12b Harnessing Social Media to Advocate for the University Archive
Tracks
Collaboration and Advocacy
| Wednesday, October 19, 2022 |
| 9:45 AM - 11:15 AM |
Presentation Type
Traditional Paper -- Moderator: Kathryn Dan
Session Information
Community engagement: For the archival profession to remain relevant - or be visible - in the eyes of the public, the profession has to engage with the community on multiple levels. This engagement can be at the individual or personal level - the approach generally adopted by archives is through emphasis on the provision of access. Alternatively, engagement can be on a larger scale and take a more general approach to this relationship. Speakers in session 12 will discuss finding of new areas not only for archival collecting but for building audiences for existing records and the new areas.
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Laura Sizer
Monash University/ Student At Charles Sturt University
Harnessing social media to advocate for the University Archive
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Until 2022 the Monash University Archives did not have a platform for advocacy, promotion, or sharing our holdings within the University or with the wider general public. When seeing the online activities of other archives, particularly other university archives, within and outside Australia, this appeared to be a significant gap in our operations. This became even more apparent when we were only engaged in a limited way to assist with the celebrations of Monash University’s 60th anniversary, despite items we hold dating back to the University’s earliest days. It seemed that few within the Monash community knew of our existence or the extent of our collections, and we wanted to change that.
With no previous social media experience on a corporate level, we created a social media strategy, developed one year’s worth of weekly content, and launched our new social media channels. In preparing for the launch we followed the advice of University Marketing, Admissions and Communications (UMAC), which directed us to create the strategy and a content calendar. This encouraged us to think more carefully about the reasons for our social media activities and what we were hoping to achieve. In addition, we collaborated with UMAC to develop content for the official Monash University channels. This partnership was a serendipitous one, resulting from communications on other topics, and culminating in UMAC approaching the Archives for regular content to share on the main Monash channels, as previous ‘throwback’ content had always performed well.
One month into our campaign, we are already seeing results. Our audiences are growing and engaging with our content, we are being acknowledged by other divisions within the University, and we have even been approached with a request to collaborate. Our partnership with UMAC is also proving successful, despite some early miscommunication, with an archival video of Monash University’s opening ceremony being watched over 5,000 times across the main Monash channels. We expect the engagement on both our own channels and the official University channels to only increase in the coming months as we continue to share our holdings with the community and show them that we are here.
In this paper we hope to share with the archival community our experience of setting up a social media strategy from scratch with no previous professional social media experience. We will also share our experience collaborating with others, particularly communications and marketing teams, to reach wider audiences. Finally, we will share our results, including the lessons we have learnt throughout our promotion and advocacy journey, the type of content that has had the most success on social media, and the effect (if any) this work has had on our overall operations (e.g. queries and deposits). Ultimately, through this presentation we want to show the rest of the community, particularly smaller archives like ours, that if our small team can harness social media to advocate for our university archive and tell everyone that we are here, then it is possible for any archive to do the same.
With no previous social media experience on a corporate level, we created a social media strategy, developed one year’s worth of weekly content, and launched our new social media channels. In preparing for the launch we followed the advice of University Marketing, Admissions and Communications (UMAC), which directed us to create the strategy and a content calendar. This encouraged us to think more carefully about the reasons for our social media activities and what we were hoping to achieve. In addition, we collaborated with UMAC to develop content for the official Monash University channels. This partnership was a serendipitous one, resulting from communications on other topics, and culminating in UMAC approaching the Archives for regular content to share on the main Monash channels, as previous ‘throwback’ content had always performed well.
One month into our campaign, we are already seeing results. Our audiences are growing and engaging with our content, we are being acknowledged by other divisions within the University, and we have even been approached with a request to collaborate. Our partnership with UMAC is also proving successful, despite some early miscommunication, with an archival video of Monash University’s opening ceremony being watched over 5,000 times across the main Monash channels. We expect the engagement on both our own channels and the official University channels to only increase in the coming months as we continue to share our holdings with the community and show them that we are here.
In this paper we hope to share with the archival community our experience of setting up a social media strategy from scratch with no previous professional social media experience. We will also share our experience collaborating with others, particularly communications and marketing teams, to reach wider audiences. Finally, we will share our results, including the lessons we have learnt throughout our promotion and advocacy journey, the type of content that has had the most success on social media, and the effect (if any) this work has had on our overall operations (e.g. queries and deposits). Ultimately, through this presentation we want to show the rest of the community, particularly smaller archives like ours, that if our small team can harness social media to advocate for our university archive and tell everyone that we are here, then it is possible for any archive to do the same.
