art Museum to attend to a concert by Uncle Rock, listen to a reading of original ghost stories written by 3-6th-graders, do crafts and watch paintings in the Museum’s collection come to life with the help of some costumed interpreters.
We live in a small community that is blessed with a wide variety of cultural resources. With such a small population, competition is steep, not only for funds but for a basic share of attention. You can plan an event for a year, but if it happens to coincide with almost anything else, your attendance will suffer greatly.
Meanwhile, families who are looking for something to do often rely on word of mouth and a lot of happenstance to learn about events.
So when we heard about an initiative to bring those groups together to create a comprehensive events calendar, we couldn’t wait to join the effort.
As parents, we’ll be thrilled to have that resource for ourselves. As creative teachers, we’ll be glad to have another venue to promote our workshops. And as members of the community, we think this effort will make arts, culture and recreation more accessible to everyone in the community.
Paperkite is donating our services to help get this collaboration off the ground and online. We’re set to launch in the next couple of weeks, and we’ll give you a peek behind the scenes of all the hows and whys of what we did.