 For museums online social media has the potential to be more than traditional marketing  Social media is about creating a community with our visitors by engaging, communicating and interacting with our audience

 Who is this audience?  What are the demographics of the individuals using these online social networking sites?  Where do they fit into our target audience?  How to they compare to our traditional audience?  How do we make the most of this new Marketing and networking platform?

 According to a recent study by the Canadian Museum Association 74.9 % of the Canadian population is on the internet, that is a potential audience of more than 26 million Canadians.  Out of that 74.9 %, 80 % of those internet users are accessing social media’s such as facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

 Facebook is the most widely used with 400 million active users globally and more than 15 million in Canadians are using Facebook.

 9,500 Facebook fans of Canadian Museums have revealed that the large demographic is women aged and the second highest group is women aged  These two groups are not only the largest but spend on average the most time on social media’s such as Facebook approximately 3.4 hours a week.

Social media’s such as Flicker, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are great tools that museums can use to advertise:  Special events, lectures, festivals, fundraisers etc.  Lectures  Hours of operation /general site information  Educations programs  New or travelling exhibits

 These social media websites put the word out there that your site is an active and up to date institution that wants to reach out and engage with the community. “Keeping up on popular trends”  Also by participating in theses social networking activities you are not only reaching a wide variety of people but you are basically getting cost effective marketing options for your museum.  Reaching new audiences, especially a younger audience

 By creating a Facebook page you are allowing millions of people to see your organization, you are putting a face to your museum.  It is free Advertising and promotion  Facebook allows you to see what kinds of people are interested in your site such as age, gender and you have more local national or international people interested in your site

Why ask for birth date? To make sure legally old enough to maintain the account

 Go to account using for Facebook

 Contact information  History of institution  Making photo albums  Changing facebook page profile picture  Wall postings  Creating special events & inviting members to attend

 It is important to regularly update your page with new events information, local / museum news, photos and links to related sites.  If you never update your page then people will not visit it on a regular bases.

 Never post personal information such are your date of birth, personal phone numbers and addresses  Always be aware of your online reputation, any information that is posted on your site reflects your museum, so always check spelling and grammar and never post a persons personal contact information such as without permission  Regularly check what people have posted on page wall & delete any unwanted information that might reflect badly on your museum or be misleading

 Presents the opportunity to connected with the public directly  Allows people to follow your museum in an easy and way via blackberry, ipod, netpads, ipads, laptops etc.  Allows people to post comments about your site and suggested it to other twitter  Free Marketing / advertising  Allows you to make live postings on special events and when they are happening and as they are happening

 Tweet - One message  Tweets - More than one message  Tweeting - What you are doing when you post your message  Peeps - Everyone in the Twitter community you follow  RT - Re-Tweet... The best gift you can give your fellow peeps

 Post in bullet point fashion  Comment and Compliment fellow peeps  Post a profile picture  Post your website or blog URL in your bio/profile  Post fun, informative videos that can help someone else  Post Twitter badges on your MySpace, Facebook & other social media sites

 Insult (in any way) fellow peeps  Lie or talk badly of others / other sites  Post mindless rambling tweet marathons  Use any 4 letter "potty mouth" words  Be boring  Ignore direct messages unless they are negative