Cafe Night: September 2016

SOCIAL MEDIA was the topic. Here's some notes from our discussion that evening.

interesting: Western University has "digital humanities"
Humber Collage; has a continuing education certificate in Social Media

Podcasts are a pretty accessible, wide-open area for social media sharing.

• Check USA for museum/gallery based podcasts 
• Examples: History of the World in 100 Objects, Bata Shoe Museum

Questions:

• what CAN we accomplish at our institutions without compromising quality?
• Capacity is important
• Is this a team effort, or down to one staff member?
• what happens when a social media staff member leaves?

Great example of museum social media use: Lakeshore Grounds

• Old psychiatric hospital; has small exhibit space
• Online presence to expand space because space is so small
• Did IG takeover
• Speaking consistently; unanimous voice
• started with immediate physical neighbours, seeing what hashtags they use

Another great example of museums using social media: Hamilton Museum of Steam and Technology

• MakerFair steam museum: twitter was great for that
• Good to know your target audience and where they are
• How do you find that out??: have to know people/plug into their social media of choice and see how they use it

Things to think about with your institution and social media:

• do you need to use it at all? Is it where your audience is?
• WHICH platform to use? 
• Have a plan for cohesive voice; should speak with  your audience in the tone that's apporpriate to both your institution as well as the platform (some more relaxed than others)
• If you use multi platforms, sometimes work can be cut down and one post will go out to all your platforms by using in-between apps (like IFTTT)
• Facebook is still the most popular, demographic skewing older
• Boosting your post on Facebook does indeed make a difference
• Project specific may make it easier to do; specific event/audience
• Teachers are super interested in tagging back, students less interested
• social media will at least demonstrated a heart beat for your museum
• it's really important to have your hours listed, and make sure any maps connected with your institution are correct

Thinking about Snapchat? Here's an interesting webinar on it.
Museum Nerd on Twitter: huge following, very popular.