Open Forum

I am curious to know how, if at all, you all use instagram to promote your museum to younger audiences?

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Ruth Haus
President
Living History Farms
Urbandale IA
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Hi Ruth,

I'm at the Wildlife Conservation Society, so we have Instagram set up for our main organization, the Bronx Zoo, NY Aquarium, and our 96 Elephants campaign. We share images of wildlife and for 96 Elephants, "elphies."

I was recently intrigued by the NY Times' article about the Met's use of Instagram, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/arts/design/sharing-cultural-jewels-via-instagram.html. There is a social media consultant here, Dave Krugman, who has created some cool campaigns on Instagram for museums in the past. You can check out his work at http://community.davekrugman.com/.

Are you using other types of social media at Living History Farms?

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Lisa Jaycox
Wildlife Conservation Society
Bronx NY
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-27-2014 10:54 AM
From: Ruth Haus
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

I am curious to know how, if at all, you all use instagram to promote your museum to younger audiences?

-------------------------------------------
Ruth Haus
President
Living History Farms
Urbandale IA
-------------------------------------------

I think Instagram is a great way for museums to connect with people online -- and a great way to connect with other museums as well!

I've been working hard to increase our instagram presence, mostly with participating in Throwback Thursday. As a history museum, it's easy to pull throwback photos and show our followers a peak into what our city and region looked like 50, 60, 70 years ago. Those are some of our most popular posts, though I also like highlighting artifacts that people might miss.

I also find it important, as with any social media platform, to stay on top of trends and current events and use the appropriate hashtags and timing to talk about such things. An example is that we have an aluminum bathing suit designed by Oscar de la Renta in our collection. A lot of people were reminiscing and remembering him recently on his death, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to remember him from Pittsburgh's perspective with this artifact that many people might now even know exists.

The thing with instagram is that you really do need to look at hashtags and use them appropriately, and since it does skew younger, the photos you use ought to appeal to that age group, too. With history, sometimes, I think it's easy -- everyone regardless of age likes to see photos from a time they weren't alive yet!

Sarah

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Sarah Reck
Web & Social Media Content Manager
Senator John Heinz History Center
Pittsburgh PA
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-29-2014 09:20 AM
From: Lisa Jaycox
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

Hi Ruth,

I'm at the Wildlife Conservation Society, so we have Instagram set up for our main organization, the Bronx Zoo, NY Aquarium, and our 96 Elephants campaign. We share images of wildlife and for 96 Elephants, "elphies."

I was recently intrigued by the NY Times' article about the Met's use of Instagram, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/arts/design/sharing-cultural-jewels-via-instagram.html. There is a social media consultant here, Dave Krugman, who has created some cool campaigns on Instagram for museums in the past. You can check out his work at http://community.davekrugman.com/.

Are you using other types of social media at Living History Farms?

-------------------------------------------
Lisa Jaycox
Wildlife Conservation Society
Bronx NY
-------------------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 10-27-2014 10:54 AM
From: Ruth Haus
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

I am curious to know how, if at all, you all use instagram to promote your museum to younger audiences?

-------------------------------------------
Ruth Haus
President
Living History Farms
Urbandale IA
-------------------------------------------

Hi Ruth,

I am not sure how young your target is, but for our high school participants of our summer leadership program, we used IG to set up the #ReaganSLP.   What we found was that a lot of the photos they tagged and shared were not visible to everyone because most of the students had a private setting.  Just recently we added a new account Ronald_ReaganSLP so that next summer, students can follow us and see/like any photos we make public.  This was our first summer launching the leadership program and using IG specifically for a "younger" audience. 

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Alissa Whiteley
Manager, Air Force One Discovery Center
Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation
Simi Valley CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-29-2014 09:20 AM
From: Lisa Jaycox
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

Hi Ruth,

I'm at the Wildlife Conservation Society, so we have Instagram set up for our main organization, the Bronx Zoo, NY Aquarium, and our 96 Elephants campaign. We share images of wildlife and for 96 Elephants, "elphies."

I was recently intrigued by the NY Times' article about the Met's use of Instagram, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/arts/design/sharing-cultural-jewels-via-instagram.html. There is a social media consultant here, Dave Krugman, who has created some cool campaigns on Instagram for museums in the past. You can check out his work at http://community.davekrugman.com/.

Are you using other types of social media at Living History Farms?

-------------------------------------------
Lisa Jaycox
Wildlife Conservation Society
Bronx NY
-------------------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 10-27-2014 10:54 AM
From: Ruth Haus
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

I am curious to know how, if at all, you all use instagram to promote your museum to younger audiences?

-------------------------------------------
Ruth Haus
President
Living History Farms
Urbandale IA
-------------------------------------------

Hi Ruth - 

We use Instagram at Shedd Aquarium and see nice engagement. As an image-driven site, we get a lot of nice engagement with our posts and feel that it's been a nice addition to our social media portfolio. I've included a link to our page in case it might be useful to you!

http://instagram.com/shedd_aquarium

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Meghan Curran
PRAM Board Member
Vice President of Marketing
John G. Shedd Aquarium
Chicago IL
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-30-2014 12:35 PM
From: Alissa Whiteley
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

Hi Ruth,

I am not sure how young your target is, but for our high school participants of our summer leadership program, we used IG to set up the #ReaganSLP.   What we found was that a lot of the photos they tagged and shared were not visible to everyone because most of the students had a private setting.  Just recently we added a new account Ronald_ReaganSLP so that next summer, students can follow us and see/like any photos we make public.  This was our first summer launching the leadership program and using IG specifically for a "younger" audience. 

-------------------------------------------
Alissa Whiteley
Manager, Air Force One Discovery Center
Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation
Simi Valley CA
-------------------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 10-29-2014 09:20 AM
From: Lisa Jaycox
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

Hi Ruth,

I'm at the Wildlife Conservation Society, so we have Instagram set up for our main organization, the Bronx Zoo, NY Aquarium, and our 96 Elephants campaign. We share images of wildlife and for 96 Elephants, "elphies."

I was recently intrigued by the NY Times' article about the Met's use of Instagram, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/18/arts/design/sharing-cultural-jewels-via-instagram.html. There is a social media consultant here, Dave Krugman, who has created some cool campaigns on Instagram for museums in the past. You can check out his work at http://community.davekrugman.com/.

Are you using other types of social media at Living History Farms?

-------------------------------------------
Lisa Jaycox
Wildlife Conservation Society
Bronx NY
-------------------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 10-27-2014 10:54 AM
From: Ruth Haus
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

I am curious to know how, if at all, you all use instagram to promote your museum to younger audiences?

-------------------------------------------
Ruth Haus
President
Living History Farms
Urbandale IA
-------------------------------------------

We use Instagram here at the Sophienburg, and find it has a younger audience in general. As has been said, as a history museum, we are able to post old photos, either through #tbt, or a "can you guess what this object is?" It is interesting that those are popular both with our younger and older social media audiences (for instance, I'll tweak the same content and use it on Facebook, where there is very little crossover and get good feedback in both places... Twitter? Almost never).

The format of being about pretty pictures on Instagram certainly works in a museum's favor, I think. 

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Elizabeth MacCrossan PhD
Support Services
Sophienburg Museum & Archives
New Braunfels TX
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-27-2014 10:54 AM
From: Ruth Haus
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

I am curious to know how, if at all, you all use instagram to promote your museum to younger audiences?

-------------------------------------------
Ruth Haus
President
Living History Farms
Urbandale IA
-------------------------------------------

I work in a 150-year-old museum where we don't allow visitors to take pictures (though, without dedicated visitor services staff, we have trouble policing this and I am sure people take pics all the time). I just wonder if others have experiences using Instagram despite these policies? Obviously I think it would be a worthwhile tool for us to post our own pictures, which we take all the time, but it loses some of the interactivity when visitors aren't encouraged to post their own pictures. 

Best,
Cara

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Cara Scharf
Program and Communications Manager
Wagner Free Institute of Science
Philadelphia PA
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Original Message:
Sent: 11-05-2014 03:36 PM
From: Elizabeth MacCrossan
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

We use Instagram here at the Sophienburg, and find it has a younger audience in general. As has been said, as a history museum, we are able to post old photos, either through #tbt, or a "can you guess what this object is?" It is interesting that those are popular both with our younger and older social media audiences (for instance, I'll tweak the same content and use it on Facebook, where there is very little crossover and get good feedback in both places... Twitter? Almost never).

The format of being about pretty pictures on Instagram certainly works in a museum's favor, I think. 

-------------------------------------------
Elizabeth MacCrossan PhD
Support Services
Sophienburg Museum & Archives
New Braunfels TX
-------------------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 10-27-2014 10:54 AM
From: Ruth Haus
Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

I am curious to know how, if at all, you all use instagram to promote your museum to younger audiences?

-------------------------------------------
Ruth Haus
President
Living History Farms
Urbandale IA
-------------------------------------------

I operate as our social media coordinator as well as registrar. We don't use Instagram but do have Facebook, History Pin and Twitter. Our policy in terms of posting pictures has always been to provide low res watermarked images so that we are limiting people's ability to reproduce the photos for professional use while still providing social media content.

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Melissa Houston
Registrar
The Barnum Museum
Bridgeport CT
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Original Message:
Sent: 11/20/2014 9:37:34 AM
From: caras@wagnerfreeinstitute.org
Subject: RE: Instagram - social media marketing for museums

I work in a 150-year-old museum where we don't allow visitors to take pictures (though, without dedicated visitor services staff, we have trouble policing this and I am sure people take pics all the time). I just wonder if others have experiences using Instagram despite these policies? Obviously I think it would be a worthwhile tool for us to post our own pictures, which we take all the time, but it loses some of the interactivity when visitors aren't encouraged to post their own pictures.  Best, Cara ------------------------------------------- Cara Scharf Program and Communications Manager Wagner Free Institute of Science Philadelphia PA -------------------------------------------
Original Message: Sent: 11-05-2014 03:36 PM From: Elizabeth MacCrossan Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums We use Instagram here at the Sophienburg, and find it has a younger audience in general. As has been said, as a history museum, we are able to post old photos, either through #tbt, or a "can you guess what this object is?" It is interesting that those are popular both with our younger and older social media audiences (for instance, I'll tweak the same content and use it on Facebook, where there is very little crossover and get good feedback in both places... Twitter? Almost never). The format of being about pretty pictures on Instagram certainly works in a museum's favor, I think.  ------------------------------------------- Elizabeth MacCrossan PhD Support Services Sophienburg Museum & Archives New Braunfels TX -------------------------------------------
Original Message: Sent: 10-27-2014 10:54 AM From: Ruth Haus Subject: Instagram - social media marketing for museums I am curious to know how, if at all, you all use instagram to promote your museum to younger audiences? ------------------------------------------- Ruth Haus President Living History Farms Urbandale IA -------------------------------------------