Overcoming the Odds: Social Media on a Shoestring Budget

Overcoming the Odds:Social Media on a Shoestring BudgetCatherine Shteynberg@cshteynbergMcClung Museum of Natural History & Culture, University of Tennessee, KnoxvilleTN Association of Museums 2013

#tam2013

-It used to be that we had to pull out stats with museum directors and colleagues to prove that it was worth our while, but today, it is pretty much a given that since the average American spends three hours a day on social media, that museums simply have to be in that space.-Nevertheless, with everyone here doing the jobs of three people, and with small budgets, how do you sustain social media outreach at your museum, and how do you know if the return on your time and resources is worth it?1

-Something I battle myself, but I hope to share a couple of tips and techniques Ive picked up working in social media positions at both the Smithsonian, and at the McClung Museum.-While most of us no longer have to justify social media participation, I think a lot of us still face hurdles to understanding the purpose of, and the effort involved in social media, and the need to spend museum time on it. -So, I wanted to show this tweet I came across just a few days agoits a former Smithsonian colleague talking about speaking with her director.2

What is Social Media?Nina Simon: Tools that enable people to create, share, and connect with each other

Image credit: NY Times (left); Han Nguyen (right)

-So, what is social media?-Part of the problem is with our definition. Why is social different from marketing? Yes we promote events on Twitter and Facebook, but social media is about creating sharing, and connectingyouve got to create killer content, and youve got to focus on the relationships that youre creating.-Good Examples: Glad to have Met you from the Met Museum and a behind the scenes tweetup at the Smithsonians National Museum of American History.3

Reality Check

Social Media

My teenager can do it!It takes lots of time, care, and knowledgeIts Instantaneous!Its fast moving, but not fast results Its all about the followers, baby!Does following = caring?

-So, in thinking about social media, there are a lot of myths that have to be addressed.-First, Its important that we dont give the duty solely to interns or to grad students that are passing through. Its important to remember that just like with real life friendships, to form a meaningful community you have to spend a lot of time listening, responding, and developing those relationships. And you are getting a lot of information from these relationships. You cant just have an intern do it for 2 months: youll not only lose information, youll lose relationships.-If we do it, well automatically have people that love us and come to all of our activities. Building relationships takes lots of time.-If we have 5,000 followers, it means were doing awesome.5

What happens to your stuff?

Image credit: NASA

-Okay, lets do a pollhow many of you have metrics or performance indicators for your social media outreach?-Do you know how your content is performing, who is sharing it and why, or what happens to it?-Dont worrya lot of people dont, but I think it is important that we ask ourselveswhy are we doing this, and how are we going to sustain these efforts and know that theyre working.6

Keys to Social MediaSelf-ExamineListenFish where the fish arePlan, plan, planIts a team effortRespect & engage with your fansMeasure!Fail Frequently, Fail Fast

-All of this leads me to some of the keys Ive found in social media that well cover today.7

-Before I started my job at the McClung about 6 months ago, I decided to do some research about our museum. So, of course, I started with Google and quickly started to find some patterns: ways that people were talking about us, groups of people that were talking about us, and some missed opportunities on our social media networks that would be easy to fix. For example, we werent listing our events on our Facebook page, and a lot of students on Twitter and Foursquare talking about our location because they went to class there, but not really interacting with the museum much.8

SELF-EXAMINEWhat are our goals?Why are we doing social media?What social media are we using?Does it fulfill our goals?How much time are we spending?

Who am I?

-When I came to the museum, as I was tasked with social media responsibilities along with curatorial and outreach duties, I asked staff what our goals were with social media and why we were using it. The answers were familiar: people knew they should be doing it, but they werent sure of any exact outcomes that they wanted. They wanted to reach the general public, and they had no idea if their efforts were successful beyond our follower counts slowly but steadily creeping up on Twitter and Facebook.-There was a clear need to ask and answer the questions here, and to come up with goals for our social media.-You may even want to do an audit of your social mediaI have examples in the resources listed at the back of the presentation9

LISTEN

Flickr User: Social_StratificationWHO is talking and WHATare they saying?

-But before we could figure out where we wanted to go, I wanted to understand where we were coming from, and how we were interacting, or not interacting with people already on social media, and what people were saying about us.-So, I started our process by doing some listening.10

FILTERout theNOISE!

-Of course, this is all challenging, because theres so much noise out there. When youre one person working on social media for a quarter of your work time, how do you filter out the noise?11

Listening ToolsTools/Methods-Come up with KeywordsSet up Google Reader/alternative RSS readerGoogle Alerts Twitter Search RSSFeed it all into your ReaderArchive & Track mentions with Bookmarking Service

What to track-Organization KeywordsTwitter hashtags and listsURLs of site, blog (on Twitter, Google Alerts, Wikipedia)Events, exhibitions, services, program namesNames of people in org.Related organization blogsSocial Media blogsInfluencers on social media channelsYour evangelists

-The good news is, there's so much information out there about your organization to be had for free with just a little bit of work, and by using some free tools. -For a few years now, Ive been using a system whereby I set up Google Alerts and RSS feeds of Twitter searches and feed this back into Google Reader. Note that Google Reader might be shutting down this summer, but I have a list of resources at the end, which include a list of alternatives.12

-Heres how I track all of the information that comes through in my RSS Reader.14

The Good

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The Bad, and The Ugly

Need to blank out names16

Why Listen?

Discover key influencersFind new ideasWhat youre doing well/failing atDiscover your most popular mediumsTo figure out which ideas are stickyHow can you add value to the conversation?

Next, well look at a case study using one of our desired audiencesUniversity of TN students.17

Where are our fish?

-In addition to finding a lot of student comments about the museum on Twitter, we were finding that they were sharing photos a lot.18

Fish where the fish are

-We decided to use Instagram.-Chances are you have specific collections and content that you create at your institutionwhether youre an art, history, science, or cultural museum. Aldo, chances are theres something unique about your institution that you can and should take advantage of in your social media. You have you figure out who you want to reach, and your have to engage with that audience where they already existin other words you have to fish where the fish are.19

InstagramEngaging with students directly on Twitter

iPadiPhone

-Students are sitting around anyway waiting for class, so how can we encourage sharing and engagement?20

Plan, plan, planCan you get together a team?Social Media Editorial Calendar & MeetingsHootsuite

Insert planning diagram21

Content StrategyFacebook:Content: Event/activity photos, object photos, eventsAudience: Moms, community membersTwitter:Content: Anthro, Archaeo, Nat. History news; Conversations w/ audience; PressAudience: Students, professionals, local businesses/colleaguesInstagram:Content: behind-the-scenes and interesting/weird photosAudience: Students, 20-30 somethings in Knoxville

Its a Team Effort

-You never know where ideas might come fromso much of social media success is about realizing that great ideas can come from multiple people on your staff.23

Respect & Engage with Your Fans(and Frenemies)

-And more pleasant, engaging with a student on Twitter and Instagram.25

From Goals to MeasurementWhat do you want your audience to do?Goal: Increase engagement with UT students on SM.

Measurements:Quantitative: Avinash Kaushik: Increased Conversation (comments/post), Amplification (RTs or shares/post, Applause (Favorites or Likes/Post)Qualitative: interesting conversations, positive sentiment, awareness of what works

Measure!

Google Analytics

bit.ly|bitly|blogfaves.com|blogger|bloglines|blogspot|delicious|digg|facebook|feedburner|flickr|foursquare|goo.gl|groups.google|groups.yahoo.com|instagram|linkedin|newsgator|ow.ly|pinterest|plus.google|reddit|stumbleupon|technorati|twitter|typepad|tumblr|wordpress|youtube|t.co|hootsuite|tweetdeck|m.facebook.com|plus.url.google.com|instagram.comUseful when trying to filter SM visitors to website

Google Analytics

Fail Frequently, Fail FastWhy did it fail?What did we learn?What insights can we use next time around?

Credit: Beth Kanter

Insert image of us posting up a QR code in galleries30

Experiment

Resources

Reading:Wearemedia.org"Mission Accomplished? by Linda NorrisGood Research Isnt About Asking Audiences What they Want, asking audiencesFive Cool Twitter Search Tricks, MakeUseOfActionable Listening, by Beth KanterThe Listening Primer Social Media Listening Wiki, by Beth KanterBest Social Media Metrics: Conversation, Amplification, Applause, Avinash KaushikTemplates:Social Media Audit Template, The Other MediaSMART Chart, Spitfire StrategiesCreating Your Organization's Social Media Strategy Map, Beth KanterWe Are Media, Social Media Strategy Worksheet and AIDS.gov New Media Strategy Map based on We Are Media Worksheet.

Tools:Google Keyword ToolAlternatives to Google ReaderGoogle AlertsSociable, Twitter RSS Feed CreatorDiigo, or another bookmarking toolList of Social Media Listening, Monitoring, Measuring, and Management Tools, Social Media Listening Wiki, by Beth KanterTwitter RSS Feed GeneratorEditorial Calendar Template, via Erin BlascoMuseum AnalyticsTrue Social Metrics

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