Tool Shed: Virtual Building Blocks for Historic Preservation Jane Pojawa www.pojawa.com save.the.adobe@gmail.com
Social Media and Your Organization Objectives
Learn innovative and cost-effective solutions to generate public awareness and further a cause Identify the most beneficial on-line tools for your organization Demystify interactive media programs Defining your Facebook marketing strategy – what/who/when
Advocacy
My 2011 Presentation was about using internet tools for preservation advocacy. You need to get the word out! What tools are useful and what is a giant time-suck? How can you attract volunteers, contributions, raise public awareness, sell your wares and promote your “brand”?
What is Your Brand?
You, in your professional capacity A Product A Service A Cause An Organization A Historic Building A Historic District Your “brand” has an online life all its own.
Raven Jake’s Observations
“Raven Jake” is a character I developed with my husband Jeryd. Raven Jake, as such, does not exist. He is a fictitious desert rat. As with many fictitious characters, he has become real and even has something of a following. The content of his blog, “Observations of a Western Legend,” centers mainly on nature, history and travel. http://ravenjake.typepad.com/blog/
The Blogosphere
Raven Jake’s blog, originally hosted by VOX, is now on Typepad. Both are free hosting services with nice templates. Blogs are one of the more reputable forms of social media. They are free, easy to use, and can be an invaluable tool in the preservationist’s arsenal. Blogs can be used by a person or by an institution or business and are frequently incorporated into a more “official” website. One day, Raven Jake received a comment from a distraught fan…
The Blogosphere
The initial advocacy was helped to a large degree by a blog, “Raven Jake’s Observations.” In no way was that the only form of community action being taken, or even the most important one. Typepad, Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal and many other platforms offer free, dependable, nicelooking blogs. Start one!
The Michael White Adobe 1840? – 2012 http://sites.google.com/site/michaelwhiteadobe/home
Social Media
FaceBook has become and indispensable way to quickly share information and is gaining credibility. It is free, allows easy interaction/feedback and can be used to raise funds. It is also a good way to reach a broad spectrum of the public – particularly young people. This is a “cause” page. Free!
FaceBook Group Page
Organization Page
ndn.me
http://ndn.me/ Social media site for Native Americans Great place to post events Cultural resources News feeds, interest groups, tribal affiliations, events Free to join
LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/ Social Networking for business contacts. “Find past and present colleagues and classmates quickly. LinkedIn makes staying in touch simple.” If you wish the high school reunion would never end, this is for you! Basic/individual service is free; business accounts range from $20-$100/month
Putting the Package Together
There’s no one-stop shopping Users can upload photos to most blogs and websites, but Twitter requires an independent host for both photos and videos. Over the past year, “collages” such as Pinterest and Storify have become very popular. Most of these services/applications are free or lowcost
Twitter
https://twitter.com/ Twitter is a real-time information network that connects you to the latest stories, ideas, opinions and news about what you find interesting. At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called Tweets. Each Tweet is 140 characters long. You can see photos, videos and conversations directly in Tweets to get the whole story at a glance, and all in one place. Can tweet from your phone Link to videos on Youtube or photos on Flickr. Good for live coverage of events. Free
Flickr – photo/video hosting
http://www.flickr.com/ Flickr is an image/video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. Yahoo reported in June 2011 that Flickr had a total of 51 million registered members and 80 million unique visitors. In August 2011 the site reported that it was hosting more than 6 billion images and this number continues to grow steadily according to reporting sources Basic service = free, Pro service 3 months for $6.95, 1 year for $24.95 2 years for $44.95 (save $10.95 and pay only $1.87/month!) *
InstaGram – photo hosting
http://instagr.am/ “It’s a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your photos with friends and family.” “Snap a picture (from your cell phone), choose a filter to transform its look and feel, then post to Instagram. Share to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr too – it's as easy as pie. It's photo sharing, reinvented.” Free
YouTube – Video Hosting
http://www.youtube.com/ YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos. It is now a subsidiary of Google. There are other video sharing sites (Hulu, Vimeo) but YouTube is the largest Free
Pinterest
http://pinterest.com/ Pinterest is an online pinboard to help you organize and share things you love. You need to request an invitation. Free
Storify
http://storify.com/ Storify lets you curate social networks to build social stories, bringing together media scattered across the Web into a coherent narrative. Search social media networks to find media elements about the topic you want to Storify. Look through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Instagram and more to gather material for your stories. Drag and drop status updates, photos or videos to bring together the social media elements that will best illustrate your story. Write your own narrative — A Storify story is more than just a collection of elements from social media. It's also your opportunity to make sense of what you've pulled together. You can write a headline, introduction and insert text anywhere inside your story. You can add headers, hyperlinks and styled text. Build a narrative and give context to your readers Embed stories anywhere: Storify stories can be embedded anywhere on the Web by simply pasting an embed code, just like embedding a video. You can also connect Storify to your Wordpress or Drupal blog, publish to Tumblr or Posterous, or send an email newsletter through Mailchimp.
Storify
This example is about fire that broke out in a restaurant. It contains comments that people tweeted and facebooked and the photos and videos they uploaded to social media sites. Be careful what you put online – your public content is fair game. Storify could be used or preservation advocacy, recording progress on restoration projects and for large, public events
Putting it together
Now that you’re a member of 10 different social media sites, how do you keep it organized? This is a more difficult question than you’d think as lines between personal and public are blurred. Services like HootSuite allow users to integrate their content uploads. Services like BrandYourself and Person.me allow users to offer all of their online connections in one place.
HootSuite
http://hootsuite.com/ Enhance your social media management with HootSuite, the leading social media dashboard. Manage multiple networks and profiles and measure your campaign results. Free basic service $5.99/month for pro.
Person.me
https://about.me/ A single personal page that “points people to everything you do, all around the web.” Analytics – Keeps track of who has found your profile and where they are – in an impersonal way, of course Free!
More Useful Stuff
Free tools and apps are being developed every day. Content can be applied to a variety of different applications. I am unaware of any online services developed specifically for preservation issues (doesn’t mean they don’t exist) but existing services may be repurposed for your own nefarious requirements.
QR Codes
This is a “super barcode” that links to online content. QR Code Generator: http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ QR Code Scanning App allows users with smart phones to access. Good for linking print media to online content or for identification badges. Free
Mail Chimp - Newsletters
Free email marketing service from MailChimp. Design, send, and track HTML email campaigns with our simple tools. http://mailchimp.com Basically, this means newsletters, but also think in terms of virtual flyers. Also manages your mailing list. Great for sending your members updates. Sliding scale. Less than 500 emails a month = Free. 25,000 – 50,000 emails/month = $240
Issuu – Document Hosting
http://issuu.com/ Issuu is the “leading digital publishing platform delivering exceptional reading experiences of magazines, catalogs, and newspapers.” Easy way to store a backup copy of any document Great for newsletters Easily embeds in websites Free
CreateSpace – Books & DVDs
https://www.createspace.com/ Online store plus Amazon listing You might want to publish a book, either to raise your profile or to sell as a fundraiser. (This one can be expensive – the less you pay “up front,” the more you pay on the back end. But you don’t have to lose your shirt. And you can do it for free) You might want to publish a DVD. (Free-expensive. This one depends entirely on your ability to network and access community resources. It is also a high profit margin item) A DVD costs about $4.95 each to print on demand, includes ISBN number, box and printing.
MagCloud – Magazines Printed on Demand
http://www.magcloud.com Service offered by Hewlett Packard No minimum order Online store, print-ondemand Brochures, catalogs, newsletters, portfolios and recipe books – and magazines. Base cost is .20/page
Getting Started Start with a blog or a website (these days they’re practically indistinguishable)
•Upgrade! Register a domain name/ get a hosting service
1 - Generate content – take pictures and write words
2 - Send out news releases to your media sources, as usual
3 - But also repurpose those words and images for online use
Integrating Content Campaign
Users: Members, clients, media contacts, the public
Build a mailing list
Send digital newsletters using Mailchimp, invitations through Evite
Content: words and images
Use Instagram, Flickr, Youtube & Storify to create and manage content
Post content to blog or website
Repost to social media – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc
Online Resources Raven Jake http://ravenjake.typepad.com/blog/ Michael White Adobe http://sites.google.com/site/michaelwhiteadobe/ Publishing Issuu http://issuu.com/ Magcloud http://www.magcloud.com/ Website builders Google Sites https://sites.google.com Joomla http://www.joomla.org/ Wordpress http://wordpress.org/ Social Media Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ MySpace (almost obsolete) http://www.myspace.com / Twitter http://twitter.com/ Timelines Dippity Timeline Generator http://www.dipity.com/ Blogs Typepad http://www.typepad.com/ Wordpress http://wordpress.com/ Blogger http://www.blogger.com LiveJournal (mainly for writers) http:// www.livejournal.com/
Genealogy Find-a-Grave http://www.findagrave.com/ Family Search https://www.familysearch.org/ Watch a video of anything - YouTube http:// www.youtube.com/ Another video host - Vimeo http://vimeo.com/ Create slideshows – http://socialtimes.com/12-free-online-slideshow-creators_b59 Kioza http://www.kizoa.com/ iPhone apps for historical tours (great for districts, could also be a self-guided museum or cemetery tour) http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/strawbery-bankemuseum/id394289589?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chester-revealing-therows/id379853774?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/digimacq/id37970422 6?mt=8 This is a company that creates iPhone apps for custom tours. I have no idea if they’re any good or how much they charge: http://www.productworld.com/index.php/producttour/mobile-apps/
More Resources Jane Pojawa’s personal website: www.pojawa.com Social Media Facebook http://www. facebook.com/ Twitter https://twitter.com/ LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/ ndn.me http://ndn.me/
Integration BrandYourself http://brandyourself.com/ Person.me https://about.me/ HootSuite http://hootsuite.com/ Other
Photo/Video/Document Hosting Flickr http://www.flickr.com/ Instagram http://instagr.am/ YouTube http://www.youtube.com/ Issuu http://issuu.com/
Pinterest http://pinterest.com/ Storify http://storify.com/ QR Code Generator (you will also need to download an app for your phone) http:// qrcode.kaywa.com/ MailChimp http://mailchimp.com
Print-on-Demand CreateSpace https://www.createspace.com/ MagCloud http://www.magcloud.com