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A strong social media presence will help your organization’s greater community while also spreading the word and garnering support. This page covers the different audiences one might find on different social media sites, and the various advantages and disadvantages of each platform.
A few best practices for social media apply across all platforms. First, you have to have someone to maintain it consistently over time. Ideally this person has an intuitive understanding of that platform, enjoys coming up with new ideas for posts, and is knowledgeable about both your organization and the people who you serve. Consistent messaging that is relevant and personal will help people feel connected to your organization! At the same time, all platforms are different, and adapting a message to suit the platform is almost as important as the message itself. Social media is not about relaying all possible information; those details can live in an email and on a website. It is more about communicating interesting moments in time that will capture people’s interest.
Museum marketing professionals emphasize the importance of a strong, consistent newsletter and regular email campaigns. While it may seem like audiences pay more attention to either social media or print campaigns, email is an efficient, democratic, and versatile medium that shouldn’t be underestimated. When done correctly, a good email campaign will reach students, families, artists, potential collaborators, and future donors. Not everyone has social media, and not everyone receives mail (or pays attention to it when they do), but virtually every person has an email address.
One downside of email is that most people’s spam filters have become even less trusting in the past several years (particularly for those with Gmail accounts). It’s an important security feature that unfortunately tends to flag harmless email campaigns. Using an email address that is easily identifiable as belonging to your organization will help prevent this issue, but there are a few other simple strategies to stay out of your audience’s spam filters, which can be found here.
Facebook is a great platform to use for both hosting content and communicating with your audience. Unlike other popular social media sites like Instagram and Tiktok, Facebook can serve as a stand-in for a full website. Facebook feed is almost blog-like in format, and is searchable by both names of pages and key words. You can also create pages for events and track potential attendees through the RSVP feature. Anyone with a Facebook account can create an organization page, which reports likes and engagement.
Facebook has absorbed many features of other social media sites over time, such as 24-hour story reels, which originated on Snapchat. This makes it seem like the ‘one-stop’ of social media platforms, but it also makes its interface more complicated. It is also worth noting that just because a platform has a feature doesn’t mean that people use it very often!
Instagram is a photo-sharing platform that is excellent for displaying and promoting art and art events. It is more visually oriented than Facebook and Twitter, so it is a better home for photos and descriptive imagery, rather than longer text. Instagram also has a 24-hour story feature, which is useful for making smaller, slightly more repetitive posts, such a poster for an upcoming event. This helps keep your permanent feed clean and legible, so that viewers can easily refer to past posts without wading through endless photos.
In terms of audience, Twitter is quite a mix. A large portion of Twitter users are there for humor, because the site’s character limit format lends itself well to quick, witty remarks and memes. Many people also use it to develop a professional presence. Writers and academics often use Twitter to talk about and promote their work, and some artists use Twitter to advertise work they are selling. Many people use Twitter to create informational threads, raise awareness about social and political issues, and share fundraisers.
While all of these things occur on other social media sites, on Twitter there is an implied public status of almost all posts, whether they are made by individuals or organizations. This is a huge advantage for organizations who wish to engage with their audiences more directly online. While Twitter is not as visually oriented as other platforms, it can be a great place to share slightly less formal content, like behind-the-scenes photos before an event or some fun facts about your organization and the people who run it. This kind of online presence can help foster a community that is accessible for a wide range of people who may be interested in your organization but perhaps don’t live nearby, or don’t have the time to attend events, or who have a disability that makes it difficult for them to do so.
While many organizations have not quite unleashed the potential of Twitter, there are some successful models who have taken a non-traditional approach. For example, the Museum of English Rural Life has a very fun Twitter presence! They share objects and photographs from their collection in a way that acknowledges what their audience is curious about while also celebrating the history, culture, and innovation of rural people. Their approach to Twitter can be adapted to share anything from artists’ latest work in your gallery to interesting anecdotes about your local community.
Youtube
While we often think of Youtube primarily as a host for video content (see Free Digital Platforms), it also functions as a social media platform. For any arts organization, Youtube serves two main functions: education about the content of the museum or gallery, and documentation of events. A more socially engaged Youtube presence is worth pursuing if your organization has a skilled team of videographers and content creators.
If you are thinking about using Youtube as a tool, there is one organization that has pulled it off exceedingly well. The Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia has embraced Youtube as a part of their mission to educate the public about medical history. While their content does have a certain macabre draw, the sensitivity and care with which they create their videos also makes them successful. If you are beginning or expanding an educational initiative at your organization, then the Mütter Museum’s virtual tours, lectures, and short-form videos are an excellent model to follow.
Tiktok
Tiktok is an untapped resource for small arts organizations. Like Twitter, Tiktok has the capacity for greater public engagement. Its algorithm brings publicly posted videos to users’ ‘for you page’ (commonly abbreviated as FYP), which serves as a vehicle for finding new audience members. Tiktok’s algorithm takes users’ location into account, so your videos will likely reach a relevant audience who lives near your organization. Tiktok content is also informal by nature. It consists of vertical cell phone videos anywhere between a few seconds to three minutes in length. There is no expectation of extremely polished content or skilled videography.
LinkedIn is not usually a home for people in the arts; culturally the site tend to be quite corporate. However, there are a few good reasons to have an official LinkedIn page for your organization. Potential software service providers will be doing their marketing and communication on LinkedIn in a more involved way than on other platforms. This includes individual employees making posts that reflect their company’s philosophy (sometimes intentionally and sometimes not). These insights are important when choosing a service provider. What is their message to their customers? Do their employees seem passionate and engaged? Do they seem like they would understand your mission?
Another advantage of LinkIn is the opportunity for these potential providers to see you. Asserting your organization’s presence can make you more easily recognizable as a potential customer. Some companies may even reach out to your page (though one should be cautious of such LinkedIn cold calls). Lastly, having a LinkedIn presence allows your organization’s members to easily list it on their personal profiles–a small detail that is still important for professional development, especially for younger members.
Some Final Takeaways
It can be difficult to gauge broader trends across social media, because our experiences on social media have become so individualized. While extensive data research isn’t always necessary, looking at recent reports about social media usage can be helpful. Looking at statistics from the Pew Research Center on how people are using social media in the United States may be helpful.
The most important thing to remember is that digital audiences want to laugh, learn, and most importantly, be invited in; ultimately there is no singular marketing formula to accomplish those things. Have fun coming up with new ideas for content and see what your audience enjoys the most!