The Archives and Records Association, Scotland’s social media campaigns: #ArchiveZ and Instagram

I think it is safe to say that this year is a little different than most, no matter what part of the archives and record keeping sector we work in. With everything going on in the world just now, so many of our colleagues working from home, and being away from our collections, social media has been a great way to stay connected to one another, and to feel connected to our beloved archives, even from a distance.

We’re now 12 weeks into the 2020 #ArchiveZ ARAS campaign, which we are running on all three of our social media accounts – Twitter, Facebook, and our latest addition, Instagram. With a new letter of the alphabet as the ‘theme’ each week, the campaign is more relaxed than some of our other campaigns, where archivists and repositories can contribute as much or as little as they like and can include almost anything you can think of from your collections, so long as they match the weekly theme – no matter how tenuous!

Instagram: the latest addition to the ARAS social media family

We set up the ARAS Instagram account in 2019, with two aims: the first was to expand our social media engagement with ARA Scotland members and the wider public; the second was to create a space to amplify the voices and contents of our Scottish collections, giving the opportunity for institutions which already have a social media presence, as well as those who are just beginning to explore the possibilities that Instagram provides. Instagram is quickly becoming a key platform for reaching a younger demographic worldwide, and as it is image-focused, creates an ideal space for allowing the public to gain an insight into life within the archive, highlighting the repositories, archivists, special projects, and the collections themselves in a new way.

The first content on the Instagram account was during last year’s #Archive30, showing items from the collections from the ARAS committee members that fit the daily themes, as a way to test the waters for the new platform. In June, we hosted our first Scottish Archive Highlight, sharing the collections of the University of Dundee archives. Since then, in addition to posts relating to ARAS events, social media campaigns, and providing information to our followers, we have been hosting monthly highlights of different Scottish archives from university, business, and local authority archives. As every archive is entirely unique, each month’s archive highlight has been a completely different experience, despite the same basic themes being explored each month. In a post each day, featured archives introduce the repository, most popular collections, staff highlight, volunteer or community highlight, and a wildcard or event announcement to the account followers.

Instagram: Tips & Tricks

Based on experiences running the ARAS Instagram over the past year, as well as my own personal experience using Instagram, Below are some tips and tricks specific to creating content for Instagram, although they apply to other platforms as well.

1. Keep it simple

There is no right way to run any social media account, but the best way to keep your activity sustainable is to keep it simple, and make it something that YOU know about, and are interested in talking about—it makes it so much easier to write the content if you care about the topic, and it helps you answer any questions from your followers!

2. Use lots of visuals to share your archive stories

Visuals are always important on social media—a picture really is worth a thousand words, which is particularly important when you have a character limit! Instagram’s character limit is substantially larger than Twitter’s, but your audience may not always be inclined to read an essay of a caption. If you can grab their attention with a captivating visual, however, they may be more interested in learning more about what they are seeing. In addition to still images, video clips provide a great way to portray the scale of an item, or to engage with it in a more dynamic way. This is particularly useful just now, with so many of us working from home and without public access to our physical collections, as it allows for more meaningful digital engagement with our archives.

3. Vary your content, but stay consistent

I realise that this may seem like a contradiction—particularly when first starting an Instagram account, I think it is important to experiment with the types of content you share with your followers, but it is equally important to share your content consistently. What is your target audience? What messages do you want to share with that audience? Questions like these should be used to help you decide the best time of day to post, and what types of content you want to share. Once those questions have been answered, plan out a schedule of when you are posting—even if only once per month, make it so each post goes out at the same time. Making a schedule is particularly helpful if more than one person is contributing to the account, making sure that there are not inadvertent long periods without content to share with your followers.

4. Jump in with existing campaigns or start your own!

Keep an eye out for local and sector-wide social media campaigns that you can adapt to items from your collections. While each platform has its own community, campaigns and hashtags travel well across platforms. Twitter is an absolutely fantastic place to keep up to date with upcoming social media campaigns and themed days—each month @ArchiveHashtag posts a really useful run through of the month’s themed days, giving plenty of time to schedule content, and any campaigns run by ARA or ARAS will be shared through our member lists, and our social media accounts.

5. Use content across platforms

If you are already using other social media platforms, there is no reason why not to use the same content on Instagram too, potentially with a few minor tweaks. If you are used to posting on Twitter, then Instagram may appear slower paced, but that can work to your advantage. As mentioned above, Instagram’s caption length limits are much higher than Twitter’s, meaning that if you are putting out a thread of content on Twitter with associated visuals, the thread can be condensed into a single Instagram post, with up to 10 pieces of media (including videos up to 0:59 seconds long). Posts can be published directly to both an Instagram and Facebook page through the Instagram app, and both are compatible with scheduling programs such as Hootsuite.

Since beginning on the new platform a year ago, the ARAS Instagram account has become a central part of our engagement channels; we have successfully attracted over 560 followers and have highlighted twelve archives across Scotland. During feature weeks the account receives an average of 2000 impressions on Instagram, with an additional audience through Facebook, where posts are also shared. Our feature week posts have encouraged the public to engage with collections and their repositories, often asking questions either about the collections and content shared, or else for more specific information for their own research. We have really enjoyed watching Instagram become more popular amongst archives across Scotland, and are looking forward to seeing what the next year brings!

Ravana Eagleheart – Communications Officer ARA Scotland

Email :arascotland@archives.org.uk 

Facebook @scotlandara

Twitter @ARAScot

Instagram @ara_scotland