A presentation for a series of workshops for museums on social media (October 2009)

1. How to promote your museum
with online tools
Sarah Jones
Boost New Media
for National Services Te Paerangi
sarah@boost.co.nz
www.boost.co.nz
twitter: boostnewmedia
blog: www.boost.co.nz/blog
tel: +64 4 939 0062
1

2. Workshop objectives
• An overview of social media tools
• What they offer and who they target
• How to use them to build audiences and professional
networks

3. You will ...
• Get hints and tips on using social media effectively
and avoiding pitfalls
• See examples of how museums are using social
media
• Discuss approaches you might use for your
organisation
• Build confidence to use and contribute to
the growing body of practice around
social media

4. Part 1: Introduction
• Introductions
• Definition of social media
• Why social media matters

5. Part 2: Different audiences, different tools
• Deciding which tools are most appropriate for your
organisation
• Popular social media tools
• Comparing and contrasting the tools
• Hands-on with the tools

6. Part 3: Your professional networks
• How to grow your professional networks
• Popular social media tools
• Hands-on with the tools

7. Part 4: Social media strategy
• Creating a social media strategy
• Benefits of a strategy
• Where to begin - 5 steps

8. Part 1: Introductions
1. Your name and organisation
2. Your use of social media
3. Marketing focus
4. What you’d like to get out of this workshop

9. National Services Te Paerangi
www.nationalservices.tepapa.govt.nz

10. How we help
He Rauemi Resource Guides
0508 NSTP HELP
freephone helpline

11. Training and professional development
Workshops for museums at regional Marae-based workshops
and national level

12. New Zealand Museums Standards Scheme
• Practical and user friendly
• Sends good message to funders
• Formal review or as a resource
• Its free!

13. NZMuseums www.nzmuseums.co.nz
• Online collection management system
• Marketing tool for your museum
• It’s free for up to 200 objects
• Wider access for your museum
and collection

14. What do you know about social media?
What is social media? What is it not?

15. A definition
From wikipedia: Social media are media designed to
be disseminated through social interaction ... [Social
media] are accessible and scalable publishing tools.
Social media supports social interaction, using web-
based technologies to transform broadcast media
monologues (one to many) into social media
dialogues (many to many).

16. Social media in plain english
Video from CommonCraft
http://www.commoncraft.com/socialmedia

17. Does this change our view of what
social media is?
Why does social media matter?

18. Social media matters because ...
• At least some of your audience is increasingly
living online
• Research shows more and more people are
influenced by friends, family and strangers over
other promotional channels
• Research also shows social interaction is often a
pretext for attending an event
• It offers new ways to reach audiences and learn
about them
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19. Part 2: Different audiences,
different tools
• What does each tool offer?
• What does your audience need?
• What resources do you have?
• Which tools are most appropriate for your
organisations?

20. NZLive.com
• Published by the Ministry for Culture and Heritage to
promote arts, culture and sport
• Free to list events
• Events are syndicated to other websites
• Large visitor numbers
• They supply statistics on views of your events
• Helpful staff available to assist

21. Blogging - Wordpress, Blogger
• A blog is a website where authors regularly add text,
photos, audio, and links - like a journal. Readers can
usually add comments.
• Promotes news and events; exposes behind-the-
scenes activities and knowledge
• Expresses the personality of museum
• Maritime Museum
http://blog.maritimemuseum.co.nz
• Otautau Museum
http://otautaumuseum.blogspot.com

22. Nina Simon on four approaches to blogging
1. News about the museum
2. Content of the museum
3. Specialised content
4. Personal voice
http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/search?q=flowquiz

23. Seb Chan on the benefits of blogging
Within the non-profit sector, brand visibility is the
key benefit from blogging. Brand awareness leads
to potential future, real world visitation and, in
terms of collecting museums and research centres,
a general awareness of the nature of ‘what exactly
it is you do other than exhibitions’.
‘Towards an ROI measure of musem blogging’
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/

24. Microblogging - Twitter
• Messages limited to 140 characters
• Immediate updates and links from many sources
• Popular with people with little time
• Profile your collection and exhibitions
• Te Papa http://twitter.com/Te_Papa and
http://twitter.com/TePapaColOnline
• National Library http://twitter.com/NLNZ
• Seb Chan http://twitter.com/sebchan

25. Image and video sharing - Flickr, YouTube
• Publish their digital content (eg photos, presentations,
video) for sharing. Content can be tagged (labelled) and
rated by other users.
• Promote events and happenings and feed media to
other places (eg your website or blog)
• Involve your community: Friends of the Chch Art Gallery
http://www.flickr.com/photos/friendscag/
• Contribute to others’ channels: Destination Rotorua
http://www.youtube.com/user/DestinationRotorua
• Integrate social media into your exhibitions: It’s time we
met http://www.metmuseum.org/metshare/timewemet

26. Social networks - Facebook, Bebo, Ning
From wikipedia: A social network service focuses on
building online communities of people who share
interests and activities or who are interested in
exploring the interests and activities of others. Most
social network services are web based and provide a
variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail
and instant messaging services.

27. Social networking in plain english
Video from CommonCraft
http://www.commoncraft.com/video-social-networking

28. Social networks - Facebook, Bebo, Ning
• Facebook - 18-35 year olds, university grads
• Bebo - youth, focus on real-time interaction
• Ning - create your own community
• Intersecting with your audience’s social lives
• Getting to know your community
• Cross pollination of ideas and people
• Networking with peers (professional)
• Te Papa http://www.facebook.com/TePapa
• Museum 3.0 http://museum30.ning.com

29. Wikis - Wikispaces
• A wiki is a website where several authors can add,
edit, and delete content. There are text, spreadsheet,
and presentation applications that allow content to be
shared over the web and authored collaboratively.
• Very simple website creation tool
• Puke Ariki’s Taranaki wiki
http://www.taranakiwiki.com

30. Surveys - SurveyMonkey, Wufoo, UserVoice
• Get feedback from your audiences
• Share the results with your audiences
• Strengthen their relationship with you
• SurveyMonkey http://www.surveymonkey.com
• Wufoo http://wufoo.com
• UserVoice http://uservoice.com

31. Other considerations
• Can I control access to my content by other users?
• Can content contributed by users be moderated
before it is published?
• Is there an age restriction for users?
• What security and privacy is provided for personal
information (refer to the software’s terms and
conditions, and its privacy policy)?
• Who owns my content?
• How easy is it to export my content or move my
content to another service?
• Will it be easy to delete my account?

32. Compare and contrast: features and uses
• Blogging
• Microblogging
• Image and video sharing
• Social networks
• Wikis
• Surveys

33. Hands-on with the tools
• Check out ‘tools and examples’ on the workshop blog
http://museumsonline.wordpress.com
• Write a blog post on the workshop blog
http://museumsonline.wordpress.com/wp-admin
• Write a tweet on the workshop twitter account
http://twitter.com/museumsonline
• Set up your own social media ...

34. Part 3: Your professional networks
• Grow your networks for support and inspiration
• Find colleagues on Twitter
• Find communities
• Find blogs that interest you
• Find websites and services that help you
• TechSoup http://home.techsoup.org/pages/default.aspx
• LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com

35. RSS aggregators - Netvibes, Pageflakes
• Aggregators enable users to collect and view
information feeds from sources across the web,
including blogs, podcasts, and websites.
• Pull together your own version of the web
• Netvibes http://www.netvibes.com
• Pageflakes http://www.pageflakes.com

36. Hands-on with the tools
• Check out ‘professional networks’ on the
workshop blog
http://museumsonline.wordpress.com
• Check out the ‘blogroll’ on the workshop blog
http://museumsonline.wordpress.com
• Join a community or find a blog to read ...
• Set up your own RSS aggregator ...

37. Part 4: Social media strategy
Experienceology blog - video from conference on social media
strategies for museums
http://experienceology.blogspot.com/2009/09/social-media-strategies-
for-museums.html

38. Creating a social media strategy
• Involve others in your organisation
• Spend time with the social media tools
• Identify who your audience is
• Identify what you want to achieve
• Be realistic about your resources
• Set goals and success metrics
• Change policy to match practice
• Contribute to the social media of others

39. A social media strategy may ...
• Make you think about what audiences really want
• Increase your understanding of your community
• Change your exhibitions and your collections policy
• Capture new audiences (some might be physically
remote)
• Make museum knowledge public
• Re-energise staff, who find their daily grind is of
interest to others

40. Where to begin - 5 steps
1. Assess where you are now
2. Define your objectives and target audiences
3. Select the right tools for the job
4. Begin with small steps
5. Plan for the long term
Vicki Allpress-Hill, http://www.nzlive.com/blog
‘Getting started with e-marketing’

41. What is one thing that you’ll take away from today?
What social media tool might you try next?
Thank you for your time.