BUILDING YOUR BRAND –SOCIAL MEDIA TRAINING WITH JEN LOWTHROP.

Hello!

I’m Roseanna and I’ve been volunteering with Nottingham Museums and Galleries since May 2014. 

I was originally drawn to helping out with the commemorative events for centenary of the First World War. As it was so enjoyable, and I met so many great people, I stayed on with Illuminate! 

Here are my thoughts on the recent social media training session we attended on 21^st January 2015.

Jen Lowthrop is a woman whose presence online is impressive and bewildering to someone like me, whose social media activity is limited to an occasional grumble on Facebook. (I’m still living in the nostalgic MySpace years; music and cool background personalisation...what happened?!)

A proficient and successful travel blogger, Jen is well versed in the ever-changing world of social media. One online search generates an abundance of results- blogs (shegetsaround.co.uk), instagram updates, facebook comments, and related features and interviews. She has effectively established her own personal ‘brand’; but to remain in control of that, she reveals, you have some work to do.

Jen is passionate and engaging, a perfect personality to get Illuminate started in the world of social media, and help us focus on how we can make it work for us. The workshop was well attended, with members of other volunteer groups and staff from heritage sites such as Green’s Windmill all keen to develop their presence online.

We began with introductions and ‘random facts’, about ourselves; I will skirt over Rosny’s Vatican cheese-knife escapade (no holy cheese was harmed, perhaps excluding emmental ). 

After some discussion about the various motives of using social media, we were set to work in groups to put together our thoughts on individual sites, and the pros and cons of using said sites. 

One of the top points mentioned was how easy and accessible information is in the digital age. No matter what you want to learn, discover, buy, communicate...we can get that information through the touch of a keypad, within seconds. It’s sometimes easier than fishing out your manual copies to find out when that club night/production of Cats/Cliff Richard tour date is happening.

Personally, despite being part of a social media generation, I must admit I was a little ignorant of how useful social media can be. I have been resisting the ‘twittersphere’, anxious to avoid becoming lost in cyberspace, destined to walk into catastrophe, clutching my phone whilst checking Kim Kardashian’s latest antics or worse; snapping a selfie. 

                                                

Often I had thought the self-promotion shameful, and ugly. But life is what you make it, and not everyone uses social media in the same way. You make it work for you, and if I’m behind the times then I’m missing opportunities and ignoring a whole community. Our ancestors could hardly imagine a time when a whole world of information is at your fingertips, pretty much anytime, anywhere.

In fact, many have taken it upon themselves to make history more interesting by parodying historical figures’ imagined twitter accounts. for example, here’s a twitpic from’ Queen Victoria.' Some actually use real diary entries...again, another example from Queen Victoria.  

Jen assures us that it is possible to stand out from the crowd. Real talentwill shine out, and with a little time each day anyone has the potential to get their brand out there.

Practice makes perfect. The more you use social media, get to know trends, strike up networks, contribute, and stay abreast of what’s popular, it is a world of opportunity. It needn’t take up your life either, Jen says; various onsite timers such as tweetdeckcan be set to tweet a pre-recorded message at a certain time of day. However, to stay interesting you do have to be varied and invest some time to ensure the results you want.

These, amongst other tips and tricks, have convinced me that it’s all worthwhile. So, I am going to make an effort to be more active online, to feel the ground, gain familiarity. The future is happening, and I don’t want to miss it...I mean, how will I know if it’s snowing outside (?)

Watch this space for a new twitter account for Illuminate, which will chart our escapades throughout the year! You will get more of an idea of what a volunteer gets up to within Nottingham’s museums and galleries, the likes of which is more varied than you might think!

Creating Badges

We wanted to use a detail from each of our 5 key items to make into a fabric badge. The badge is to be used as a targeted marketing tool and we liked the idea that it was something you could wear, linking it to the garments and textiles on display.

We choose sections from each of the 5 key exhibition pieces and then voted in order to whittle down to our favourite 5. We just need to get quotes now and then we are go.

Finalising leaflet Designs

Another exciting decision making day, last week we all drew ideas for the inside of our flyer and fedback on the design so far for the front. Simon was in again this week to show us how he had changed our drawings into designs. Here are his mock ups of our drawings from last week.

We all agreed that we liked the black background and the collar, which Grace had designed. We felt the dragon robe looked a bit ghostly so we decided to lose that. The group also liked the cut out of the flower motif and we talked about ways it could be incorporated into the leaflet design. Megg had the idea of including a fact about an object we all agreed that we that worked well and should be included.

The front of the flyer is pretty much there, we had a couple of tweeks to make but everyone was happy with the overall look. Next week is our last session with Simon so we will be signing off the design work, making sure that all the sponsors and funders are happy with it and then we are ready to go to print.

Designing our leaflets

So in marketing we are still working towards creating our " unravelled" flyers and marketing materials. Simon came in with some drafts he had made based on our designs from last week. It was great to see them mocked up.

We had a lot of debate about which we liked. We all liked the design which used the robe as a background rather than one were there was only a section of the image. However we found it hard to decide on which shape we liked. We had a vote, which was tied, then discussed why people had chosen certain shapes, then anther vote, in which a few people changed their mind but we were still tied. After another discussion we eventually decided on the square shape as it was felt it was a bit different but to keep the image of the robe from the other design.

Next we looked at the "unravelled" logo. Anna had bought some images she liked and Shuang ( from exhibitions) had also mocked up some ideas. We all like the idea of the logo looking like thread or the text containing thread in them. Here are a couple that Simon had bought with him.

Lastly we started working on the badges. We wanted to use the 5 key items in the exhibition and create fabric badges using a section of the design. The idea was that this could be used as targeted marketing to specific groups. We looked at photos of the 5 main items and looked at which sections of them it might be good to use.

Where we are now... Marketing

The marketing team started work last week with Simon from Design Source. They started the session by looking at examples of leaflets and pulling out ones they liked, this could be because of its size, shape or particular things about it's design.

We were all drawn to the same few designs, a couple of square leaflets, made in thick card with a glossy finish and some traditional rectangular leaflets which folded into three. We liked the square flyer as it felt different and the rectangular as it fitted with the idea we had had about making the leaflet look like one of the robes. We also felt there was more space in the rectangular leaflet for information.

The next step was to have a go at designing, we had already chosen one of the exhibition pieces as our key item for the design. Simon showed us an example of a design he had done and how to illustrate on the paper where we thought text and images should go.

We set to work, playing with our ideas and designs.

After a set time we each presented our ideas, a couple of us had used the idea of a cut out in the design. Vicky had made a leaflet that opened like the robe and had a cut out around the neckline. Yafet choose a design with a number of folds and the rest of us created a variation on the square leaflet.

We couldn't decide on our favourite so Simon offered to mock them all up digitally to give us a better idea of how they would look. We also started thinking about the logo for the exhibition title "unravelled". Simon gave us the task of collecting ideas and examples of things we liked to bring with us next week.

All in all a very productive session and exciting to see our ideas start to come together.