When the Montclair Art Museum decided to launch a new after-hours program, marketing director Michael Gillespie decided the best — and cheapest — way to market the free event was through social media.

Posts on Facebook and Twitter brought several hundred people to the inaugural First Thursday Nights at MAM, which feature free admission to the galleries, as well as a cash bar and music from 5 to 9 p.m.

The crowds are is similar to exhibition openings, Gillespie said, but with one important difference. “It’s really bringing in a different audience ... and helps attract younger people,” he said.

The link between digital technologies and new audiences — evident in the Montclair experiment — is a key finding of a new report, “Arts Organizations and Digital Technologies,” released today by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project in Washington D.C.

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