A Day in the Life of the Social GingerBot

The Social Gingerbot and Digital Media on the Daily

As a professional Digital Media Specialist at an art museum, my schedule is almost 24/7 about social media. Half the week is spent creating and curating social media content for the week and the other half is personal. I often switch between my personal accounts and the professional accounts I manage minute to minute, hour to hour. I don’t want to miss an important question, or let a dumpster fire burn too long that started while I was eating dinner over a post that didn’t align with a followers personal values. Ya know, important stuff. My mobile device reports an average screen time of 37 hours spent per week on social networking sites.

Since my place of work has gone mostly digital with our programming, I am spread thinner and thinner, where I am like a sheet of phyllo dough, you can practically read a newspaper through me. Since we’ve moved almost everything to a digital space, it falls under my job description, even for programs that I have had nothing to do with in the past. I am nearing my breaking point and often experience burnout and my cries for help go unheard. Please help me.

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter

Day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, I jump between Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to ensure I am not missing out on anything important from followers. Facebook is my go-to as most of our followers congregate there. This social network would be considered our businesses social hub and where we see the highest engagement out of all our social networks. This is where all of our important information is marketed. Personally, Facebook is where I spend most of my time connecting with friends and family. I enjoy all kinds of content from news, current events, art, and feel-good stories. It is a bittersweet platform since there is so much misinformation being shared and stupid arguments that no one wins, seemingly happening in every corner. Those arguments are absolutely pointless.

Next up is Instagram, which, I admit, has not had as much TLC as I would like to give it. I have reserved this network for posting artwork only. I like the idea of our feed having a certain aesthetic, rife with graphic lines, color variations, and all types of brush strokes, inks, and forms, from paintings to video art and everywhere in between. This is an important decision since it allows us to target an audience who is there to be challenged by art, the follower or patron who is looking at the museum for what it is, essentially becoming an online gallery in itself. Personally, I like to post photos of my dog to her account and follow anyone The Dodo suggests. Instagram gives me an overall good vibe when I scroll through the content from the accounts I follow. Instagram gives me more positive vibes since I don’t digest news and social issues there unless it is told through a comedic lens, such as from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.

Twitter is my least favorite social network. It is reserved for retweets and news article shares, more or less. This site gets the redheaded stepchild treatment: included on the really important stuff but has never really formed a bond with their parents. Nothing against redheads, though. My go-to hair color is red and i’ve had every shade imaginable. Personally, I post random junk no one has ever cared about and shouldn’t. I mainly digest news and celebrities’ lives that I appreciate. As far as platforms go, I feel like this one is akin to Facebook with all the political rhetoric and bots running wild. It has an air of danger to it, somewhat like trying to cross the street in heavy traffic. It is by far the number one platform to give me anxiety.

Personally, I get sucked into the popular vortex that is TikTok on the reg. It is mesmerizing, tantalizing me at every turn with life hacks, tasty recipes, hilarious shtick, arts and crafts, and makeup for days. I don’t really wear makeup or cook that often, but I just can’t take my eyes away! I often think of how I would like to have a TikTok account for the museum I work for, but I just can’t stomach having another account to populate content with.

Is it crazy for a business to shave twelve social media accounts, or is it just me?

The Web: Surfing and Working

I do A LOT of research. My mind is always turning, thinking of what are the best social media practices and trends for 2020 or who played that biker on that show I watched once 20 years ago. All important stuff. I always have at least 20 tabs open in Google Chrome, working on updating my place of employment’s website, constructing an eNewsletter, researching creative assets, looking up tutorials for new graphic design techniques, or figuring out how to go virtual with a program. To help me manage digital and social media marketing, I use an application that has all of my networks, management software, analytics apps, etc. all in one place.

With a background in website design, I often look past the information presented and analyze the overall layout of the site itself. I am often rating these sites and comparing it to the museum’s website and am often conscious of its usability, information hierarchy, and design features.

Applications

Apps are life. I manage my professional duties using over ten apps. About 90% of those apps are social networking or social networking management apps and the rest are for interdepartmental project management and internal and external communication.

Outside of work I spend a lot of time unwinding with games or watching fun videos. It is important to keep a balance between work and personal. The lines often are blurred, but that is the life of working in digital and social media marketing.

Email Marketing

Email is EVERYDAY. All day. Whether it is work, news outlets, or businesses letting me know about that new thing they have that you may want at this low low price and is only available for a limited time so act now, I consume A LOT of email. I am not the biggest fan when it comes to work email messages, especially when conversations become huge threads that lose the core information about 15 replies in. I end up missing important information and that is extremely frustrating for me. I don’t like not executing my duties because I didn’t see that email.

I often enjoy emails that come from other museums as they are usually the most creative. I like a lot of cursory information that links out to the bigger picture. It keeps an email from becoming too long, and I am a sucker for beautiful visuals and these emails rarely disappoint.

Digital Media Marketing Today

In today’s world, digital and social media marketing are considered a staple of successful marketing plans. Digital marketing ensures a far reach of a company’s message and it allows for a targeted approach. Instead of casting wide nets, businesses can set small traps to catch just the right fish and grow their brand. It is unheard of for a business to not have a social media presence. Marketers have seek out where their audiences spend most of their time to get the best ROI.

Recently, I’ve seen targeted ads and brands just about every day on digital and social media. Local businesses are beginning to utilize the Hulu streaming service to advertise their brand, which I am personally very excited for. Disney reported that there were 36.6 million subscriptions to the streaming platform at the end of 2020 (Watson, 2020). It opens up a whole new marketing channel for small businesses to reach a broader base within their target audiences.

Digital advertising is no longer uncharted territory. Without it a business will never reach its full potential and alienate a large portion of the population. It is business suicide to refuse a social media presence in today’s ever-changing digital landscape. It is the only true, and exponentially measurable connection to your audience.

Notes from the Editor

I fear for the future of social media since it has become a much more dangerous place, where aggression and trolling are the norm. Doxxing is real, and it is no longer possible, by normal means, to hide behind your keyboard. The platforms that once shrunk the world are now imploding, setting on fire the very fabric of our country, threatening our democratic society. We’re slipping from our place as one of the most developed and civilized countries, largely caused by social media, where dangerous voices are amplified and sowing seeds of chaos in the weak-minded. Save us.

References
Watson, Amy (Nov 16, 2020). Number of Hulu’s paying subscribers in the U.S. 2019-2020, by quarter, Statista. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/258014/number-of-hulus-paying-subscribers/#:~:text=In%20the%20final%20quarter%20of,of%20the%20previous%20fiscal%20year.