In my role as Chief Historical Interpreter at Murney Tower Museum, one of my responsibilities was to create a social media plan for the museum. I was also in charge of running the museum's social media platforms, which included, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google My Business. Running these accounts entailed posting regular and relevant content, but also monitoring followers, interacting with online audiences (i.e. liking, sharing, commenting posts, and/or responding to reviews), and managing account settings. The social media plan acted as a guideline as it enabled fellow interpreters to post relevant content on days I was not present. The plan can also be used for future museum seasons-- although as social media trends continue to evolve, adaptations will need to be made.
Creating this social media plan and operating the museum social media accounts was of great importance to me. This is primarily due to the need for accurate and factual content on social media, especially in a space where distortion and fabrication of the truth is all too common. In creating this plan, I wanted to ensure the museum accounts presented not only educational material, but also authentic material.
Generating a Murney Tower Museum Social Media Plan for 2018/2019 entailed:
- Researching social media platforms, which allowed me to determine appropriate use of each platform and make use of platform features such as Instagram Stories and Facebook Scheduled Posts
- Researching and consistently using relevant and trending Instagram hashtags, which resulted in an overall increase in "likes" on 2018 posts in comparison to 2017 posts (at times these "likes" were doubled) and a steady increase in followers
- Creating a new Facebook and Instagram contest series called #MurneyMysteryMonday that increased not only Facebook Page reach and engagement over the 2018 operating, but also brought more people into the museum
- Working independently and as a close-knit team with fellow interpreters to create original content for each platform based on demographics and statistics
- Planning posts well ahead of schedule, which enabled more time to be spent by staff on other important projects
- Scheduling off-season posts for September 2018 to May 2019 via Hootsuite, Gramblr, and Facebook (schedule at post feature), that will help the museum accounts maintain an online presence while the museum is closed and interpreters are not present
- Making the evidence-based decision to deactivate the Murney Tower Museum Snapchat account, which allowed for more efficient use of Instagram Stories, a similar, yet currently more popular platform
- Using Microsoft to generate a compressed social media plan, as well as a more detailed version that are both easy-to-follow
- Constructing a list of social media "do's" and "don't's" from research and a local workshop that was not only used by myself and other staff, but can also be of use to future employees
You can find the Murney Tower Museum on Facebook as @MurneyTowerMuseum, on Instagram as @murneytower, and on Twitter as @MurneyTower.
Below you can find the compressed version of the Murney Tower Museum Social Media Plan 2018-2019.
