In this month’s edition of Performance Counts, Rachel Kassman, Marketing Manager, offers a quantitative as well as qualitative assessment JMM and social media. To read past editions of Performance Counts, click here. To read more posts by Rachel, click here.
In thinking about what to write for this month’s Performance Counts, it came to my attention that it has been more than two years (2.5 to be exact) since our last look at the Museum and Social Media. I thought it was time for an update and to share some of the new social media-related projects and campaigns we’ve been experimenting with recently.
First, some quick stats: I’m happy to report that we’ve seen growth on all four social media platforms where JMM manages active accounts (Facebook,Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram). Our biggest gains have been on Facebook, where we now count 3,232 followers (that’s over a 30% increase), and Instagram, where the number of people following our account has increased to 958 (That’s more than 1000% growth! To be fair, at last writing, we had only been using Instagram for 3 months, but I’m still pleased with our growth on this visual-focused platform!).
Hootesuite, which you may remember is one of the tools I use to manage all these disparate accounts, has also started offering its own set of analytics. This makes it easier to track progress across the different platforms. One of the features I find most helpful tracks engagements. Engagements can include all sorts of things like sharing a post, liking a photo, or leaving a comment. We didn’t have this base stat two years ago, but at this time I can report on the past 12 months, where we’ve seen 6,900 engagements on Facebook, 1,400 engagements on Twitter, and 12,000(!) engagements on Instagram.
Moving past the numbers, I wanted to call your attention to some of the different ways we’ve been using our social media platforms over the last two years, focused on different departments throughout the Museum.
Education: You may have noticed a significant increase in the number of photos we share from our many field trips! This initiative, spearheaded by our new School Program Coordinator, Paige Woodhouse, has a two-part purpose: First, to showcase the wonderful work our Education Department is doing, along with the diversity of students we serve, and capturing the positive experiences those students have here. Second, to help strengthen and grow our relationships with specific teachers and schools.
By increasing the number of photos we share from school field trips we are able to show students exploring our exhibits, using primary sources in our archival explorations, and capturing the wonder of learning through our synagogue tours, introduction to Judaism programs, and our living history characters. Paige is then able to take our various posts and share them directly with the teachers and administrators whose schools are represented, increasing the opportunity for more interaction between us and the schools. We have found a direct increase in the number of teacher evaluations received as well as deeper, more thoughtful responses within those evaluation. Teachers are also then able to share those posts with their students’ families as proof of the effectiveness and importance of the learning experiences the Museum provides.
Exhibits: Part of our exhibit program has been finding ways to increase the reach and scope of our original exhibits and the online sphere provides the perfect real estate. We decided to use the tools provided by the Tumblr platform to create “mini-sites” for some of our original exhibits – a much cheaper and faster option than creating whole new websites from scratch. Our first foray was in setting up the Marrying Maryland account, which was created as a companion to our Just Married: Wedding Stories from Jewish Maryland exhibit. Here we combined material from our collections along with crowd-sourced wedding invitations and photos to tell more stories than would fit into the physical gallery and give them life beyond the close of the exhibit.
The ease of creating Marrying Maryland led us to the second mini-site, Fashion Statement, a companion to our current exhibit of the same name. On this account, curator Joanna Church has been able to tell more stories about the individual items in the gallery and highlight items from our collections that just wouldn’t fit into the limited physical space. The Tumblr platform has proven an easy and effective way to let our exhibits grow beyond their walls and we look forward to our future creations!
A second, smaller innovation in our exhibits and social media is the new ability in Facebook to create multi-date events. This has allowed us to create specific events for the run of our exhibits in a form that is easy for our followers to share and to purchase general admission tickets online. It’s not yet a perfect tool (for instance, we’ve had to break up the current exhibits into multiple events because the time period that they are on display is longer than the current maximum number of dates for a single event), but it is a definite move forward. These events will also allow us to “boost” our exhibits on Facebook to reach a wider, interested audience.
Collections: Much of our social media, past and present, has focused on our collections, often using themed weekly posts like #WetNoseWednesday (featuring pets in the collection) and #ThrowbackThursday as well as unique holidays and observances (like International Jazz Day and National Picnic Day). These posts have continued to prove popular with our audiences across all social media platforms.One of our longest running themed posts have been #TravelTuesday, which started as general vacation photos from our collection. In 2018, I decided to try a theme-within-a-theme, focusing on the vast array of passports in our collection. This allowed us to share a little bit more about the items in our collections, including stories of the passport’s owners and their families. For 2019, I chose something even more ambitious, introducing a new blog series called Traveling With Grace. This series transcribes the travel diaries of Grace Hecht and illustrates her various journeys. Each of these posts are then shared across our social media accounts. (You can check out the intro to the series here.)Esther’s Place: One additional innovation we’ve been playing with over the last two years is themed posts about the JMM shop. We began with #MugShotMonday, originally used to highlight mugs in our collections, which allowed us to feature the fantastic selection available in our shop, using a “re-kickoff” post from Deputy Director Tracie Guy-Decker. Having this campaign in place was perfect when we introduced our first custom products – the announcement post shows up in our top 3 posts of the last 12 months for both Twitter and Facebook!
Following up on that, Shop Assistant Jessica Konigsberg had the genius idea for #FrameItFriday, featuring the gorgeous photo frames available at Esther’s Place. We’re getting ready to start a new theme – #WearItWednesday, to coordinate with our two currentfashion exhibits, featuring the variety of textiles and other wearable items available. We could use some models, so we’d love for you to stop in at Esther’s Place and let us take your photo with one of our beautiful pieces!
JMM continues to present a vibrant, active, and content-rich experience across multiple social-media platforms. I hope you will follow along with us on whichever platform you like best – and if you have any suggestions for what you’d love to see, please let me know!
