What your social media team should look like #Blogg100

When setting up a social media presence, you need a team to manage the channels. But what should that team look like? In many smaller organisations there is often just one communicator for social media. Is that really enough?

Well lets start with the person (or people) who actually manages your social media channels. What competences are we looking for? Who is this? Johan Ronnestam gives a simple answer:

a human being who’s not afraid to talk to strangers and who’s got tons of common sense

That’s it?

Yes, it’s the communicative skill we are looking for. Meeting  and interacting with your audience is skill no 1. And to do so the person needs to be digitally socialized. Understand the cultural codes and languages of online communication.

That in itself is no stranger than getting socialized into any society. This means that it’s not the early adopter that should manage social media, but an outgoing communicating person with, as Johan says, lots and lots of common sense. Though one could argue that early adopters within social media ARE communicative. This kind of goes hand in hand.

This means all other skills HAVE to be provided for by other staff. And by other skills I mean public relations, planning, content strategy, analysis, IT etc. In itself not a strange thing. When calling or e-mailing a museum I most probably don’t want to talk to the manager but get answers to my immediate questions or have my problems solved. The same thing goes for social media.

In smaller organisations both communication and content packaging, as well as evaluation and strategy, has to be performed by probably very few people. This doesn’t mean planning and evaluation can be neglected.

In larger organisations there is room for a team that together manage social media.

So who should do what? Well IT has to be involved, setting up recommendations for security, apps and other tools. Someone has to do the copywriting, graphic design, image editing. Many people have to be involved in aggregating and creating content. And someone has to look ahead, plan, build a strategy, analyse and evaluate. 

Regardless of how your organisation shares the responsibilities for social media, it has to be clear once and for all, it’s not a one-man/woman-job.

And that goes of course for anything in an organisation. Each area of responsibility is intricately interconnected with, and depending on other parts of the organisation. Using social media only makes it more urgent to adapt to this disruptive era.

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So you’ve found your tribe, then what? #Blogg100

Photo: Benny Mazur, CC-BY.

One of the most important things about using social and digital tools for communication is to use trial and error, to try different ways of communicating and to try different kinds of content.

This is how you finally find your tribe, the one community that is actually willing to spread your content and to talk about and with you in a positive and rewarding way. Suddenly your content is shared, liked and talked about. Your analytics go ”Bingo!”.

As a museum this might come a surprise, because it isn’t always the areas you have planned for in terms of exhibitions or other activities. The tribe might be interested in a whole different topic.

So what do you do? Hook up with the tribe and try to convert them into loving all your other exciting stuff? Or totally reschedule all activities to focus on the tribe?

I believe most museums aren’t flexible enough to quickly respond to the lessons learned from social media. At the same time I am not  yet on terms with to what extent this has to influence further activities.

I do believe that resources have to be relocated and that the opportunities to communicate with a tribe have to be explored.

Since I am still exploring the concept of tribal communication I would love to get your opinion on this.

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Are you using Twitter and FB for customer support? #Blogg100

Delta Air Lines. Photo: Innovationtrail, CC-BY-NC.

In my next couple of blog posts I will share some insights from #SSMX, Stockholm Social Media Exchange, an un-conference taking place in central Stockholm in February. The last one held this past weekend. The conference mainly attracts marketing/PR/communications people.

One of the interesting people I talked to at the #SSMX is Martin Garbarczyk. He shared some great insight on customer support through social media, among other things he forwarded this great post at ragan.com on how Delta Air Lines use Twitter:

@DeltaAssist was the first airline program in the U.S. to use Twitter for customer support. When it started, four community managers provided support Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. EST, helping customers who sought answers to questions about things like flight status or gate numbers.

As team members listened to customers, they realized they could help customers even more by using the social media platform to solve problems.

The expanded team includes 12 empowered reservations agents serving customers 24/7, using a triage system to respond to tweets. They can do anything a call center employee can do, except book a new ticket. To add a personal touch, employees sign their tweets with their initial, and their first names are listed on the airline’s Twitter profile.

Full blog post here

Social media is what your audience makes of it.  This is why companies and organisations need to know how to use social media, and what is required to maintain a presence there. Adding cutsomer support is crucial.

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Google glass #Blogg100

With a great broad band connection the Google Glass could be really interesting. I just fear as with Google Hangout for example, the bad connections can ruin the experience quite quickly. But the concept is excellent and still useful for recording and taking pictures. And why not, looking up relevant information while visiting museums or watching TV?

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One, two, three – success! #Blogg100

Colleen Dilenschneider suggests tree areas that are vital for social media success, Community Management, Content creation and Measurement. I moderated her infographic slightly here, enhancing the need for the three areas to interact, and the need to constantly go back to the drawing board.

Another great blog post on social media success is The New Normal: The Elements of Social Media Success for Non Profit Organizations by Colleen Dilenschneider. It inspired me to write today’s blog post.

“Doing social media” (i.e. developing and deploying a social media strategy) requires contemplation of three distinct – and equally important – broader tasks: content creation, community management, and social media measurement.  

Colleen Dilenschneider

Today, in 2013, it is more clear than ever that social media requires great efforts from any organization. It can be both time and money consuming – as I mentioned in my previous blog post.

Getting a grip on these three areas is vital to any cultural heritage organization, not only to be successful but to do it with efficiency and saving money. To do so requires staff, dedicated time and money. Most museum leaders do know that social media is important and that it’s here to stay. As Colleen Dilenschneider states:

While perhaps occasionally lacking specific expertise, these … nonprofit executives increasingly understand the basics – social media is important for reaching new audiences, retaining supporters, and achieving long term financial solvency.

This basic knowledge has also raised awareness about Measurement, evaluating social media efforts, to justify social media communication. One can assume that most organizations focus on measuring followers. These numbers are also sometimes wrongly used in bench marketing, as a way of measuring success in comparison to other museums. Though it would be unfair to say that museums aren’t also becoming more aware about measuring the quality of interaction, looking for results that help the museum achieve it’s goals.

In my opinion the weakest points for museums, in this model that Colleen Dilenschneider suggests, are Content Creation and Community Management. Areas where the least efforts are made.

Community Management is perhaps the area that museums will master next. By being out there, on social media channels, the staff managing the daily social media communication are in most cases quite aware, at least on a basic level, of how to manage their communities. Learning by doing, by daily interaction with the community. Though this awareness is probably not yet completely reaching the museum management.

As for the Content Creation, I am only guessing (though from a rather initiated perspective) that most museums are by far not ready for an efficient and strategic content creation. Mostly because we are still programmed for creating exhibitions and printed material. How much content should we in fact be creating? What content? For which channels and which audience? In what format? But also because since we yet aren’t measuring correctly we aren’t ready to fully answer these questions.

So to summarize, adopting Colleen Dilenschneiders three-piece model is a great way to success. And most important of all, to successfully adress the three areas you need:

1. Time (both staff work hours and time as in months and years)
2. Money (sometimes you’ll need consultants to help evaluate, and money to spend on advertising and producing great content)
3. A great strategy (i.e. a dedicated management)

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What kind of content? #Blogg100

Curate content by color? CC-content from Flickr assembled by Tin Eye Labs, according to the colors picked by the visitor to the site: http://labs.tineye.com/multicolr

Content creation is essential when building an online presence. But what is content? Is it about providing online collections, or is it about curating your own content? And to what extent should we involve other content than our own?

It gets even more interesting when Johan Ronnestam adds the purpose of the content. In his latest blog post he talks about Content made for attention vs content made for relation.

Content creation for social media channels involves the entire museum. But without a strategy of what and for whom, and for what purpose, we will soon run out of staff and money, as Ronnestam points out. Content creation can seem to be an endless task but answering these questions will provide an efficient communication without draining the museum of resources.

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Content curation – discovering art on Facebook #Blogg100

Utagawa Kuniyoshi. Henry L. Phillips Collection, Bequest of Henry L. Phillips, 1939. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The other day the Metropolitan Museum of Art posted on Facebook a beautiful piece of art by Japanese 17th centruty artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi. I am grateful to be able to have historic art being presented to me, right in my living room, on my Facebook wall (which is MY own space that I have curated to be filled with content that I enjoy). Especially grateful since this work of art is not even on display – as is the case for most museum objects.

At the time I did not leave Facebook. Because when browsing Facebook I am not inclined to leave because someone suddenly posts a link to another website. I enjoy the art work and I share. Only when writing this blog post I go back to the Met Museum Facebook page and click on the link that leads me to their website and more information on the art work.

At the Met Museum website I can enlarge the image. Only then I discover that I can download the image. Then I have to search for terms and conditions, and discover that I can in fact use the image on my blog.

I check Wikipedia for more art work by Utagawa Kuniyoshi and find this:

On Wikipedia I know that I can re use the images any way I want to. This work of art is marked Public Domain.

This blog post is primarily not aimed at copyright issues and museum collections. Even though this deserves a couple of blog posts. I know all the details and problems having worked in the cultural heritage sector for almost twenty years.

Instead I want to pay attention to the social media in close encounter with museums, or vice versa. Through social media I can experience art, or cultural heritage, in my own devices whenever I choose to go online. I can curate my Twitter stream or Facebook wall so it is filled with my favorite content. This makes me more eager to actually commit to whomever delivers the best and most engaging content.

And as a museum we can highlight objects in our collections, communicate our online collections and build relationships with new audiences. Again, as I wrote in my previous blog post, I believe we will see much more of content curation in social media, and hopefully soon new and innovative ways of storytelling and different ways of tribal engagement.

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Interactive woodland world for kids at Royal London Hospital #Blogg100

Read full blog post by Katy Cowan at Creative Boom.

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Storytelling on Facebook #Blogg100

Märta Helena Reenstjerna.

February 17, 1827: Saturday. A pig was slaughtered – the pots in the windows were frozen – I wrote, read the daily, unraveled some yarn and took a nap, then I was told we had visitors it was gentlemen Norlander, Salén and Norberg. The latter told me that my Cousin Cavalry Captain Sven Kafle had long been ill with nerve stroke and that he is weak and confused that he did not know to name some things right but with strange and incomprehensible words – His wretched wife is so foolish that she rarely thrives at his home and also their assets are fairly scarce.
//My translation from Swedish//

One of the accounts I follow on Facebook is publishing posts from a 16th century Swedish diary. The diary was originally written by Årstafrun, or Märta Helena Reenstjärna. It tells a moving life story about a woman living on a small estate just outside Stockholm, Sweden. Her life was certainly better than the ones of most people in Stockholm at the time, she was wealthy and has a beautiful home and gardens. She had a large staff taking care of her estate.

The diary reveals both happy and sad times. Happy when enjoying the company of her and her husband’s friends, happy when making small trips having picnics. And sad, or in fact deeply tragic times, when her children, one after the other die at young age from illnesses. Her only son reaching adulthood is struggling with alcohol abuse and is constantly in trouble. Finally he drowns on the lake a cold winter night.

The diary gives a unique insight in the life of a 16th century woman. The Facebook account was launched in January 2009, not by Nordiska museet where the diary is kept, but by someone else (I still don’t know who).

Musuems all over the world keep treasures like this, content that is perfectly suitable to be mediated through Facebook or other social media channels. Still we see very little of this kind of mediation.

I think it’s essential not to just give a voice to objects but to carefully plan and mediate stories like the way an exhibition would be planned. I do believe we will see much more of this kind of mediation – and would even online and social media perhaps be the prime channel for some museums in a not so distant future?

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From Slideshare: How to create great presentations #Blogg100

Giving excellent presentations is a tricky thing, and requires (as everything else) time and care. Here are some tips from Slideshare:

Introduction to Slide Design: 7 Rules for Creating Effective Slides from Alex Rister

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Blog post 022/100 #Blogg100 challenge