Museums, Social Media and PR

I wonder how many museums are currently using social media to support and promote their museum's mission and programs in our state of Oklahoma. In terms of using social media, here are a few things I learned this past Friday at a volunteer management conference in Grand Prairie Texas, from presenter Ashley Hyder, Manager, Public Relation & Communications ahyder@vcnt.org www.vcnt.org, "To Tweet or Not to Tweet":

- there are now 400 million Facebook users worldwide, and 57 million Myspace users... This website was shared at the conference.

- first and foremost LISTEN to and respond to what your followers are saying. Be authentic.

- know your goals and objectives

- plan a strategy that will work for your organization

I happened to sit next to the web designer for the Texas Volunteer Management Conference and his advice was to use social media to build visitation to our main website. Sure enough, I found more information on this idea in one of Ashley's handouts. The content is from Online Marketing Blog. Under "Have a Destination and Draw Users Back". First line reads, "Without some sort of destination to draw users back to and funnel subscribers, you'll never achieve successful web community building that is protected from the rise and fall of social networks. My destination is our museum's website, which, by the way, is being redesigned and will include a new logo! So, if I understood correctly, I should use tag words to build up our chances of being pulled up during random searches. ...which is how this tag box is used below my post. Hmm. I didn't realize its importance.