Website development

in the age of social

About usBrooke Carson-Ewart

Web ManagerAustralian Museum

Tom Voirol

PrincipalReading Room Australia

About the Australian Museum

Two roles

Flickr: Robboguy Flickr: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Vision

Inspire the exploration of

nature and cultures.

Previous online presence

Previous online presence40,000 pages

Manually maintained (Dreamweaver)

Duplicates, conflicting information

Guerrilla sites

Information, not interaction

Challenge:

Convincing the right

people

Tip

Don't just convince your senior

management, work with

everyone and at the same time

Choosing a CMS

Tip

Don't be too prescriptive on the

wireframes and spend too

much time and money on them.

Tip

Technology is changing

fast and needs to serve

users.

Building from scratch

Custom permissions matrix

Tip

Consider all three routes:

commercial, open source

and custom-build.

Tip

Don't assume any of these

is inherently cheaper than

the other.

Prototyping and

testing

Tip

Build a custom CMS around

the staff, their working

life, their language.

Tip

Testing will open your

eyes to your users'

thoughts and needs.

Tip

Put a lot of work into

building a thorough

prototype and testing it

How has it worked so

far? 

How has it worked so far?Empowered staff to participate

Out of 250 staff , 200 have active accounts

90 users have added assets

over 45 have added > 50 assets

28 users have added > 100 assets

9 users have added > 500 assets

The top user has added > 6000

Tip

Make the process

transparent and involve

staff from the very start.

Content Migration

Tip

Use a new CMS as an

opportunity to improve

your content

Being social

The social museum

Social media strategy

Listen

Tip

Don't delegate listening to

your marketing team, or

worse, an external agency.

Tip

Don't just hone in on mentions of

your organisation, find your topics

and listen to conversations around

them.

Engage

Tip

Once you start

engaging, do not stop

listening.

Tip

Don't use it like a

broadcaster, use it for

two-way conversation

Tip

Understand each platform,

its respective culture, its

rules of engagement.

You affect the

conversation

Tip

Don't be afraid of loose cannons.

You are judged on your reaction,

not their behaviour.

Tip

When you go out

there, continue the

conversation.

Drive 

Built social interaction

into the fabric of the

website

Anyone can…

Tag assets

Comment

Upload photos

Upload videos

Be recognised as an expert

…on

an article

a media release

an animal factsheet

a research project

an event

an image

a video

Tip

Once you start

driving, do n0t stop

engaging or listening.

Do not engage and drive at the same time if you…are just starting out in social media

have poor brand perception in the public

have not yet got rich content online to drive people to

do not have the buy-in of staff to participate

Our platform or theirs?

Our platform or

theirs?

Both!

Tip

Use 3rd party platforms

to invite people to your

own.

Process

New social media projectsdefine the key aims

define potential audiences

define how/where we will engage

define an exit strategy (e.g. Evil blog)

begin trials

measure and review

decide whether to continue

Tip

Don't be afraid to fail, but

prepare your management

to support you in failure.

How do you scale? 

Afraid of people using social

media to criticise you?

Don't be!

Tip

Tip: Allow users to take

load off you

Questions?