For as long as we’ve had the Brooklyn Museum Twitter account, I’ve been the sole voice behind it, but today we are trying something new. Ben Hedrington, the developer behind ConnectTweet, has given us the go ahead to alpha test the app that powers the Best Buy Twelpforce, a campaign I’ve long been a fan of.
ConnectTweet acts as a relay and allows allows us to connect staff twitter accounts directly to the main Brooklyn Museum account. Basically, approved accounts can tweet with a hashtag and then that tweet will relay to @brooklynmuseum and show up via @BK_staffer. There are several reasons why I think these changes are significant:
Keep it personal. Given our community-minded mission, I’ve long been an advocate of figuring out how to get individual voices online, especially in social media settings. ConnectTweet goes many steps beyond simple bio identification and background images (things people don’t see often enough) or initials after tweets (which can be hard to decipher). In this case, followers can click on the byline and learn more about each person.
Foster internal advocates. By far, the best advocates for our programs are the people actually working behind the scenes to make them happen. ConnectTweet allows us to put those voices out there. Now, followers can hear from a variety of voices about the programs they are working on. To start, we’ve got folks in tech, digital imaging, exhibitions and membership with more on the way.
Sustainability. I can’t tell you how many vacations I’ve tweeted through. It got to the point on a recent trip to New Zealand, where the time zone changes alone were difficult, but timing announcements between plane changes bordered on ridiculous. I’ve been thinking a lot about sustainability and ConnectTweet allows us to share the load without it being disingenuous to our followers. For me, this is a bit of a happy relief.
To get started, we’ve got some familiar faces starting to relay on the account: @shell7, @dwythe, @nkawatra, @jennybantz. As we continue to test, we’ll introduce more voices as we go.
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Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum
This sort of system would open up all sorts of possibilities for temporary exhibitions / projects. Great blog, thanks.
Hi Emily,
I totally agree – there’s so much that can be done here. I think we’ve got some challenges ahead with coordination, but overall I’m pretty happy with it so far. The one problem we keep having is we have to remember to reduce the character limit to include “via @username” so our tweets don’t get cut off!
This is fantastic! I’ve been experimenting with having multiple people on our account, but this would make it even easier, and much more personal – which, like you said, makes the difference. Thanks for spreading the word about it
(and oooh, for temporary exhibits…)