Marketing Finding Aids on Social Media: What Worked and What Didn't Work

Abstract

Sam Houston State University's Special Collections (SHSU) needed a way to expose finding aids to more users. Using social media to promote online awareness, while simultaneously improving search engine result rankings for the finding aids, seemed like a potential solution to this problem. With this goal in mind, SHSU researchers selected ten social media sites to test the assumption that posting information about finding aids to social media would be an effective marketing strategy. Following three months of posting information about finding aids while tracking user traffic to finding aids from social media sites, the research findings indicate that a combination of certain social media sites, in this case WordPress, Facebook, and Twitter, provides a better marketing strategy for getting the word out about archival collections. Additionally, the researchers confirm that posting to social media improves search engine result rankings for the finding aids. Overall, the SHSU researchers' results concur with the perception that using social media tools is an effective marketing strategy for an organization desiring to promote online awareness and improve search engine result rankings for finding aids.