The Use of Hashtags in the Promotion of Art Exhibitions

Abstract

Hashtags are increasingly used to promote, foster and group conversations around specific topics. For example, the entertainment industry widely uses hashtags to increase interest around their products. In this paper, we analyze whether hashtags are effective in a niche scenario like the art exhibitions. The obtained results show very different behaviors and confused strategies: from museums that do not consider hashtags at all, to museums that create official hastags, but hardly mention them; from museums that create multiple hashtags for the same exhibition, to those that are very confused about hashtag usage. Furthermore, we discovered an interesting case, where a smart usage of hashtags stimulated the interest around art. Finally, we highlight few practical guidelines with behaviors to follow and to avoid; the guidelines might help promoting art exhibitions

The invigorating influence of relationship marketing on purchase intention in fine arts sector

“…There may be forums or news sections on artist community websites that welcome artist submissions. However, due to confusion in strategies, artists and art marketers are hesitant to announce to promote their work online through these platforms (Furini et al , 2017).…”

About Challenges in Data Analytics and Machine Learning for Social Good

“…[8] aims to understand more about how museums exploit social networks by studying the types of tweets and the kinds of activities museums perform to engage their visitors, and [9] proposes a five-step strategy to make art museums influential over Twitter. The interested reader can refer to [10][11][12][13] for further relevant research.…”

Examining the Impact of Online Media Advertising on Art Exhibition Engagement and Visitor Satisfaction

“…The purpose of exhibition promotion is to inform a wide range of people so that many people can see the exhibition. The art exhibition market like markets in other fields is a distribution process of supply and demand in which advertising is used as a tool but art exhibition products have different advertising characteristics from general products [6]. Unlike other goods, art has the property of experiential goods that consumption begins when certain symbols are formed through repeated experiences and it has a time-intensive nature that requires going to the museum to watch performing arts and a public good nature.…”