Author Archive

Did You Know?

Posted in Uncategorized on March 17, 2010 by moxemediagirl

We had a few requests for the Did You Know video after the presentation yesterday, so I’m posting it here.  I’ll be following up with participants via email in the next week or so. Thanks for coming to our presentation!

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Getting Started with Your Social Media Program, A Few Tips & Links

Posted in Uncategorized on March 14, 2010 by moxemediagirl

by Jonah Holland, PR & Marketing Coordinator, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden and President, Mox-eMedia LLC

Note, this is a cross post, and can also be found on Mox-eMedia.com’s blog.

As Suzanne Hall from VMFA and I are finishing up our PowerPoint presentations for the Virginia Associations of Museums 2010 Conference, I thought it might be helpful to provide you with some links, that you’ll want to explore either before or after our presentation.

For Twitter:
Desktop tools:
http://tweetdeck.com/
www.hootsuite.com/ ****web based for those who don’t want to or can’t download or install a program
http://seesmic.com/

Some useful tags include:
#RVA
#VA
#VAMUSE
#History
#Museums
#DC
#FollowaMuseum
#MuseumMonday
#Smithsonian
#SMCRVA (Social Media Club, Richmond & then Go!)
For more info on the Social Media Club, go here, or connect with them on Twitter & Facebook.
http://smcrva.org/ The next meeting is THIS Thursday, if you’d like to come you can get a ticket online.

or….Create your own — but it has to bring people together, not be self-serving.

Track your Progress, refine your work
http://twitterholic.com/
http://www.twittergrader.com/
http://mrtweet.com/
http://twellow.com
http://friendorfollow.com/

Facebook Insights — on the left sidebar of your Facebook fan page.

Google Analytics — Ironworks has a great post on how to use the info you gain from Google Analytics.

Local trending
 http://www.rvatweets.com/

iphone Apps:
Tweetie
FourSquare — 5 ways to use FourSquare for business
AroundMe

Get Review/Travel Tools sites, available on iphone, or web:
Yelp
TripAdvisor

Read others blogs:
Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 is by far the best on museums!

Non-profit Tech 2.0, social media for non-profits

Beth Kanter, how non-profits can use social media for change

Museum Marketing UK

Blog Carnivals: find one in your industry

Cross Pollination….Facebook & Twitter widgets on blog or webpage

Also, if you’d like to view the slide for my portion of the presentation, you can view that here:

Virginia Association of Museums (VAM) 2010 Conference: Museums Building Communities Through Social Media

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Twitter: How Do You Make it all Meaningful?

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , , on January 29, 2010 by moxemediagirl

I’ve seen quite a few people on Twitter who are interested, and want it to work for their museum, but just don’t really understand what all the fuss is about. Actually, It wasn’t too long ago that I was in this category myself.

I knew Twitter was valuable for listening to what others were saying about my organization. I knew how to use all the applications like  TweetDeck and even pre-schedule and track Tweets with Hootsuite.  I understood that searching for key words could help me find new people to follow and pick up on interesting things people were saying.  But the big “Ah ha” moment didn’t hit me really, until I discovered how to use hash tags.  Hash tags are what make Twitter go from good to brilliant.  Basically, they are like the tags you add to blogs, photos or other social media, and they help people find and form communities.

As you may know, I work at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden. At the time, my job, in addition to social media, was to promote 4 educational symposia in honor of the Garden’s 25th anniversary.  Two of the topics were related to causes who already had a following. The first symposium was called, No Child Left Inside: Restoring Nature to Early Childhood, and after poking around, I came across the hash tag #Playoutdoors. All of a sudden, 200 strangers whom I previously had nothing in common with, and new nothing about, were talking about a topic very important to me. They were blogging about it, Tweeting about it, living it and were there to help me because my agenda was their agenda.  The second  symposia was Urban Gardening for Health and Wholeness, and I found a whole community dedicated to the return of the Victory Garden and using the tag #Twitter4VG. Once again, I could not have asked for a better networking tool! These were exactly my peeps — well my ‘tweeps to be exact!.

When do tags not work? When you make them yourself to serve only your interest. OK, well that is not 100 percent true. Those hash tags work, but only for you, not to build a community. You may use a hashtag like #LewisGinter to pull a feed of tweets having to do with your organization, but likely, you’ll be the only one using it.  Some organizatinos are so confident about what people are saying about them on Twitter is positive that they have a feed of all tweets mentioning “PBS”.  It’s a bold move, but certainly gets a buzz going, and more people tweeting and talking about PBS, and finding each other.

So, hash tags are what bring people together.  But they can also be used to bring people together in live-time. Perhaps you would consider using a hash tag for a big museum event or exhibit if you think it will attract people who have hand-held devices and mobile phones and who use Twitter.  This is a great tool for media previews or blogger tours, and has been used by a few museums and attractions to create an online buzz.  The Social Media Club of Richmond (#SMCRVA) is known for using an application called Visible Tweets to display in live time, what people are saying about an event, all tagged the same way. Yes, of course it brings up the issue of what you do if you have some folks who don’t play nice, and say inappapropriate things (which you’ve just displayed via your LCD projector) but surprisingly, typically this isn’t  typically an issue. If you are confident in your institution, your visitor experience and what people will say about you, giving up control is a small price to pay for the relationships you will build this way, and the attention your event will get.

How tech-savvy are the attendees at the 2010 Virginia Association of Museums Conference: Museums Driving Change going to be?  That is a great question! I know many of these folks are on Twitter already, because I follow them, but the question is, have the gone mobile? For most museums and non-profits, that means that the person doing the social media for the museum would have to buy the mobile device on their own, because of budgetary constraints.  But, even if there are just a few dedicated “tweeters” using a hash tag, the product can be insightful for those who may have wanted to attend a particular event but can only be there virtually.

For the VAM conference, I’m going to propose that anyone tweeting about the event (either live, on site, with a laptop or phone, or back at the office on a desktop, before or after the conference) use the tag #VAMUSE.  That way, the conversation can start before the conference, and continue long after. If you use the hash tag well, you’ll be able to connect with new people, meet them in person, and continue learning from them and the new community you’ve created — an investment in the future.

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Welcome to the Blog for Museums Building Communities Virginia Association of Museums Annual Conference

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on November 30, 2009 by moxemediagirl

Thanks for visiting our blog! Stay tuned to this website for updates on the Virginia Association of Museums workshop session Social Media: Museums Building Communities, presented by Suzanne Hall, Chief Communications Officer, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Jonah Holland, President, Mox-eMedia, LLC and PR & Marketing Coordinator, Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.  We look forward to seeing you on March 16th at 10:30 a.m.

The Social Media: Museums Building Communities session is geared toward participants who are familiar with the basics of social media and may have a Facebook or Twitter account, or blog, but who may have not streamlined their use of social media or may not fully understand its importance or how to make it an integral part of the visitor experience. We ask that all participants visit our Museums Building Communities blog, http://ifiwereamuseum.wordpress.com/ for updates and discussion around the the Museums Building Communities session. Also, we strongly encourage participants to sign up for personal Facebook and Twitter accounts so that they can listen in and get the feel for social media if they are not already engaged.

What is required to be successful in social media is the willingness to be transparent, sincere, and engaging and the ability to constantly learn new things. The landscape of social media is constantly changing and the one thing that you can be sure if is you’ll never know it all. You will learn the basics of social media, and why museums and attractions can’t afford NOT to embrace it in today’s world. The speakers will discuss: how to listen to what people are saying about your organization, how to add value to the visitor experience through social media, how to build a following on your blog, Facebook and Twitter & how they all work together to create synergy, what sorts of goals you might set for your social media program and how to measure success (ROI).

If you need assitance in setting up a Twitter or Facebook accout, or have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.   Also, if you have any other particular questions regarding social media that you’d like to see addressed during this session, please feel free to leave a comment.

For more information and registration for the 2010 Virginia Association of Museums conference, Museums Driving Change, please visit VAM’s website.

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