Deepening Connections Through Social Media:

Presented by Jeff Stern, Director of Membership Advancement

to NCTech4GoodFriday, April 15, 2011

Our Approach at the Museum ofLife and Science

My story starts January 16, 2007

• My position was newly created, residing in Department of Learning and Innovation

• Asked to lead the Museum’s blogging efforts

• Science Online pre-conference workshop showed me it was easy to start blogging

• Morehead Current Science Forum on Social Media, @ruby tells me “I get paid to play on Facebook, you should too!”

We started slowly and deliberately…

Members demonstrated an emotional connection to our animals, so having keepers blog was natural (but scary)-“Poop Scoopers” not the traditional “curatorial voice” -Tightly scheduled department did not have “free” time

January-April 2007 spent planning. April began internal blogging. October blog went live to staff, then members.

Blogging Truthfully Can Be Hard

Blogging honestly led to great comments:

This was the emotional connection to regular visitors that we had been striving for. But it also showed that our experiment had several positive unintended consequences:

•These experiences helped us embrace transparency and tell our story

• The profile of animal keepers was elevated among staff & public: not just “poop scoopers” but experts who have a sense of humor too

• The success of the blog helped the department get additional resources for photos and videos that helped them do their “real” jobs

• Blogging provided professional development opportunities for keepers

• Other departments saw this success and wanted to participate as well

To get to this point we needed:

But this was all just prelude…Everything changed in July 2008 when we hired @10ch to help us expand our digital experiments.

•Strong support for Web 2.0 efforts from the top

•Training and support for those doing the blogging

•Additional equipment to shoot video

•Policies for other employees who wanted to blog

Suddenly, we were on flickr, twitter, delicious and friendfeed

Beck’s expertise helped everyone experiment more and feel safe doing

it.• Animal Department took greater control

over their blog & schedule• The Flickr Plant Project began• 3 more blogs launched• Cross-functional teams discuss Museum

2.0 and visitor co-creation• Weekly happy hours blurred professional

and personal boundaries and led to group blogging experiments

All in the first 6 months she was here!

Listening is the most important skill to cultivate

• Google alerts and other listening tools show us where our audience is and what they are saying

• RSS readers are invaluable• Feeds need to be monitored and

comments replied to• Grow big ears!

Don’t Panic!

They may be angry, but they like you!

•Embrace fan criticism

•Respond appropriately

•Don’t freak out or overreact – it’s okay to leave the trolls hungry

•Don’t just placate people – work to become better when criticism is justified.

•Give people the tools to tell your story for you

Members create things we couldn’t

Once we had some success, we planned for more. Dino-sized success,

in fact:

Our new Dino Trail was long-anticipated, and offered a chance to try new things:

-Blogger event

-New website with visitor &expert content

At left: Local bloggers @waynesutton and @gregoryng (a member too) enjoy the preview. See http://socialwayne.com/tag/museum-life-and-science/ for one awesome resulting post.

Our homepage got social t00…

Meanwhile, I’ve turned my attention to Facebook, where our members are

•I try to post 3-5 items per week, with at least one being a link to something that is *not us*

•I try to post what people “like” – often photos

•Increasingly, people are posting directly to our wall. This requires daily check-ins, because facebook does not send notification of posts, and you need to toggle to “+ others” to see them.

Digital engagement doesn’t replace old ways of connecting,

but it can enhance them…

It’s not all sweet:•We’ve stopped using Yammer (internal IM system).

•Some services will go away, or stop being free. Best not to invest too much time/effort in new platforms.

•Some good projects languish due to competing priorities (Munch Cam was great, but Brad has other work to do).

•Distributed efforts can be difficult to manage

•There’s always more that we’d like to do, but don’t have time and/or staff to accomplish, so we have to continually re-evaluate efforts. Metrics are both concrete and fuzzy.

•Even when staff are interested and motivated, there can be internal (fear/uncertainty) and external reasons that projects don’t take off. Revisiting is important.

•We’re trying to do projects that add to our ability to do our jobs, and take advantage of our expertise. Of course, they need to be of interest to our audience too.

So that’s the bite-sized

overview of what we’ve

done.

Questions?

Get more info:http://useum.tumblr.comhttp://lifeandscience.org

http://www.slideshare.net/btench twitter @lifeandscience

flickr user: ncmlsyoutube.com/user/ncmls

facebook.com/lifeandscience

Find us personally:@jeffreymstern and @10ch jeffrey.m.stern@gmail.com

http://www.jeffstern.org

I’m also involved with Social Enterprise Network of the Triangle

http://www.se-triangle.org