Creating Your Social Media Strategy: A Workshop

This workshop is now full.

This workshop is designed to to help guide participants in developing actionable social media strategies for their respective institutions, building from a range of case studies, peer best practices, and hot-off-the-press audience research. It will feature a mix of brief, informative presentations on social media trends and applications, as well as dynamic small-group roundtables.

To provide context, we will begin with a brief overview of the most recent installment of CultureTrack, our ongoing tracking survey focused on the attitudes and behaviors of American cultural consumers. CultureTrack 2011 examines how culture-seeking audiences utilize social media in their everyday lives, spotlighting their expectations and desires for how such online interactions can enhance their connection to arts organizations. Participants will break out into smaller groups for moderated roundtable discussions aimed at learning about each group’s collective experiences with social media at their respective institutions.

Then we will reconvene for a presentation of best practice case studies from cultural institutions across the country. These case studies will offer inspiration and new ideas about developing greater connectivity and synergy in online communities, as well as outline some of the objectives of institutional online strategies. By understanding the ways in which different demographic segments utilize social media, and where differences between these segments are breaking down, every organization will be able to develop effective affinity activities. A brief discussion will follow as the workshop opens up for an opportunity to discuss the case studies and provides participants with a chance to share other social media examples they find compelling and effective.

For the final portion of the workshop, we will once again divide into smaller moderated roundtable groups to develop customized social media implementation plans. Each breakout group will be provided action plan worksheets and guidance as we cover a range of topics related to activating or expanding your institutional social media strategies, including where to focus resources, which platforms to use, and how to fund a social media campaign.

“Creating Your Social Media Strategy: A Workshop” is aimed at arts marketers, curators, educators, and other museum positions that are responsible for developing and executing social media projects. Each participant will leave with a functional starting point to build an institution-specific social media plan and a USB key loaded with copies of the presentations shared during the workshop, a wealth of social media resources, and electronic copies of all planning worksheets.