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Social media for digital engagement
This learning journey has been curated by AmbITion Scotland lead consultant Hannah Rudman.
The big development since 2005, social media or online social networking, has become the subject of undergraduate degrees and thousands of business books. But using social media in the arts, cultural, and heritage sector is all about increasing your integrity with your customers so that you can build deeper relationships through dialogue, and hook them into the meaning of what you’re doing; as well as providing extra channels where audiences hang out to talk about your message and listen to their feedback. This learning journey provides tips on how to think about and manage social media in your organisations; case studies of cultural organisations who are changing their audience engagement and business models because of the opportunities of social media; and introduces methods of analysing the data from your social media networks so that you can show a return on your investment of time in them, and understand the digital engagement of your audiences.
This learning journey focuses on sharing resources that are widely applicable to arts, cultural, and heritage organisations engaging in any of the social media platforms. It also provides an update on global take-up of social media accounts at the end of 2013, and ideas for how to understand the digital engagement your audiences have with you.
Another learning journey concentrates solely on Twitter!
1 Background thinking: a new era emerges
Lyn Gardner gives us food for thought, recognising that the sustainable future of our arts, heritage and cultural organisations may rest more in the hands of our communities than in the hands of traditional stakeholders (such as funders and large donors). Read and get wise!
2 Background thinking: Digital Culture: a new era comes of age
Following a survey of Arts Council England’s regularly funded organisations in 2013, this report maps where England’s arts, culture and heritage organisations are at. This survey will repeated in the coming two years. This first year’s report paints a rich picture of how arts and cultural organisations in England are making use of digital technologies in pursuit of their core missions. It sheds much needed quantitative light on previously understood trends, such as the use of digital technologies for marketing purposes. It also measures the rate of adoption of different technologies by cultural institutions, and outlines what organisations can learn from the ‘cultural digirati’ – the 10% of organisations that are embracing technologies most widely and who, the survey suggests, are seeing significant paybacks.
Digital Culture: How arts and culture organisations in England use technology
Following a survey of Arts Council England’s regularly funded organisations in 2013, this report maps where England’s arts, culture and heritage organisations are at. This survey will repeated in the coming two years. This first year’s report paints a rich picture of how arts and cultural organisations in England are making use of digital technologies in pursuit of their core missions. It sheds much needed quantitative light on previously understood trends, such as the use of digital technologies for marketing purposes. It also measures the rate of adoption of different technologies by cultural institutions, and outlines what organisations can learn from the ‘cultural digirati’ – the 10% of organisations that are embracing technologies most widely and who, the survey suggests, are seeing significant paybacks.
3 A 2013 social media statistics update
2013 saw social media become a core part of any modern business’ engagement strategy and communications.
4 Getting started: the basics
This guide to social media tools is highly practical, and the place to begin to get an idea of the landscape.
A Guide to Practical Social Media Tools
MarketingSavant provide this at-a-glance guide to a range of useful Social Media Tools on the web. Many of them you’ll know – some may be new to you.
5 Getting started: the pragmatics
This guide gives a practical overview of how to get started on social media platforms, and how to begin to build your communities and audiences via social media tools.
How to… Social Media for Audience Development and Community Building
How to…Social Media for Audience Development and Community Building
Download this document (PDF, 470KB)
Author: Christian Payne, www.ourmaninside.com/www.twitter.com/Documentally for AmbITion.
6 Digital Engagement Framework - towards a strategy
The brilliant Digital Engagement Framework by Jasper Visser and Jim Richardson is for arts, culture, and heritage organisations and helps you to design the strategies, processes and technologies to systematically engage all stakeholders with your institution in order to maximise the value you co-create with audiences and customers.
Digital Engagement Framework
The brilliant Digital Engagement Framework by Jasper Visser and Jim Richardson is for arts, culture, and heritage organisations and helps you to design the strategies, processes and technologies to systematically engage all stakeholders with your institution in order to maximise the value you co-create with audiences and customers. Look out for live and online training sessions using some of the tools in the framework, and download your own copy here.
7 Getting started: building and tracking impact
This webcast masterclass on tracking impact is a great beginners’ guide on how to gather data about your online social networks, and how to analyse that data to produce information and intelligence.
Getting Digital Webinar 3: Tracking Impact – David Sim, 4TM, 22.04.10
AmbITion Scotland Getting Digital Webinar 3: Tracking Impact was a great success, attracting our best numbers of attendees and online viewers.
David Sim from Open Brolly talked to us about tracking and measuring the impact that our digital presence is achieving.
Slides
8 Masterclass & Case study: MOMA PS1 use of visual images and social networks for engagement
Watch this masterclass on demand by Rebecca Taylor. Its an in-depth case study on how MOMA PS1, where Rebecca is Director of Communications, use visual images and social networks for optimum audience engagement and to encourage participation.
Visual Engagement in a digital world – Watch the masterclass on demand!
This webcast masterclass on Visual Engagement in a digital world – is a (digital) picture worth 1000 words (or 140 characters)? is here to watch on demand.
Following the digital technology explosion is the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” still true? Certainly, a digital image is something that works well across all digital and social media platforms.
The culture sector quickly embraced more word/character-centric platforms like Twitter, but we have collectively struggled with the challenges posed by visual platforms such as Instagram and Tumblr— facing issues around copyright. But beyond that, the resistance to visual engagement on digital platforms also stems from an age-old debate about the image and the object, and the fear that providing an image or perhaps a video then usurps the need or desire to see that object or image or live experience in person
As the Communications Director of MoMA PS1, one of the oldest and largest non-profit contemporary art institutions in the United States, Rebecca Taylor manages all communications functions for the museum. She previously served as Senior Communications Specialist at The J. Paul Getty Trust in Los Angeles, and before that she was Public Relations Coordinator at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). In addition, Rebecca Taylor is a contributor to the Huffington Post (Arts & Culture).
Download this document (PDF, 10.88MB)
Case study from Riverside, a Glasgow Museum: David Scott, Digital & New Media Curator for Glasgow Museums, presents a case study of visual engagement using digital tools inside museums across the city. David Scott has been producing digital content for the heritage sector since 2000. In 2005, he joined Glasgow Museums as Digital Curator for the £74M Riverside Museum Project. Here, David was instrumental in the development and creation of over 70 individual instances digital that interpret Riverside’s story-based displays.
Download this document (PDF, 14.03MB)
Q&A session with Rebecca Taylor and David Scott
Update on AmbITion Scotland opportunities for the arts, culture and heritage sector by Hannah Rudman
Welcome to Glasgow Sculpture Studios (David Watt) & the event supported by WhiteNOISE (Dianne Greig)
9 Case study: using social media for innovation
The umbrella organisation for Edinburgh’s Festivals, Festivals Edinburgh has been using social media platforms to encourage innovative practices and ideas to emerge. Watch this case study of their journey presented by Faith Liddell and Martin Reynolds.
10 Case study: developing a social network - Central Station
This webcast masterclass is well worth a watch if you’re considering building a bespoke social network. Central Station is a huge online network of Scottish visual artists, and it’s creator Damien Smith lets us in on how he conceptualised, then built it up from scratch.
Webinar 5: Central Station – developing the online social network
11 Expert: evaluating success & tracking impact - tools and ideas
While cultural managers are increasingly interested in showing evidence of online success, funding agencies and government departments currently lack the expertise to offer guidelines or set standards for measurement. For many organisations this results in a confusing mixture of statistics and reporting which is time-consuming to provide and reveals little about online user behaviour, engagement and satisfaction. This is an issue faced by all parts of the cultural sector. Organisations regularly invest in cultural websites, social media activities and online services without a clear idea of what these services are trying to achieve, or their intended audience.
The brilliant Culture 24 project which works with UK Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs!) worked with 17 organisations to develop effective ways to define, measure and evaluate the success of online activities. The result was an insight into the place where many of the UK’s GLAMs currently are when it comes to understanding and making use of the data they collect from their online activities.
The real insights lie not in the tools or platforms, but in the shift in thinking that needs to happen at a deep level within every cultural organisation. Lessons can be learned through careful analysis of the data against each organisation’s primary objectives.
The report focuses on tools such as Google Analytics, Hitwise, Klout and Twitterific and looks at the social media platforms of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These platforms were chosen because they currently dominate the social space, but it does not mean that other channels are not relevant or should be ignored.
The report provides an insight into the way cultural organisations should go about trying to measure the success of their business online and challenges the assumption that simply counting total visitor numbers or ‘likes’ really tells us anything meaningful at all.
And here’s links to the other useful resources:
Social media metrics toolkit – A framework suggesting ways to make use of your social media metrics
Social media tools comparison – A comparison of the tools identified during the project that can be used to track diffident different social media channels
How to… evaluate success online, by Culture 24
Download this document (PDF, 2.41MB)
Thanks to Culture 24 for creating this great resource!
12 Expert: understand and measure digital engagement
The brilliant Culture 24 project which works with UK Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs!) worked with 22 organisations to develop effective ways to understand and measure digital engagement culminating with this 2013 report.
And here’s links to the other useful resources:
Social media metrics toolkit – A framework suggesting ways to make use of your social media metrics.
Social media tools comparison – A comparison of the tools identified to track diffident different social media channels.
How to… understand and measure digital engagement – 2013 report and tools from Culture24
Thanks to the brilliant Culture24 for sharing the outcomes and insights and tools of their latest 2013 action research project. Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAMs!) worked together to share experiences and exercises in understanding and measuring levels of digital engagement.
13 Social media for working with children and young people
This proforma is for you to download and adapt to ensure that you have a policy if your organisation or practice works with young people or children.