By Emily Haight, Social Media Manager at New-York Historical Society (@em_dash_h8 on Twitter) & Jonathan Munar, Director of Digital Media and Strategy at Art21 (@jonnymoon on Twitter)
For social media managers who are overtaxed more than a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, we, your loyal Social Media SIG chairs, have pulled together a few resources to help you navigate the social media waters.
Want to stay up-to-date with platform changes and industry news but you don’t have time to search for it? We recommend signing up for these newsletters: Social Media Geekout by Matt Navarra and Social Media Today.
The Museum Social Media Managers Facebook group is a great resource for exchanging ideas and collaborating across institutions. If you’re more likely to use Twitter you can follow #MuseSocial and #MuseTech on Twitter.
Don’t have time to create your own content calendar from scratch? Capacity Interactive shares monthly downloadable calendars. Or you can plan #OnThisDay content around these calendars for Events in History and People in History. (Just give those dates a double-check before posting.)
While every social media manager has their own style and preferences for managing their institutional accounts, we also wanted to share with you our favorite must-have tools that we use regularly in our roles. Emily’s favorite tool is an Instagram line-break generator that she flows every bit of Instagram text through first—and it’s free! Jonathan would never post a video to social without a set of closed/open captions, so he relies heavily on YouTube’s basic upload tools to transcribe, timecode, and generate a tidy caption file to pair with video across all social platforms.
Just for fun: If you want to commiserate or enjoy a bit of dark humor, we recommend following these Instagram accounts for the LOLs: @SippinSocialTea and @WorkInSocialTheySaid.
If you don’t manage social media for your institution, but want to support the person who does—reach out and ask if there’s something you can help with! As Colleen Dileschneider says, social media is the every-department job in nonprofit organizations. Fresh ideas are great, but even more valuable is offering resources to help execute the projects already in motion.
Finally, thank you to everyone who joined us in March for a chat about Instagram Reels. Join our SIG to be notified about our next meetup.
Interested in joining the conversation?
To join the Social Media SIG, please fill out this form. MCN’s Social Media SIG examines the campaigns, issues, and trends in social media as it relates to museums. The group is for any individual who works with social media directly or is interested in its application in a museum context, with an emphasis on content and strategy development.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Interested in joining a SIG?
Through Special Interest Groups, all MCN members have the opportunity to connect with colleagues doing similar work, explore opportunities to collaborate among them, share resources and effective practices, or discuss ways to advance their area of digital practice.
MCN members may join any SIG and there is no limit on the number of SIGs one may join. When you fill out the membership registration form select which SIGs you’d like to join, you can join or leave a SIG at any time by updating your profile in the New Member Portal. Join or Login today!