MARKETING FINDING AIDS
ON SOCIAL MEDIA –
WHAT WORKED AND WHAT
DIDN’T WORK
Society of Southwest Archivists 2014
Introductions

Felicia Williamson, MLIS, CA
 Special
Collections Librarian
 fxt004@shsu.edu

Scott Vieira, MLIS
 Electronic
Resources Librarian
 svieira@shsu.edu

James Williamson, MLIS, CA
 Digital
Resources Librarian
 jwilliamson@shsu.edu
Why we undertook this research


We wanted our archive to be known, fast!
Introduced Archon in January 2012.
 Archon


is a searchable online finding aid database.
While it was indexed and appearing on search
engines, it was not getting a lot of attention.
Special Collection & University Archives did not
have a presence on the Library’s social media.
The kernel

The kernel of the idea came years earlier at SAA
in Chicago – when a presenter mentioned that
Google crawls social media more effectively than
a traditional library website!
“Corn Kernel” Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co
rn_kernel Accessed May 23,
2014.
Research Questions

Can social media sites be used to promote
archival finding aids?
 Does
this type of material operate well within the
online community?
 Which sites provide the best return on investment?
 Running these sites takes a lot of time – can we see
a clear advantage to running two or three sites
over their competition?
Social Media Uses in Archives

There is research touting the many advantages of
running social media platforms for outreach and
marketing purposes such as:
 Reaching
new audiences.
 Advertising events.
 Advertising departmental innovations, staff, policies, etc.

Though our social media did serve these purposes,
our research is approaching the question of whether
people will click through a social media post to
conduct archival research using a finding aid.
Methodology – Getting Started


Selected and started maintaining a blog and 9
social media sites.
Steps…
 Used

statistics on most popular sites.
 Included sites that had been promoted within the
archival community, e.g., Historypin and Pinterest.
 In both Flickr and LinkedIn we joined related historical
groups. (In some cases this would provide the benefit of
exposing our posts to more groups.)
Blog/Wordpress, Facebook, Flickr, Google+, Historypin,
LinkedIn, MySpace, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Twitter.
Methodology – Getting Started II
Methodology - Getting started part III

We selected two listservs with total membership of almost 1,000
people (although we didn’t measure overlap between the two
groups). The groups were selected based upon practical issues and
geography.





Archives and Archivists (631)
Arkansas History (306)
Archon finding aids content was selected for research phase based
upon appealing historic or visual interest.
A publishing schedule for the content was worked out for twelve
weeks—the duration of the research phase.
In the six months leading up to the research phase, we built an
audience for each site by posting content on a bi-weekly basis.


Drew from materials in Special Collections & SHSU Archives.
Selected content from collections with appealing historic or visual
interest.
Methodology – Technical Notes


We choose Google Analytics as our usage analysis tool.
Google Analytics Setup:
Learning Curve
 Create a Google Analytics Account.
 Added Archon to our account, which creates an unique
tracking ID for our Archon URL.
 Embed Google Analytics tracking code within Archon’s php
footer template code.

Methodology – Technical Notes (con’t)


Setup Google Campaign for tracking social media sites.
Create template URL for Google Campaign. This allowed us to track
sessions, page views, average duration of page views and number of
pages viewed across ten social media sites.
Sample URL:
https://archon.shsu.edu/index.php?utm_campaign=archon&utm_medium=refe
rral&utm_source=blog&p=collections%2Fcontrolcard&id=6

Setup pop-up survey using Survey Monkey on Archon home page.

Steps…


Design and tested survey in Survey Monkey.
Campus IT placed put together a pop-up with link to the survey. The pop-up
was triggered by landing on the SHSU Archon home page.
Questions included:



How did you find us?
Are you affiliated with Sam Houston State University?
What research interests do you have?
Methodology – Research Phase





Establish starting point for social media followers.
Prepared content for social media posts and listservs.
Primarily edited selection from biographical
information and scope and content note. Used
Google Campaign URL template and copy and
pasted.
During the research phase, publish one finding aid a
week for twelve weeks.
Posted once a week around 10am on Tuesday.
Email listserv posts to selected listservs.
Example of Sanford Bates Collection
Wordpress
Example of Sanford Bates Collection
Twitter
Example of the Map Collection
Flickr
Example of the Map Collection
Facebook
Myspace
Example of the Wild Dog Collection
Tumblr
Example of the Wild Dog Collection
Pinterest
Historypin
Example of Listserv Email
Findings-Explanation of Traffic

Search Engines


Traffic from search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo).
Referral

All traffic from outside websites that contain links to our finding
aids.




Listserv


Library website
Digital Collections website
Emails
Traffic from the two designated listservs that we posted to.
Social Media

Traffic from our campaign on designated social media sites.
Findings
Breakdown of Website Traffic
Search
Engines
21%
Listservs
36%
Referral
22%
Social Media
21%
Search Engines
Referral
Social Media
Listservs
Findings-# of Finding Aid Click-throughs
Breakdown of Social Media Site Click-throughs
30
30
25
25
20
18
16
15
10
10
5
3
5
1
1
0
0
BLOG
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
LINKEDIN
TUMBLR
GOOGLE +
MYSPACE
FLICKR
HISTORYPIN
PINTEREST
# of Click-through vs. Audience size
Click-through vs. Audience Size
12000
10865
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
743
30 104
25
18
364
555
16
10 79
LinkedIn
Tumblr
0
Blog
Facebook
Twitter
# of click-throughs
5
7
Google+
Size of the Audience
3
1
Myspace
1
Flickr
1
0
Historypin
0
89
Pinterest
Findings- Most clicked Finding Aids

Map collection (Map collection)
-Click-throughs:14
-Launch Date: December 3, 2013

Austin MacCormick (Criminal Justice)
-Click-throughs:10
-Launch Date: November 5, 2013

James V. Bennett Collection (Criminal Justice)
-Click-throughs: 9
-Launch Date: October 8, 2013

Ruiz vs. Estelle Collection (Criminal Justice)
-Click-throughs: 8
-Launch Date: November 12, 2013

John Warren Smith Papers (Research Collection)
-Click-throughs: 8
-Launch Date: November 26, 2013

Sanford Bates Collection (Criminal Justice)
-Click-throughs: 7
-Launch Date: October 15, 2013
Findings- Activity with Users

Map collection


Wild Dog


6 likes/re-blogs/etc.
John Warren Smith


12 likes/re-blogs/etc.
Sanford Bates


13 likes/re-blogs/etc.
WWI


42 likes/re-blogs/etc.
5 likes/re-blogs/etc.
3 others tied with 4
World War I Collection, 1909-2005, Sam Houston State University
Findings - # of Views vs Click-Throughs
Analysis of Map Collection
350
300
287
250
200
150
111
100
67
50
19
4
0
0
Facebook
Flickr
Google+
Views
1
0
Click Throughs
Historypin
Findings- Increase in Followers

The only sites that showed a substantial increase were:
Tumblr 84.8%
 Wordpress 65.3%


Wordpress content was heavily based on research
project.

Tumblr had other content unrelated to the project which
produced more re-blogs and likes.
Findings-Average Duration







History Pin - 00:08:46 (1 click-through)
Twitter - 00:02:28 (18 click-throughs)
LinkedIn - 00:02:06 (16 click-throughs)
Facebook - 00:02:05 (25 click-throughs)
Blog - 00:01:33 (30 click-throughs)
Tumblr - 00:01:25 (10 click-throughs)
Every other site had average duration of a few
seconds
Findings-Frequency of Use







Tuesday - 40 click-throughs
Wednesday -17 click-throughs
Thursday - 22 click-throughs
Friday -10 click-throughs
Saturday - 2 click-throughs
Sunday - 10 click-throughs
Monday - 8 click-throughs (everyone is bumming
around)
andria-spafford (2012). Monday Monkey lives for the weekend sir.
Andria-spafford.tumblr.com
http://andria-spafford.tumblr.com/post/22012871831
Findings-Platform


Only 9 out of the 109 click-throughs were viewed from mobile
devices.
Blog




Twitter



Windows (20 click-throughs)
Macintosh (5 click-throughs)
iOS (3 click-throughs)
Windows (16 click-throughs)
Macintosh (2 click-throughs)
Facebook



Linux (14 click-throughs)
Windows (10 click-throughs)
iOS (1 click-throughs)
Takeaways from the findings

Listservs produced the highest results.
 109
click-throughs to the website.
 74 click-throughs to the designated finding aid.

Sites like Flickr, Pinterest, and Historypin provide
high numbers of views but not an audience that
clicks through.
 Sites
like Tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter are middle of
the pack.

Blog was the winner in term of total number of
click-throughs, number of click-throughs/followers.
Takeaways from the findings


Those interested in clicking through to your finding
aids are going to be on laptops or pcs.
Interesting images may bring activity and new views
but it doesn’t necessarily correlate to users viewing
your finding aid.
Benefits of Social Media Effort

After a year of social media efforts, we have
already seen these benefits:
 People
on campus are increasingly aware of Special
Collections & SHSU Archives.
 More students contacting us for research help or to put
up displays (one of our learning objectives).
 This
is probably the most noticeable and drastic change!
 We
had a researcher come in who had read about
collections on the blog, but never seen Archon.

But is this the point? Does social media lead people
to finding aid based research?
Social Media and Google



Our social media campaigns have increased our
presence on Google.
We appear higher in the search results (first page,
every time) and often have multiple points of entry
– for instance we might have a direct hit for a
finding aid, a hit for the blog, a hit for Google+,
etc.
In a competitive research environment where most
researchers start with Google – and some never go
beyond Google – this is a compelling result.
Example of Google Search Results


Google
search for
“Sanford
Bates.”
We are 4
out of 10
results on
the first
page of
results.
Social Media Tips



Identify and remember your audience.
Make announcements on Listserv’s and even
LinkedIn, but aren’t sustainable as a way to
advertise finding aids.
Local community interest was high. When limited by
location, Huntsville, TX was the most likely point of
origin for a click-through.
Surprises



Google+ received next to no interest from
viewers.
It does however enhance Google search results,
bringing information about finding aids to the top
of the Google Search results page.
There are remaining questions about whether
Google+ is worth the effort and whether the
Google Search results were a result of Google+
specifically, or the over all social media effort.
More surprises
Historypin is touted in the literature and
Myspace is listed in the top ten of all social
media sites, but does not seem to garner much
attention from our audiences.
 Tumblr really surprised us by how much patrons
interacted with the content.

What’s next



We plan to maintain the Blog and Tumblr and to
contribute to the shared Library Facebook and
Twitter accounts.
We might continue Pinterest and Google+,
depending on research interest and staff time
constraints.
Pinterest and Flickr are viewed, but don’t generate
a lot of click-throughs. They are good for overall
archival promotion.
What’s best for finding aids?


If we were only going to use one or two platforms?
We’d rely on the blog and link it to Facebook. Then,
for kicks, we’d tweet about it. Easy as 1-2-3!
 after

a lot of effort, of course!
The lingering question is whether Google+ is truly
producing higher indexing results and is worth
continuing.
What has happen since 2013

Our Tumblr has blown
up!
 Our
Tumblr has been a
trending blog twice
 3 appearances on
Tumblr Radar

Went from 146 to
8,000 followers (as of
last week)!
What has happen since 2013

Subscribers to our blog
have increased as well!



From 172 subscribers to
5,600.
Twitter and Pinterest
followers have increased
at a faster rate than
during the research phase.
Cumulative effect, but how
would our project have
been different if we
launched the research
phase today?
Questions?

Email us anytime with questions
 Felicia
Williamson, MLIS, CA
 fxt004@shsu.edu
 936.294.3290
 Scott
Vieira, MLIS
 svieira@shsu.edu
 936.294.3743
 James
Williamson, MLIS, CA
 jwilliamson@shsu.edu
 936.294.3290