Unleash the viral potential of your collections on social media
The development of a successful social media presence to reach new and existing audiences is central to the outreach strategies’ of most memory institutions today, and if it is not, then we think it should be. That is why we will soon be publishing Disrupting History; a publication with the aim of enabling you to get the most out of your social media activities and engage the public more deeply with your collections.
.jpg)
1. Front cover of Disrupting History publication, Europeana / Retronaut (CC-BY-SA). 2. The 1930s nose jobs that sparked an online sensation with over 100,000 pageviews on Europeana, increasing interest in the Wellcome Library's collection by over 17,000%. J. Sheehan, Plastic Surgery of the Nose, Wellcome Library (CC-BY-NC).
With the recent surge in popularity of social media accounts such as @HistoryInPics and @History_Pics, there is a clear demand for the obscure and unseen past in digestible servings. As memory institutions we can learn from their approaches that are proving to engage millions, while at the same time do what we do best: add value and context around the collections we decide to surface on social media. These accounts are engaging millions of people with the quirky images that can be found in our museums, libraries and archives, but they are unashamedly stripped of context.
Through Disrupting History we will describe how working together with Retronaut - a website that showcases remarkable pictures from the the past - helped Europeana to exponentially increase the reach of partners’ collections on social media. It is easy to see that Retronaut has done a great job of lowering the threshold for users to engage with cultural collections from an enlightening perspective.
After partners’ collections experienced hundreds of thousands of extra pageviews, quirky reproductions and millions of impressions on social media, an adoptable model developed by Europeana and Retronaut to achieve this will be discussed in the Disrupting History publication. It will enable you to identify the pieces in your collection that have the ingredients to go viral and generate unprecedented interest in your institution and the collections that you hold.
Disrupting History is written by Neil Bates (Europeana) and Chris Wild (Retronaut) and will be published on August 21.
Subscribe here to be notified once the publication is available for download: