How Cultural Organizations Can Profit from Using Digital Platforms

This week we look into digital platforms and the advantages they offer, especially for cultural organizations.

Digital Trends in Culture 2022

Digital solutions and offers are becoming more and more important; COVID-19 has just accelerated this development. The digital will never be able to replace the real experience and should rather be seen as a useful, user-friendly additional offer that, in the best-case scenario, intensifies communication and exchange between museums, other cultural institutions, and their audiences. The cultural sector in particular can still do some catching up to position itself better online – be it with its own websites, digital content offers, or participation in digital platforms and marketplaces.

Since the pandemic, museums and other cultural organizations have increasingly relied on social media to keep in touch with their audiences. This trend will continue, as these channels are relatively easy to use and, above all, appeal to a young audience. You can find out how cultural organizations can use social media platforms in our recent blog post.

In the past, many museums developed their own apps but creating them takes a lot of time and money. They are often not very popular: who would want to install an individual app for visiting each museum, buy tickets from third-party providers, and have to go to the organizations’ websites or social media channels for up-to-date information? The solution is digital platforms such as Cultural Places, which cover various aspects from information and content distribution to ticketing and digital marketing.

Digital Platforms and Their Users

When it comes to online platforms, most people first think of large, international platforms such as Tripadvisor or Airbnb in the travel sector, of social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, or of product sales platforms such as Amazon. What they all have in common is that they provide their users with a wide range of products, services, and features from different providers. Users do not have to go to various websites and painstakingly compare offers, prices, products, conditions, shipping costs, and more. In addition, there is greater trust in big, well-known names, from which lesser-known companies can benefit. But smaller platforms apart from Google, Amazon, and co. also enjoy trust in their special niches.

Advantages of Digital Platforms for Companies in the Arts and Culture Sector

Not only users, but also companies and organizations benefit from the use of platforms such as Cultural Places. They are specifically beneficial for the arts and culture for the following reasons:

• Technology & Resources

Cultural Places CMS (Screenshot)

Cultural organizations can use existing technical infrastructures through platforms and do not have to develop and implement their own concepts. This not only saves time, but also costs. The use of a platform also makes sense in the long term, since technical problems, updates, etc. are taken over and carried out by the platform. Set-up and maintenance are managed by professionals and do not have to be done by the cultural organizations themselves. Cultural Places offers a tried and tested platform (web and app) that is continuously maintained and brought up to date with the latest technology. Additionally, we provide our own CMS for customers, as well as support.

• Synergy Effects & New Target Groups

A digital platform for art and culture offers museums, exhibition halls, event locations, and much more the possibility to reach new target groups. For example, users search for concerts and then find exhibitions or theater performances on a platform, even though they did not specifically search for them. In this way, new target groups can also be reached who have not looked directly for a specific organization or category. We at Cultural Places also combine our offers and activities with other platforms such as Instagram or Facebook. With the Christmas campaign 2021 “Back to Culture – Advent Calendar” we were able to raffle vouchers and tickets from 30 organizations and thus bring new audiences to both their content and ours.

• Additional Sales Channels

Another advantage of digital platforms is the possibility of selling tickets, experiences, or merchandise to be processed safely and easily. The individual organizations do not have to laboriously set up and maintain their own online shops, but instead can use existing offers. Cultural Places currently offers ticketing. For example, the Hotel Sacher Wien handled the ticketing for its pop-up exhibition in summer 2021 via our platform. In the future, selected articles such as art catalogs can be sold, and experiences are offered and processed securely.

• Content Creation & Content Marketing

Some platforms also offer taking over the content creation for certain products. Cultural Places has already created many digital audio guides for well-known cultural organizations such as St. Stephen’s Cathedral and the Vienna Secession. We also offer the creation of podcasts and marketing texts, which are also advertised via our social media channels.

Cultural Places Digitalizes Culture

With our “Digitalize Culture Initiative” we are aiming to support cultural organizations with a platform infrastructure to help them in their digitalization and thus reach both existing and new audiences. If you are curious about our offer, you will find more information on our website and can keep up to date with our newsletter. For interested cultural organizations, we also offer regular webinars in which the features of Cultural Places are explained and where there is opportunity for further exchange. Just write to office@oroundo.com and we’ll get back to you with the next dates!