Getting social with social media
Getting social with social media
In October we held a series of four workshops titled ‘How to promote your museum using online tools’. The aim of the workshops was to provide museums with knowledge and practical skills in the use of digital technologies, such as Twitter, Facebook, Bebo and YouTube, and of course the chance to get together offline with others in the region!
The workshops were led by experienced social marketer Sarah Jones from Boost New Media, and held in Whanganui, Whakatane, Westport and Dunedin. The workshops were developed by Boost New Media and focused on social media skills. These skills helped provide participants with practical knowledge and methods of apply them to their museum.
Sarah developed Museums Online, a blog especially for the workshop series. The blog has Sarah’s experiences on the workshop, as well as a number of useful resources. You can download her presentation from the blog as well.
Sarah describes five central themes from the workshop series:
1. A professional presence
Having a professional presence on Facebook enables organisations to intersect with the social lives of potential audiences. Research indicates that social interaction can lead to participation, and also that people are increasingly influenced by recommendations from family, friends and even strangers. Facebook, and services like it, encourage fans to market your service for you. Museums reported some successful forays into audience building via Facebook.
2. Virtual visits are valuable
Museums can value virtual visits as a legitimate cultural experience. Virtual visits can generate physical visits – web camera footage of the dissection of the colossal squid had people turning up to Te Papa to see it in the flesh. Curating online makes your collection or service accessible to audiences who are remote and may never be able to walk through the doors.
3. Targeted use of social media
We are seeing increasingly nuanced and discriminating use of social media. Te Papa has two twitter feeds: one focuses on promoting events, happenings, exhibitions and giveaways, and the other profiles interesting items from their collection. Ideas for blogs generated by workshop participants ranged from working with the community to identify unknown objects in a collection to presenting a characterful, behind-the-scenes museum personality.
4. Resource-strapped?
A blog or Facebook page may give a low-cost web presence or greater flexibility if they are part of a larger website run by a parent organisation. A website is important but not enough. A website centralises information about your organisation; social media distributes information. Audiences may visit your website rarely but receive your twitter updates regularly.
5. Make it part of the plan
‘Under the radar’ activities are giving way to building social media into communications and marketing plans. Linking your activities to your marketing objectives will help you choose the right tools for the right reasons, prioritise what you can manage, as well as think through the implications for organisational social media policy, branding and so on (see this post on the workshop blog about social media strategy).
See Sarah Jones blog entry about the workshops
Visit Boost Online’s blog
Visit the Museums Online blog