ICOMSocial Media Guidelines
for ICOM Committees© 2019 The International Council of Museums (ICOM)We realise that we may not cover all of your questions,in which case, do not hesitate to contact us for further
information: icom.network@icom.museum

INTRODUCTION517 he influence of social mediaTand the purpose of these guidelines

The Basics

533

Live tweeting
Facebook and Instagram Live

Types of social media platforms
Choose a platform

2
11

6
Creating a Campaign

39

Content calendar

3
Creating Content
Writing for social media
Visual content

427

Daily Management
Feed your account
Scheduling posts
Analytics

Social Media Policy
Identity
Content

SMART campaigns

17

Covering an Event

43

Glossary

47

ICOM Graphic Chart

THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE
PURPOSE OF THESE GUIDELINES
Communication is generally considered to be one of themost crucial aspects of any organisation, whether it is commercial, or not-for-profit like ICOM and its Committees.
However, communication is rarely the main priority, andthis paradox is even more evident in relation to digitalcommunication, and particularly to social media. Worldwide, there are around 3,4 billion active social media users(almost half of the entire population) and they increased by
320 million between September 2017 and October 2018.1
The influence of social media today cannot be underestimated.
There is a misconception that unless you are a social media
professional (or a millennial!) then creating and keeping
up with a social media strategy is too complicated. However, while it is true that a social media professional will
always be able to take statistics to the next level, a working   knowledge of the Internet is enough to carry out a simple
and effective social media strategy. This principle is one ofthe pillars of the ICOM Social Media Guidelines and Policy.
The second pillar is time-efficiency. ICOM is aware that, in
our Committees, social media is usually run by one person,
who in most cases is also in charge of many other things.
With this in mind, we have created guidelines that will allow you to manage platforms in a time-efficient way, while
also maximising their impact.

1. Brandwatch, 123 amazingsocial media statistics andfacts.

Finally, the third pillar of these guidelines is the ICOMSocial Media Policy. This short document outlines the minimum standard for the official social media accounts ofICOM and its Committees, to ensure that the values andreputation of the organisation are both promoted and protected.
In summary, the main objectives of this document are:ÆÆ To provide the basic tools to create effective social
media campaigns;
ÆÆ To help you create and use compelling content;
ÆÆ To share tips on how to monitor platforms in themost time-efficient ways;
ÆÆ To provide a common framework for the use ofsocial media for all ICOM Committees;

Budget-friendly
guidelines.
These guidelines recommend
several online tools – most ofwhich are free.

5

1

The
BasicsTYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS
The number of social media channels has grown exponentially over the past decade. While functionalities vary
greatly from one platform to another, they can be categorised by content into four main groups:
ÆÆ Blogs: i.e. LiveJournal, Blogger, Wordpress. Thesesites function as journals. Posts have tags* attached tothem that make it easier to search and categorise. Blogs
are ideal for long articles and reportsÆÆ Micro-blogs: i.e. Twitter, Tumblr. These are similar
to blogs, but posts are limited to a smaller number ofcharacters. They are ideal for short messages that need
to be shared immediately, such as: status updates,
breaking news, live events, and to quickly communicate with your audienceÆÆ Networking: i.e. Facebook, LinkedIn. These social media channels allow you to connect with others
through common interests and other categories such asage, location and career. They are ideal for building acommunity, and for medium size articles
ÆÆ Photo/Video: i.e. YouTube, Instagram. The maincontent shared on these social media channels is videos
and images. This type of platform is ideal if you have astrong visual image or a large photobank

CHOOSE A PLATFORM
In ICOM Committees, the social media platforms areusually run by just one person – and that is the best casescenario. In most cases , the person who is managing online presence for a Committee is also responsible for othercommunications and administrative tasks. Rather thancreating multiple accounts on many different social media
platforms, which are then abandoned as it becomes too difficult to maintain them, it is much more effective to choose
a select number to be active on. A strong presence on a few
platforms is better than a weak presence on many.
We suggest joining the following social media:
TWITTER
Every second, 6,000 messages are tweeted on Twitter. The
micro-blogging site has quickly become the main platform
for breaking news and real-time reporting. Despite the factthat the features are limited in comparison to Facebook

8*All words followedby an asterisk are
explained in theglossary p. 44 and areclickable links.

Keep your profiles safe
Instead of using an already existing
professional or personal email address,
it is good practice to create an email
address which is only used for yoursocial media profiles. This will
reduce the chances of your account being
hacked.

(no events, photo albums or video live streaming*), the immediacy of it makes it perfect for sharing news about yourCommittee and its field of work. On top of that, hashtags*
allow a discovery feature that makes it easier to reach newaudiences. Though it is generally more effective to post
only once a day on Facebook, on Twitter there is no limit –espe-cially if you are covering an event!
INSTAGRAM

Protect your data
In the light of recent scandals
concerning the poor management
and misuse of the data of social media
users in different platforms, werecommend that you thoroughly readthe terms and conditions and takethe necessary steps to protect yourdata in terms of privacy settings andpermissions.

Instagram is fourth in the top social media platforms in
the world, but if you are interested in targeting a younger
audience, you may want to take a look at the image-sharing
channel – 90% of its 150 million active users are under 35
years old. While you need a strong photobank in order tofeed an Instagram account, it can easily be built throughyour network and during the conferences that you organise. Like Facebook, we recommend keeping the posting
cadence* at one post per day max. Instagram has recently added a new feature: Instagram Stories. Stories can beused to live stream an event or cover it through pictures.
FACEBOOKWith 1.15 billion active users, Facebook is the biggest social
media channel. A page on Facebook can complement yourmini-site or website, allowing you to announce coming
conferences, promote calls for papers, create events, sharephoto albums, livestream events and respond to messages
from your members. Setting a Page creates a space where
your membership can interact. However, keep in mind
that since 2017 the Facebook algorithm* has changed, limiting the visibility of Pages on the news feed* of users.
This makes it more difficult to reach your audience andeven the users who have liked your Page. For this reason,
it may be more effective to maintain a basic presence on
Facebook, with no more than one post a day, and focus onother skyrocketing social media platforms.

Other social media platforms
Aside from these three platforms,
we encourage you to open accounts
in other big social media channels
like YouTube or LinkedIn within
the limits of your capacity to feed
them. If you have a strategic goal
related to a particular geographicalarea, you should also consider
checking what is the most usedsocial network. While Facebook isinternationally popular, in somecountries national platforms havemore users. For example,
V Kontakte in Russia and QZone inChina.

9102Creating a
campaign

SMART CAMPAIGNS
Once you have set up a social media account, you have tofeed it. Nothing creates a worse impression online thanan abandoned, forgotten account whose last tweet wasin 2015. Feeding an account may seem like a tremendous
amount of work and extremely time consuming, but thischapter provides tools and tips that will help you to run
your accounts effectively with minimal time investment.
The heart and soul of a social media strategy is the campaigns. They allow you to boost your following by reaching
beyond your core audience and giving visibility to yourCommittee in topics that are relevant to it. Before outlining
the different steps to create a campaign, it is important tostress the importance of making sure that all of your campaigns follow the SMART criteria:
ÆÆ Strategic: A campaign should always serve a strategic
goal of your Committee.
ÆÆ Measurable: It is easy to measure a campaign as social media platforms offer a tracking feature that allows
you to measure the impact of your campaign.
ÆÆ Achievable: Be aware of your limitations. There is nouse in trying to launch a campaign that would require asocial media team of five people to carry it out.
ÆÆ Relevant: Is your campaign relevant to your audience?
Is it relevant to your field of work?
ÆÆ Time-bound: This is probably the most importantcriteria of all. Social media is less about what you post
and more about when you post it. Finding the best timein the year, week and day to share your content is essential.

EXAMPLE
In 2017, we published on Twitter and Facebook a small infographic for International Women's Day with four facts about
women in the field of museums. It quickly became the mostshared and liked post we had ever published on social media.
Following this success, we prepared a SMART campaign for2018:ÆÆ Strategic: The ICOM Communications Department asked
the female Chairs of ICOM’s Committees to contribute to anarticle with inspiring quotes about women in museums. This
served the strategic goal of communicating about ICOM’s
actions to a larger audience, while involving our members.
ÆÆ Measurable: We used tracking tools allowed us to collectand analyse data before, during and after the campaign.
ÆÆ Achievable: We would have loved to use the quotes in amore visual way, like videos, but we were aware that International Women’s Day was too close to the launch of thecampaign for International Museum Day, so we needed amanageable workload to ensure the success of both.
ÆÆ Relevant: International Women’s Day 2018 came right after movements like #MeToo and Time’s Up took off worldwide. The field of heritage was not an exception, and ICOM
not joining the conversation would have been detrimental
to our relevance.
ÆÆ Time-bound: We decided that the campaign should run
for one week and programmed a similar amount of posts
related to it each day, which made it very easy to track.

13

CONTENT CALENDAR
The content calendar is the most important tool to manage
your social media accounts. It is also very easy to build.
Take a calendar and mark every important date or period
for your Committee: the annual meeting, the call for adhesions, the release of your periodic publications, International Museum Day, planned workshops, or an international
day related to the field of the Committee.
This method will give you an overview of the content you
will need to create that year, allowing you to anticipate theworkload, identify quiet periods and establish a base forthe following years.

International Days
International daysprovide an established framework for you topromote the actions of your Committee. On social media, posts on
a particular theme become trending topics* on Internationaldays, particularly those which use the hashtags associated withthe day. For this reason, we strongly encourage you to build somecampaigns around relevant International Days.

Once you create your content calendar for the first time,
you will have a solid base of content to work with the following year. For permanent campaigns, we suggest thatyou create posts which can stand the test of time, withinformation that will not drastically change in the upcoming years. You can either repost these evergreen posts,
as they are, or slightly modify them every year. A word ofcaution, repeating content works differently depending on
the social platform you are using: on Twitter this practiceeasily goes unnoticed but on Facebook and Instagram yourfollowers will notice almost immediately (and, of course,
some will point it out).

14

EXAMPLEJANUARYFEBRUARY

MARCH

Launch of the
Yemen Red List

APRIL

#WomenInMuseums

International Museum Day
MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST
Indigenous
People's Day

ICOM
Annual Meeting

ICOM Committees Conferences
SEPTEMBEROCTOBERNOVEMBER

DECEMBERICOM Committees Conferences
ICOM Code of Ethics promotion
ICOM Red Lists promotion

This is roughly the format of the content calendar of theICOM Communications Department for 2018. From February to May, we focused on International Museum Day,
although we also prepared a campaign for International Women’s Day in March.
The mix of long-term and short-term campaigns allows apermanent and varied flow of content in the feeds of our social media. One of the things we identified while we werepreparing our content calendar was that there was a very
quiet period between October and December.
To cover it, we decided to create two campaigns to promote
the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums and the ICOM Red
Lists. When building your own content calendar, be sure to
identify these kind of periods and take it as a blank page topromote different actions of your Committee.

15

16

3
Creating
content

WRITING FOR SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media has its own writing style, which is heavily
influenced by the different length limitations of the platforms. The text also needs to be particularly attractive tostand out on platforms saturated with thousands of messages and calls for action. These two criteria might makewriting for social media seem hard at first, but it can help
to develop more creative thinking and it gets easier withpractice. In this chapter, we will look at these limitations
and give you tips to find creative solutions to them.
LENGTHAs a general rule, short posts do better on social media than longer ones. The space limit on Facebook is
60,000 words, but that doesn’t mean you should fillthem up. If you have ever used Twitter, you know how
much of a problem length used to be. Happily, in 2017,
the 140 characters limit was extended to 280. Here aresome tips on how to fit in all the information you want
to share:ÆÆ Write concise messages and try to use short synonyms for long words;
ÆÆ Use emojis! For example, to share information ona conference, use emoticons for the words “place”,“date” or “time” to save space;ÆÆ Check the spaces - you might have accidentally
added additional ones;
ÆÆ Sacrifice punctuation, but only when it doesn’t
affect the legibility of a sentence;
On Instagram, the length limit of a caption is 2.200 characters, which is cut off with an ellipsis […] after threelines. For this reason, you should try to write a compelling first line to encourage your followers to click on the“read more” bottom.
EDITING
When writing for social media, it is important to keep
the message as concise and simple as possible. Thismeans that you should avoid using the passive voice
and words or expressions that do not add any important information such as ‘actually’ or ‘in fact’. A goodtool to ensure that your publications are easily legibleis the Hemingway Editor. This free online application
can help you to identify the parts of your text that are
hard to read and it also provides alternatives to complex
words or expressions.

18

Tone
The good thing about social media
is that it allows your Committee
to use a more relaxed tone thatcan complement the very serious,
institutional one of its website.
For example, we usually opt
for quite a formal tone, but weswitch to a playful one when
responding to other users during
the celebration of #AskACurator
day in 2018. To determine thelimits of the relaxation of tone,
we make sure that our content
meets the following standards:
it is respectful, relevant andresponsible. For more informationon this, take a look at our Social
Media Policy on page 40.

Some other tips to keep in mind when writing for social
media are:ÆÆ Punctuation!?: Asking questions will encourage
your followers to respond with comments and replies. On Facebook, adding exclamation marks will
increase the visibility of your post, as the algorithm
considers it a positive trait.
ÆÆ It is all about ‘you’: Do not hesitate to directly callyour followers to action by using the words ‘you’ torefer to them and ‘we’ to refer to your Committee andits members. If your posts are always written in thethird person, they will sound impersonal, as if you
were talking about something that does not concern
your followers or your Committee.
ÆÆ Use (the right) emojis: Today , emoticons arenearly everywhere. A study carried out by Hubspot
showed that posts with emojis perform much better
than those without, gathering up to 57% more likes
and 33% more comments and shares. You can use
emojis creatively to gain space and to make your post
visually pleasing. Emojis do not have to be limited to
informal publications – they can also be helpful inserious and formal communications, as long as you
use appropriate ones.

Emojis used to gain space

Using emojis in a formal context
19

HASHTAGS
Hashtags, used mainly on Twitter and Instagram, are critical to ensuring that your content is easily identifiable
and that it reaches the right audience. When deciding touse hashtags in a post, you should ask yourself: Who do I
want to reach, a new audience or my own followers? If theanswer is a new audience, then go ahead and use hashtags.
This will allow users who do not follow you to find yourcontent through the hashtag.
For example, if you are organising a conference on sustainable development and museums, you can add the hashtag#SustainableDevelopment to reach museum professionals
who are not ICOM members yet, but who are potentiallyinterested in the topic of your conference. Hashtags canvery useful for promoting events. They can be used to follow information from the organiser and can help to centralise the discussion of participants. For this reason, we
encourage you to create hashtags for your conferences andworkshops. The simpler the better – for example, the hashtag for the 25th General Conference of ICOM in Kyoto is#ICOMKyoto2019 and the hashtag for International Museum Day 2019 was #IMD2019.
If you would like to target your own followers, for example
in the case of calling for membership fees, hashtags will
not be of much use, so avoid including them. In any case,refrain from using too many: they may look distracting andhide the call for action.
LINKS
Sharing links can be tricky, as it works differently on everysocial media channel. When you share a link to a news article on Twitter or Facebook, you will see a preview appear,
which includes the headline. To avoid repeating the same
information, you can either rewrite it or use a quote fromthe article (making sure to use quotation marks).
On Facebook, you will see that once this preview is appears,
the link will disappear from the text of the publication,
which helps to give your post a sleek look. On Twitter, thelink remains. If the link is too long, the platform will automatically shorten it and replace the end with three dots.
This is fine, but you can improve the way your tweets lookby using a link shortener. Buffer, which is an app that wewill discuss on the Daily Management chapter, does thisautomatically. Another good option is bitly.com.

20

Accessible hashtags
When using hashtags on Twitter,
make sure to start every wordwith a capital letter, especially
if the hashtag is located in the
middle of a sentence. This willallow reading apps for visually
impaired people to accurately readyour tweet. So, instead of writing“Happy #indigenouspeoplesday!”,
you should write “Happy#IndigenousPeoplesDay!”.

You cannot add links on Instagram captions, but there is a
way around this. You can put the link on your profile, making it appear at the end of your bio, and finish the caption
with the sentence “link on bio”. This is a common practiceand Instagram users will immediately recognise that thelink on your profile corresponds to the caption of the last
picture that you posted.
TAGGING
Tagging the right accounts on your posts makes a huge
difference to their performance. On Facebook, we suggestthat you keep it simple: if the organisations that you mention in a post have a Facebook page, tag them directly inthe text. This will notify them about your post and they will
likely share it with their audience.
On Twitter, you can do the same thing when a handle* iseasy to identify. For example, in the tweet “Download thenew publication by @ICOMCostume”, it is easy to guessthat the account belongs to ICOM Costume. However, in
this example “We are at the @XYZM* for the #ICOM- *fictional example
COL2019 conference”, we do not know who the handler isunless we visit their account. To tag these handles without
risking the readability of your tweets, there are two solutions: if you have enough space, mention the full name of
the account and tag them at the end of the tweet; if not, tagthem on the picture accompanying the tweet.
This second solution is also useful to tag accounts that are
not directly mentioned in the content of the tweet but thatmight be interested in sharing it. For example, you can
tweet a picture and a quote from the keynote speech of yourannual meeting and tag on the picture the co-organisers orsponsors of the conference, the museum where it is taking
place, or even the museum where the speaker works. This
will multiply the chances of your tweet being shared. The
same process can be applied when tagging on Instagram.

21

VISUAL CONTENT
Visual content is, by far, the most popular content acrossall social media channels. According to Buffer, tweets withimages receive 150% more retweets, and Buzzsumo determined that Facebook posts with images gather 2.3 times
more engagement than those without. If these reasons are
not enough to convince you of the critical importance of visual content, eye tracking studies2 show that Internet users
focus much more on information accompanied by images.
When the images are relevant, for example in the case of
infographics or pictures with quotes, readers spend moretime looking at the images than they do reading the text ofthe post.
In this chapter, we will show some examples of compelling
visual content and present tools to create it.

QUOTE CARDS
Quote cards present quotes in a visual manner. It’s an ideal
way of sharing excerpts from speeches and publications or
to present speakers invited to your conference. A great online tool, which is very easy to use is Canva. This tool allows
you choose from a wide selection of image formats, froman Instagram photograph to a Twitter post. Another good
feature is that you can also upload your own icons, such as
your logo.

22

2. Nielsen Normal GroupINFOGRAPHICS
Infographics are the best way to present complex information or statistics. In order to create one, follow these steps:
ÆÆ Identify the main aim: In the case of the infographic
below, the aim was to present our statistics in an attractive way for the general public.
ÆÆ Research: Find all the data you need to present. If it
is from a third party, do not forget to credit the source.
You can do this with a banner at the bottom of the infographic.
ÆÆ Display: Arrange the information in an attractive way,highlighting key numbers and words and using different fonts and icons.
There are many free, online sites you can use to create
beautiful and compelling infographics. At the ICOM Communications department, we use Piktochart or Canva.

Third party images
Using royalty free images fromphotobanks is an easy way ofcomplementing your own photographic
archive. We recommend Pixabay,
Pexels and Unsplash - they all have alarge selection of images that can be
downloaded for free. Canva also has afree photobank with images, cartoonsand icons that you can use to create
your posts.

Statistics from
#WomenInMuseums
2018

23

EXAMPLE

Statistics from #IMD201824

EXAMPLE

Infographic to promote ICOM's Red Lists

25

26

4
Daily
management

Creating content for a campaign requires preparation inadvance. As well as that, posting the content manuallywould require a full-time person dedicated to managing
your social media accounts, as inconsistency or prolonged
silences are quite noticeable to your audience. This chapter
will help you to efficiently monitor the day-to-day management of your social media channels to keep your feed
active, schedule posts and interpret your analytics.

FEED YOUR ACCOUNT
Feeding an account is more difficult on some platforms
than others. While the cadence of posting on Facebook andInstagram is lower and manageable, keeping an active feedon Twitter is trickier, as the ideal number of posts per day
would be around four. Since the content of the campaigns
is not enough to cover this, here are some tips to find relevant third-party content:
ÆÆ Press clipping: You can post news that are relevantto the field of action of your Committee. You can either
set up alerts through Google News to receive a selection
each day, or create a favourites list on your browser
with media platforms that you can check daily for interesting news. When sharing news articles, remember totag the media outlet in your tweet.
ÆÆ Share: To keep an eye on posts shared by ICOM’s official accounts and all the other Committees, there is anaccount list where you can see all the tweets by ICOM’s
Committees.
SCHEDULING POSTS
Scheduling posts allows you to prepare all the content
you will post in advance, saving you a lot of precious time.
Scheduling is a very common practice — every time you see
a social media post from a big organisation or a brand, it islikely that it is a scheduled post.
In the Communications Department at ICOM, we use
Buffer. With Buffer’s basic free plan you can connect tothree social media accounts and schedule up to 10 posts
per day. Moreover, it has a Chrome extension that allows
you to directly “buffer” any webpage. You can find a fulltutorial of Buffer here.

28

Automatic reply messages
If it is not possible for you tomonitor all the messages you
receive on Facebook, there is
an automatic reply feature thatcan save you a lot of time. Just
write a generic message with alink to the contact form on yourwebsite.

TAILORING POSTS
When you schedule posts on Buffer, you will see that you
can auto-post the content through all the social media
platforms connected to your account. This is a feature thatsaves you time when you want to share the same link or
image in several platforms, as it allows you to work with anexisting base.
However, different social media platforms have different
writing styles and limitations. For this reason, it is important to tailor the posts
We recommend that you start by drafting a longer text for
Facebook. You can then use it as a base for Instagram, adding some hashtags and the phrase “Link on bio”. Finally,
shorten it to fit Twitter’s 240 character limit.

Multilingual posts
Aside from scheduling posts, theFacebook Pages Publishing Tools allows
you to create multilingual posts, afeature that Buffer does not have. When
this feature is activated, Facebook will
ask you if you want to add translations.
When selecting an additional language,
the platform will suggest a translationthat you can later modify. This way,users will see the post according to theirdefault language and the translations
available. Find out how to activate thisfeature here.

29

EXAMPLE
For the promotion of Cai Guo-Qiang, keynote speaker at ICOM Kyoto 2019, we drafted the Facebook post first. Since we wanted
to publish it in three languages, we chose toschedule it with the Facebook Pages Publishing Tools instead of Buffer. As you can see,
the text includes a quote as well as some additional information on the event, the early
bird offer and the credits for the images.
We used the longer text as a base for our Instagram and Twitter posts, which we scheduled
at the same time via Buffer. On Instagram we
kept almost the same text but we shortened it
a bit in order to be able to publish the Spanish
and French versions below. We also added
the hashtag #ICOMKyoto2019 and added“Link on bio” so our followers would know
where to find all the additional information.
To save space, we included the image credits
as a comment just after publishing them.
Finally, we reduced the text to the maximum
for Twitter, leaving only the most essential
information. We then scheduled the same
tweet in Spanish and French, and anotherfinal tweet with the image credits.
We scheduled the posts two days before theofficial announcement. This gave us enoughtime to work on them without much pressure, it also allowed us to focus on other urgent tasks on the announcement day.

30

ANALYTICS
Keeping an eye on your analytics is not only useful to check
whether your strategy is working. They can also work as leverage when negotiating co-communication partnerships,
for example, when organising a joint conference with a bigger institution.
IMPRESSIONS VS REACH
You will see these two terms frequently used in all the integrated analytics tools of social media platforms. The difference between them is as subtle, as it is important.
ÆÆ Reach is the number of users that have seen your post.
This is the main metric used by Facebook.
ÆÆ Impressions are the number of times that your post
has been seen. The same user might see your post several times, this means that the number of impressions
are usually higher than the total reach. It is the main
metric that you will find on Twitter Analytics. On Instagram Insights, under the tab Activity, it is possible tosee both.
ENGAGEMENT
Aside from checking how many followers you have on Twitter and Instagram, and the likes on your Facebook Page,
take a look at your engagement figures. This umbrella term
comprises all the actions that can be taken on a post suchas likes, comments, shares or link clicks. It is generally anindicator of the quality and effectiveness of the content
posted, as it draws users into taking action .
There are many ways to calculate your engagement:ÆÆ Twitter: On the Analytics tab, you will find an engagement rate*, which registers how many users that
saw your post engaged with it in some way , either byretweeting it, clicking on the links or just on the image.
ÆÆ Facebook: The Facebook Insights page also measures
the total number of engagement actions that was taken
on each of your posts. If you want to compare the engagement rate on Facebook with the rate on Twitter, divide the total number of actions by the reach of your post.
ÆÆ Instagram: Instagram’s analytics are a bit less sophisticated than the ones you will find on Twitter and Facebook. On this platform, the engagement (called “Interactions” in the app) measured is limited to the numberof profile visits, website clicks and emails. To calculate
the rate, use the same formula as for Facebook.

Big does not equal good
You might be surprised that someaccounts with a big following havevery little engagement. This indicatesthat either the content is low quality,or that a large section of their audience
is not active or even real - a very low
engagement rate is often a sign offake followers that may have beenpurchased. If you have a smaller
following but a higher engagement
rate, you can enter negotiations with astronger position.

31

32

5
Covering
an event

A key element of social media is immediacy. Social media
platforms have made it possible to broadcast and cover
events from all over the world in real time, something that
until very recently was limited to TV and radio stations.
For an international organisation like ICOM, live coverage
allows us to bridge the gap between members who can attend our conferences and training, and those who cannot.
Despite seeming like a logistical nightmare, covering a live
event is easier than it appears. There are many apps andplatforms that can be used for broadcasting, such as Periscope or YouTube Live, but in this chapter we will focus on
three: Live tweeting, Facebook Live and Instagram Live.

LIVE TWEETING
Covering a live event on Twitter is very different from otherplatforms, mainly because it focusses more on the text
rather than images. Of the three methods, it is the easiest
from a technical point of view: all you need is a smartphoneor a computer and a WiFi connection. However, it requires
the most work from the person doing the live coverage, as
they need to constantly feed the live tweet manually withwritten information. To make it both compelling and aseasy as possible, we recommend the following:ÆÆ Create a hashtag: We have already seen the importance of creating an official hashtag for your conference.
It will not only make your live tweet much easier to findand identify, but it will also save you space and time,
as you will not have to write the full name of the conference every time you mention it. Another advantage of
having a hashtag is that it will encourage participants
to tweet about the conference.
ÆÆ Draft tweets in advance: Use the information on theevent programme to prepare some tweets in advance,such as for example to announce the live tweet or to
introduce speakers. You can save them as drafts andpost them, when required. Before posting them, makesure they are up to date with the latest version of the
programme.
ÆÆ Have a list of handles ready: You can use the event
programme to find the speakers’ Twitter handles andprepare a list. This will save you time when tagging
them.
ÆÆ Add photographs: To add a sense of immediacy andmake your audience feel like they are there, you cantake pictures and add them to the tweets you have drafted before posting them. Twitter is a text-based social
platform, but people love to see things, so do not hesitate to post images of anything interesting: the venue,
the free gifts, the participants…
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ÆÆ Tweet quotes: Tweeting quotes also adds a sense of
immediacy and gives your audience information that
otherwise would only be available for those attending
the conference. This takes the most effort when live
tweeting, because you have to listen carefully to thepresentations in order to find quotes that would be interesting to share. Sometimes it is possible to select anddraft tweet quotes in advance, if you have access to the
speeches that will be given.

Keep the Moment Alive!
Twitter has a feature called Twitter Moments that allows you
to curate a collection of tweets. After covering an event, you cancreate a Twitter Moment and gather all the tweets from yourlive stream event, as well as tweets from participants, so youraudience can easily find it any time.

LIVE TWEETING TWEET TEMPLATESICOM Committee @icomcommittee
Today we are live tweeting from (name of the venue) for the (nameof the conference)! Stay tuned to hear all about the speakers,
workshops and more#YourHashtag
ICOM Committee @icomcommittee
We open the conference with remarks from (names of the
speakers for the opening remarks). #YourHashtag
ICOM Committee @icomcommittee(Name of the speaker) delivers the keynote speech of the day witha presentation on (name of keynote speech). #YourHashtag
ICOM Committee @icomcommittee(Name of the speaker) kicks-off the (name of the session/panel/
conference) with a presentation on (name of the presentation).
#YourHashtag

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FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM LIVEIn mid-2018, Facebook reached 3.5 billion broadcasts on
its platform since the live streaming function was launchedin 2016, and at least 2 billion users have watched one.3 Instagram Live does not have the same amount of viewers fornow, but the feature is becoming widely popular.
For the first time in 2018, some sessions of the Annual
Meetings of ICOM in Paris were broadcast live via Facebook. The decision to transmit these sessions in realtime came from ICOM’s priority to boost accessibility
and transparency for its members, as well as finding new
ways of connecting with our international, ever-growing
membership. The results were spectacular: in total, morethan 2,000 people watched the live stream – eight times
the capacity of the conference room!
For both Facebook and Instagram, live broadcasts havesignificant advantages in terms of reaching your audienceand engaging with it:ÆÆ Most of your followers (on Instagram, all of them) will
be notified of the live stream if they have activated push
notifications;ÆÆ They will be able to send you comments and questions
in real time, allowing you to meaningfully interact withthem during the session;36

3. Source: Engadget, “Nearly
two billion people havewatched Facebook Livebroadcasts”, June 4th, 2018

Here is a list of the equipment needed to broadcast a conference via Facebook or Instagram Live:ÆÆ A solid WiFi connection: unless you want to burnthrough your data and incur in additional charges fromyour mobile carrier, make sure you have a strong andstable WiFi connection;
ÆÆ A tripod for the phone: this can be a specific tripod forsmartphones or a camera tripod with a smartphone tripod mount (tip: for Facebook, film horizontally!);ÆÆ Good lighting: you do not need professional lighting tocreate a decent image. Just take the available lighting
into account when choosing the location of the tripod.
We recommend natural light and to avoid backlighting;ÆÆ A microphone: if you are broadcasting from a large
room, far away from the speakers, having a microphone is ideal. Some conference centres have the technical equipment needed for your phone to directly pickup the sound from the microphones of the speakers.
However, if you do not want to depend on third parties
for the availability of these tools, there are external microphones for smartphones for every budget;ÆÆ External battery: if you plan to broadcast for a longtime, keep an external battery to hand.

Test pages and profiles
A good technique when getting
started in Facebook andInstagram Live streaming is tocreate a secret Facebook page orInstagram profile where you canplay around with the feature anddo some tests.

Additionally, you will need someone to assist you. While itis possible for one person to manage the broadcast, at least
one other person is needed to watch the live stream andmonitor the comments, respond to questions, and alert youof any technical problems related to the audio or image.
When finishing a broadcast on these two platforms, ascreen with the analytics of the session will be displayed.
Be sure to take a screenshot of this information, as it is notpossible to save the number of viewers who tuned in, eventhough it is possible to save the video after the broadcast.

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6

SocialMedia
PolicyThe social media profiles of ICOM and its Committees are a
crucial tool to project our organisation’s values, image andmissions to a greater audience. For this reason, we have developed the ICOM social media policy with the objectivesof promoting, reflecting and protecting ICOM’s brand. The
policy is divided into two parts; the identity of ICOM andthe content shared on the platform. The policy relates to
ICOM’s own official accounts and those of the National andInternational Committees, Regional Alliances, Standing
Committees and Working Groups.

IDENTITYUSERNAMESFor National Committees: handles should include “ICOM”
and the name of the country,□ @UK_ICOM
X @britishmuseums
For International Committees: handles should include“ICOM” and the acronym of the Committee,□ @ICOMCostume
X @museumsofcostumeDESCRIPTIONS
The profile description should clearly state the difference
between ICOM and the Committee. This is especially important for National Committees, as the distinction is often not made by national media outlets.
 French National Committee of @IcomOfficiel, an international organisation of museums and museum
professionals.
X Official account of ICOM in French.
LOGO USE
Please follow the ICOM Graphic Chart and remember not
to use the social media logos in other contexts (gift bags,
conference materials).

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The examples are fictional
except for the ones on goodpractices.

CONTENT
All content published by all ICOM accounts must fulfil thethree criteria ‘Three Rs’ of ICOM’s Social Media Policy:
RESPECTFUL◦◦ No insults or offensive language should be used.
◦◦ Discussions with other social media users with divergent opinions must be carried out in a respectful manner.

Be our best ambassadors!
We also encourage the Chairsof National and International
Committees and Regional
Alliances, as well as the membersof ICOM’s Executive Board, tovoluntarily apply this criteria
to their social media use only IF
their profiles are accessible to thegeneral public AND their ICOM
affiliation is publicly stated.

If either of these two conditions are breached:◦◦ A public apology must be issued to the person/organisation concerned on the relevant social media platform.
◦◦ The ICOM official account will not promote the activities of the Committee on social media until appropriate
action is taken.
RELEVANT◦◦ Committees should refrain from sharing content that is
not related to museums and cultural heritage, such as,
for example, a viral music video.
RESPONSIBLE◦◦ ICOM Committees are encouraged to support policies
that advance the protection and promotion of culturaland natural heritage. However, as non-governmentalorganisations, they should not endorse political parties, political figures or candidates for election.
□ “It is necessary for governments to provide adequate
public funding for museums.”
X “Ms Maria Politika has a great program for the upcoming elections. Vote for her!”◦◦ C ommittees should not comment on controversial policies, which do not relate to the field of museums andcultural heritage unless the aforementioned policies
would be detrimental to the functioning of the Committee or constitute a violation of human rights.
ICOM US spoke out against the travel ban policy as“the free movement of museum professionals is vital to ensure that intercultural and interdisciplinary
meetings and cooperation continue to be possible”.
XA Committee advocates for a stronger tax policy
against tech giants.

Don’t feed the troll!
Trolls are social media users
hidden behind anonymous or fakechannels whose main objective
is to spread misinformation andpolarise opinions. Their presence isparticularly strong in the aftermathof a major controversy or tragedy.
This might not seem like it should
concern ICOM, but the organisation
has been a target for trolls in thepast. In these situations, we advise
you to consult traditional media
outlets before commenting or
sharing information on any urgent
issue. And, of course, don’t feed
the troll: if they try to engage withyou, don’t reply and report them toTwitter. You can also read about
how to spot fake news here.

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42

The definitions below are courtesy of Hubspot, unlessmarked with *.
ALGORITHM A set of formulas developed for a computer to perform a certain function.
This is important in the social media
sphere as the algorithms that sites like
Facebook and Google use are critical fordeveloping content promotion strategies.
CADENCE* The content sharing frequency.
ENGAGEMENT A popular social media metric used to
RATE describe the amount of interaction –likes, shares, comments – a piece ofcontent receives.
HANDLE A username on Twitter, begins with the‘@’ sign.
HASHTAG A tag used on a variety of social networks
as a way to annotate a message. A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a“#" (i.e. #InboundMarketing). Social
networks use hashtags to categorize information and make it easily searchable
for users.
LIVE The act of delivering content over the
STREAMING internet in real-time.
NEWS FEED On Facebook, the News Feed is the
homepage of users' accounts where
they can see all the latest updates fromtheir friends. The news feed on Twitteris called Timeline.
TAG Tagging is a social media feature commonly used on Facebook and Instagramthat allows users to create a link back to
the profile of the person shown in the
picture or targeted by the update.
TRENDING The most talked about topics and hashTOPIC tags on a social media network, they
commonly appear on networks like
Twitter and Facebook and serve as clickable links in which users can either
click through to join the conversation or
simply browse the related content.
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