Academy of American Poets: online since 1993, before Amazon and Yahoo, etc. 1997: launched www.poets.org w/ programming: poet biographies, games. Now: over 1 million visitors a month. One year — had Almanac, with new content every day, which set up current structure. Coding, structure easier, more automated.
Open Letter, 3 Percent. Press — 2 years old, 12 books. Idea: webblog — tell who Open Letter is, what they do. Now reviews, awards. Build support and community.
Billy Merrell: “The funny thing about technology: the more we have, the more it opens up to us.” Every development leads to further development.
Open Letter/3 Percent: challenge is time. Tough to keep up w/ new ideas along w/ publishing work. Would farm out work if they could.
AAP: less integrated than they would like us to be. 9,000 dues-paying members as well as subscribers — but both DBs aren’t integrated. Web Store and ticket buyers list not tied to Fundraising DB as well. AAP — done fundraising appeal (”help us buy a robot”) around automating for website. Also, once ahead of curve, now behind in some ways — “Do you wait for something to be cheap and readily available, or do you build something yourself and have to fix it constantly?”
Challenge: AAP website gets hacked! Big sites get scammed for vulnerabilities — recently hacker went through calendar on AAP. Google will take off search ranking if they find out. Can’t know of vulnerability until you get hacked.
OL: at university, started own website so as not to go through monolithic structure. Content Management Systems for publishers too expensive, not so customizable — so OL built own CMS.
AAP: a time when funders would give tech grants for website creation. Past that stage — hard to get funding for web 2.0. How to get funders to realize how valuable website is as program that reaches a wide audience. AND, how audiences want content delivered. Beth Harrison: “It’s not just a website, it’s a way of life.”
“Evergreen vs. ongoing” content — why AAP can’t add 200 bios. Each bio is a commitment to keep up-to-date into perpetuity. Google analytics — a lot of javascript online for problem solving. Billy Merrill: “Once you got so used to knowing stats that once you start making decisions based on that, you want it for everything.” Google can give you info. Web redirects — shows you who goes to which redirect — track sources. Billy Merrill — contact him for two links that explain (e-mail: bmerrell@poets.org).
Question: how much marketing, outreach is too much. AAP: newsletter — make easy to unsubscribe. As long as subscribers are growing more than unsubscribers, good for org. Manage staff marketing work via staff-wide Google calendar to make sure it’s spaced out. Can also ask for feedback as marketing — i.e., what ideas do you have? — follow up w/ fundraising appeal to lists, let audience know. Layer things on top of each other — provide both print and web materials to members/community. Used to think there’s no too much ,b/c you can turn it off. Be aggressive, watch traffic — when that drops off, you can stop. OL: reach out on everything — anyone who’s following in any way will see it. E. J. Van Lanen: “Try to be consistent, focus on one book/event at one time, with everything we do.”
OL: Use Google for mail, don’t get statistics. But follow website — starts small, builds. Main thing is to update each day w/ material that readers will find interesting — not only content, but explanation about what you do. Doesn’t have to always be interesting to whole audience.
AAP: count newsletter response via click-back response. Can see through Google analytics. 67,000 subs to newsletter — successful newsletter: 5,000 click-backs. Not accurate, though. Anyone can cut-paste to blog, but won’t count as statistic. Also, just reading text doesn’t count.
Gary Glazner — Bowery Poetry Club. Putting together shows w/ tweets. Launched webcasting all events live in Sept.
How use technology to fundraise? Beyond “button — pay now!” Online auction — works for some orgs. E-Tapestry — fundraising. Web-based. Nonprofit enterprise section of Google. Google — back-end resources. Geoffrey Gatza: online bakesale! AAP tried to make money via mobile phone fundraiser, didn’t work. Also, Giftworks from Mission Research — DB answer to Raisers Edge.
Spam — AAP doesn’t even get alerts, just hears from newsletter subscriber who no longer can get e-mails. Different in different cases — e. e. cumnings and “Sappho, Lesbian poet” can get blocked. Have to go through manually — usually school systems that block.
VPN — virtual private network.
All resources mentioned will be posted on LitTAP website!
Question: AAP — thought of members-only section. Beth Harrrison: “We want poetry to be free. People expect it to be free.” Explain to consumers — you want Poem-a-Day to be free, please help us. Premium to audio archives — $25 or more, can download a CD worth of poetry (”deep cuts from archive”). List that asked to donate first outperformed 2 to 1 over list that ask to pay once used. Psychologically — pay, have value.
E. J. Van Lanen: “Building an audience around literature as translation will lift all boats.” Working to create fan base.