Crossing Industries

Above: ROM Selfie.
Photo credit: Lexi Buchanan
shares, likes, and comments. The event that the
video was created to promote, a Bugs & Beer night,
had 140% attendance.
A key BuzzFeed concept is that they share popular
content rather than making content popular. This
is an idea Ryan Dodge, Digital Engagement Coordinator
for the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in
Toronto can get behind. Dodge explains, “…we tried
to connect our collections, research, and exhibitions
to things that were happening in the news. Some
call it newsjacking but what it does is insert our
content into a larger conversation and build greater
awareness about the museum.” This decision
came after his social media team grew and Dodge
was able to step back and look at the ROM’s content
strategy. He found that they were heavy on
museum marketing messages and didn’t have high
levels of engagement. That has changed with this
new approach.
How does the ROM newsjack? One example is their
guide for how to take selfies in the museum. “The
selfie guide came out the same week that the Russian
Safe selfie guide did, ours on Friday and the
Russian one on Monday. We were able to take something
that was talked about in the news and put a
museum lens on it and turn it around quickly.” The
ROM made the mainstream news with this story.
The key is moving quickly and making it relevant
to the museum.
The Beaty contributes to the popular Vancouver
is Awesome blog. One of the most successful posts
was one I wrote like a BuzzFeed list – “5 Reasons
to Eat Insects.” I’ve just written “5 Ways to Tell if
you are a Fungophobe” to promote an Instagram
campaign and Mushroom Walk. The key is to have a
goal in mind – what am I trying to gain from a popular
post? It’s like carrot cake – hiding vegetables
in a sugary treat. At the Beaty we use this method
to drive traffic to our website, blog, social media,
and increase awareness of an event or campaign.
And it works.
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Right: Carrot Cake.
Photo Credit: Flickr
user Ruth Hartnup