A brief presentation given on April 3, 2013 at the University of Tennessee's Social Media Week exploring social media strategy and student outreach at the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture.
Social Media at the McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture
1. Social Media at the
McClung Museum
of Natural History and Culture
Cat Shteynberg (@cshteynberg)
Asst. Curator / Web & New Media Coordinator
@mcclungmuseum
4. 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)
12. Questions?
Cat Shteynberg
cshteynb@utk.edu
@cshteynberg
McClung Museum welcomes your comments &
hopes you’ll share your visit!:
@mcclungmuseum
Editor's Notes
Please use hashtag and shameless promotion—please follow us!
-Erin Blasco at National Museum of American History-Unlike many other businesses or organizations on social media, our ultimate goal is not sales or leads or many of those other foreign terms—it’s about fostering community, telling stories, and educating.
-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 connecting—you’ve got to create killer content, and you’ve got to focus on the relationships that you’re creating.-Good Examples: Glad to have Met you from the Met Museum and a behind the scenes tweetup at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
-The first step is listening. When we started, we found a lot of students mentioning the fact that they had class in the museum, but very few students actually interacting with us.-In addition to finding a lot of student comments about the museum on Twitter, we were finding that they were sharing photos a lot.
-Students are sitting around anyway waiting for class, so how can we encourage sharing and engagement?
-behind the scenes photos, photos of collections that would be hidden, quotes, etc.
-love to see students interacting with us, photos of students in our exhibits
-having fun with students online
-Facebook—not really for students, but still have had some success in reaching out at UT with UT Knoxville’s help.-50th anniversary campaign.
-Tweetup / Instagrammeetup as a chance to interact with students, and give some of our “VIPs” a chance to see something of the museum that they normally wouldn’t
-So it’s all about unicorns—seriously, it’s about making the museum relevant to students. We’re a resource that’s here for them. It’s about storytelling—we have all of these fascinating stories behind our doors, but it’s our responsibility to get them out there.-And finally, we’d love your feedback, so please don’t hesitate to let us know how we could make the museum more useful or palatable to you!