#ArtAtoZSerial Social Media at the National Gallery of Art

storify.com/ngadc/artatoz

Caveat

My tenure at @ngadc ended in May 2015.

Talk to the fabulous @MeaganEstep!

Before #ArtAtoZ

It’s so and so’s birthday!

Come to this exhibit and see this painting! Hurry!

Do you like trees? It’s #ArborDay!

Here’s a seemingly random link to a video from a month-old event on 19th century photography!

It’s #womenshistorymonth! We have women. Binders full of women!

There had to be a better way

Storytelling

What if we could dive more deeply into an idea or topic?

Could we serialize social media posts to build interest, deepen knowledge, take people on a journey?

2 weeks

Gimme structure

1 topic2 weeks each1 whole year

1. Asymmetry2. Brushstroke3. Color4. Drawing5. Expression6. Frames7. GirlReading8. Hands9. Interior10.Jewelry11.Kings12.Leonardo13.Modernism

14.Night15.OpticalIllusion16.Portraits17.Questions18.Rothko19.Streets20.TrompeLOeil21.Underdrawing22.Vanitas23.WEATHER!

24.Xray25.Youth26.Zoom

x=

Proactive editorial planning

All 26 topics set at the beginning of the year

Gave staff (including Social Media Collaborative) time to plan, research, write, and work together (in theory)

Potential to build momentum, collaborate with other institutions

Roughly 2-4 posts per day (depending on platform) for full 14 days

Goal: Enable social learning

Modeling educational approaches on social media

visual thinking strategies

inquiry-based

learner-centered

Did I mention that social media is housed in the education department at @ngadc?

Evidence of Engagement

conversationanswers

observations from close looking

discussion

further inquiry

sharingtagging friends

retweets/shares/reposts

creative responsephotos

visual art

creative writing (captions, titles)

What worked well

Variety of content formats for fans to engage with

Word association

Break the ice and garner insights to incorporate into later posts in the series

Definitions

Designed to baseline a shared understanding of the topic

Detail/Reveal

Guessing games

Title / Caption Challenges

Instagram challenges

#SeeingRedChat

#ngatakeover

#ngatakeover

Instameets/Tweetups

Recap & Reflection

Look for evidence of close looking, learning, surprise, joy

What is serializising social media? Going long

Longer time span NOT longer content

We could punctuate information delivery with shorter posts, calls to act/respond

We could learn as we go, adjusting content types and delivery to match what audiences want

#GirlReading conservation mystery revealed

A series means you can look forward to next episode

A really good series means it is part of your life

BUT writing for social media is hard

It’s not a label

Staff need training

Hands-on experience helps

So does 1:1 coaching

Too much content?

Needs to be seen as a priority and not “extra”

Hard to do this in collaboration with other museums

What didn’t work so well for our followers

Broad topics ( #Streets, #Portraits) generated a lot of engagement; more specific topics like #Underdrawing didn’t do as well

Sometimes too much of one thing (e.g., #Rothko, #GirlReading) felt like overkill

It’s hard to write prompts that people will respond to. It is easier to write “labels.”

Some Instagram challenges really fell flat. So we stopped doing them unless we had a really great prompt.

Obligatory Facebook & Twitter data

“Engagement”

Streets play an important role in art as artists depict the world and people around them. What type of street do you live on? Work on? Travel on every day? Share an image of a street that’s meaningful to you. What does your image represent?

THIS.

storify.com/ngadc/artatoz