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Join Andi Graham of Big Sea and Warren Wilansky of Plank as we explore the future of cultural engagement through the lens of museums, arts centers, and cultural institutions, talking with innovators crafting unique digital experiences that inspire and transform the way we connect with our communities.
Andi Graham (00:01.204)
Good morning. I guess it's morning for us today. It's a little bit strange, but welcome back to the digital stage. Today we are joined by Maria Robles Gonzalez, co -founder of Send It Social. Send It Social is a social media agency that specializes in helping museums tell their stories online. Her passion for museums and digital storytelling has taken her from the Smithsonian to the Bio Museo. I don't know how I pronounced that correct, but I'm sure you'll...
correct me, and now she's helping museums reach a whole new generation of audiences. So Maria, we'd love to hear a little bit more about your personal journey into the world of museums and digital storytelling.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (00:37.8)
Yeah, thank you so much, Andi and Warren for having me today. Super excited to chat. Thank you. Yeah, I came about to the museum world kind of a non -traditional way. I studied wildlife biology and was very much interested in the ecosystems, birding specifically, or birds. And I was involved in a wildlife museum on campus. So I did a lot of the curatorial work.
Andi Graham (00:40.052)
Yeah.
Warren Wilansky (00:41.838)
Welcome, Rhea.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (01:05.736)
And the few chances I had to connect with people on those public tours kind of lit a light bulb. And I just loved seeing the learning happen in person. And even then, I wasn't sure I was going to go into museums. But after graduating, I found my first job out of college at a science center, did the same thing, talking to people, loved it, ended up volunteering at a couple other places, still not realizing that this was meant for me.
And yeah, I eventually made it to the marketing team at that same Science Center. Found I absolutely loved marketing and having fun with, you know, creativity and getting different messages out. And that's why I'm here now. A couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to work again with my now co -founder. She was also at the Science Center. And yeah, it was this career crossroads for both of us. And we took it.
And yeah, we're here now.
Andi Graham (02:04.212)
And tell us about some of your clients. Who are some of the clients that you're working with?
Maria Robles Gonzalez (02:08.2)
Yeah, currently we're doing a lot of work with the Computer History Museum. So they're in Mountain View, California. Absolutely incredible museum. They have a super robust collection online. So they have a lot of their exhibits digitized and their YouTube is super robust. So they have a lot of archival footage. They have some exhibit footage on there, a lot of panel sessions. So we came in to...
worked together with them on developing a social media strategy and found a few, I mean, it's longer than this, but found some like main topics, content buckets, and started developing a lot of content that way, figured out where their target audience had their big interests. And so we've been working a lot with them to continue growing their social media organic side of things.
And we've done a little bit on YouTube with them. We started diving in and trying to like figure out where, you know, those same content buckets are on YouTube, maybe doing some optimization. So there's a few different things going on with them. Initially, when we founded Send It Social, we started working with nonprofits. So that was like our big thing was to work with organizations whose missions.
we like really believed in. And so, you know, we were passionate about the work they did and we helped them get their message out. So we're still working with a couple there. Yeah, yeah, I think that that covers it for now. Those are the big ones.
Warren Wilansky (03:45.486)
So I have a question for you actually. So, you know, museums, nonprofits as well. I mean, obviously there's a lot of opportunities for storytelling there. How do you find the relationship with social media and all of the stories that are inherently in the museum? And I'm always curious about the museum or your feelings about in -person visits versus digital online social visits and how that matters and the value of it to museums and different organizations.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (04:11.144)
That's an awesome question. So many things just went off. So I'll try to like stay on one road right now. The word, the word, fidgetal comes to mind. I don't know if you've heard that. I've seen it pop up a few times, that mix of physical and digital. So I think the physical aspect of museums specifically, I don't think that's ever gonna go away. I think the core of the museum experience is.
Warren Wilansky (04:16.202)
Or go down five.
Andi Graham (04:19.252)
Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (04:37.768)
standing in front of an artifact and, you know, like just really taking it in. And there's so much to that. But I think we all realize, and maybe this is said a lot now, right? But after the pandemic, that famous word we all pivoted and realized really how important it is to be in the digital space and meeting people where they're at. And I think museums as a whole now are and have been for a while, but especially now are really working to open up their doors and like,
make their spaces more accessible, inclusive to people who wouldn't make it normally to their institutions. And that can be for a variety of reasons. So social media is one of the key spaces in that digital landscape that museums can really, really benefit from being active on. And yeah, I think I'm trying to think the number I last saw.
is definitely over half the people in the world are on social media. And I think they spend like 2 .5 hours, something like that on social media every day. So museums do have like a big opportunity to reach audiences and have this new touch point with their mission. And then the other thing I was gonna add to that is social media is not, it's not,
Warren Wilansky (05:44.622)
Mm.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (06:02.472)
your typical marketing promotional channel, I think people took it that way a lot, especially in the beginning where it's like, buy this, come check out this. And the way I heard it phrased one time, which I really liked, was treating social media like going to a cocktail party and talking to people that way. You're not going to go up to someone and be like, you should go here or you should buy my product, but instead cultivating relationships and telling like,
Warren Wilansky (06:22.574)
Hmm.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (06:31.56)
interesting stories and people will start gravitating to you eventually if you keep doing that. So I don't know if there was more I could add to that, Warren, please let me know. But yeah, there's just, it's a, yeah, museums are ripe for, they're ripe with content and they're perfect for social media. People are looking to be entertained if they're not connecting with family and friends online. They're scrolling, they're looking at new ideas. Yeah, museums are built for it, honestly.
Warren Wilansky (06:41.262)
No, that's a lot.
Warren Wilansky (07:00.014)
Yeah, I mean, I guess museums, I mean, obviously the intention is they want to get somebody in there. You're right. The artifact and interacting the artifact is what a museum is really all about. And that's never going away. But there's also the reality that a lot of times people are not going to end up at a museum in, you know, in some city unless they visit it and not everybody in the world is going to end up in the museum. So I think it just gives you that much opportunity to reach out to so many more people and create those connections.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (07:26.728)
Totally, yep, yep. And I think also for people who don't see themselves as, I'm reading this book by Jennifer DeSalle, it's called Art Curious. It's really cool, it talks about all these different, the stories behind different artworks and such. And she talks about in the beginning how not everyone or she herself did not see herself as someone who loved art in the very beginning. And it wasn't until she heard all these really interesting stories that she completely fell in love with it.
Warren Wilansky (07:48.654)
Hmm.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (07:53.48)
And so there's a point to be made there. I think a lot of people don't even realize they're museum people and maybe they have this perception of museums as stuffy institutions, you know, the way it might've been in the past. But I think we're seeing a lot more museums telling their stories and creating all these connection points for people, making them relevant. Yeah.
Andi Graham (08:16.212)
I think that's such a good point. My dad is an artist and a painter and dragged my brother and I around to every art museum in the universe when I was a child. And I grew to almost not like it because it's boring when you're a kid. But what I realized is he wasn't putting in the effort, no, that's not the right word.
It was not available to them at the time to do the docent -led tours, at least with children in tow. And I think a lot of museums have come a lot farther in making it accessible to families. But now that I'm traveling, a docent -led tour is a game changer for getting engaged with a museum because you get those stories and you get that background. And so when I took my daughter to, when we took our kids to Spain and France for the first time five or six years ago,
Maria Robles Gonzalez (08:41.672)
Hmm.
Andi Graham (09:04.436)
We did the coolest docent tours at like the Prado and all over Paris. And it was just, my daughter was so engaged with the way that they explained what was happening with these famous paintings that she had seen on websites or wherever she had seen them. But she also carried around a little sketchbook and like was doing little sketches of the paintings. It was just, my husband and I's little hearts were thumping because we were so proud of her engagement and interest. But it just reminds you that.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (09:08.616)
Wow.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (09:22.28)
my god.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (09:30.088)
Yeah!
Andi Graham (09:32.34)
the telling of those stories is so important that people, you connect with something when you know its history, whether that's other humans or that's the artworks or those are historical artifacts, you know, it's not important unless you understand that piece. Social offers such a unique way to sort of help do that. So I'm curious how you go into a museum that you're working with and tie the pieces of their collection to what's actually relevant and trending on social media.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (09:39.304)
Mm -hmm.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (09:50.44)
Totally.
Andi Graham (10:01.3)
Sometimes it feels like there's a great divide between the actual storytelling and meat of something and then the banality of social media trends.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (10:13.288)
Sure, sure. And I think there is, like in general, we focus a lot on the evergreen content. So things that can live on and, you know, someone down the line runs into it, even if the trend or a trend is long gone, they'll still identify. Yeah, yeah, because they are, they're ephemeral. They come and go, right? And there is a place for trends. I think if museums, say for example, there's a TikTok trend and I can't think of one off the top of my head, but something,
Andi Graham (10:19.14)
Yeah.
Andi Graham (10:27.316)
It disappears, yeah. It's fair, yeah.
Andi Graham (10:41.588)
Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (10:42.984)
And because they go so fast, there's something and a museum finds a really creative way to like tap into it and put their own spin on it. I think that can be really fun. As long as it's not like, there's a lot of trends that can be surface level, but I think of a museum puts their own spit, like it ties into the museum. I think that's cool. And I think that's really unique. And it does like, I think people see it and are like, my God, you know, like that's smart. I see what they're doing.
Andi Graham (10:49.46)
Mm -hmm.
Andi Graham (11:03.188)
Yes.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (11:11.656)
But in general, I think a good story is a good story. And I think that's the route we typically take. So when we're looking to make content, we're, take the Computer History Museum, for example, we look at their blogs, we look at YouTube, maybe we look at which of their web pages are getting the most traffic that month. And we kind of build stories around those initial sources. And there's a lot to be done there.
And you can tie that into current events sometimes. The Macintosh's 40th anniversary was earlier this year, forgetting the month. But they had a whole campaign around that. And so we started doing some organic content, showing historic footage of the Macintosh being revealed. And not everyone knows that it was the Macintosh's 40th birthday, but the people that did latched onto that. Yeah, so in general.
Andi Graham (12:04.916)
Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (12:09.032)
We definitely go towards evergreen content, but like I said, trending content can still be fun. And I think a good way to use trending content is like art memes. You see a lot of institutions doing that. They're super fun. This lady, Jennifer DeSalle that I mentioned, she had in her book about, yeah, people not being able to connect with pieces until they see like that relatable aspect of it.
Andi Graham (12:23.124)
Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (12:38.344)
And I think especially art memes are a really good way to connect with a contemporary audience where you see something you understand right away, right? And if a museum has their spin on it, it just makes it that much more like relatable. There's a meme actually going around right now on the bait. I don't know if you've seen it. It's a baby. And it says something like, who's ready to go to the Orlando Resort or something like that. I just saw the Getty. Yeah. Yes.
Andi Graham (13:04.244)
Yes, I saw that yesterday. The four seasons, the Orlando four seasons. Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (13:08.648)
Yes, yes, yes. And like the Getty, just I saw their their post the other day or yesterday. I mean, that's a really quick and easy way and you're showing your your own artifacts, too. So. Mm hmm.
Andi Graham (13:18.228)
Yeah
I didn't see the Getty's response to that. Yep.
Warren Wilansky (13:21.006)
And it's also showing that you're paying attention.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (13:23.528)
And it was, sorry.
Warren Wilansky (13:24.622)
It also shows you're paying attention to what's trending at the time too. It's a fun way of doing things.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (13:29.064)
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And there's like literally there's no way to keep up with everything. I mean, you could be online forever. So yeah, yeah.
Andi Graham (13:38.036)
So when you're working with a museum, do you normally have an internal counterpart who's doing the more trendy in the moment stuff and then you guys are producing the evergreen?
Maria Robles Gonzalez (13:46.536)
Yeah, yeah, it does work like that because my co -founder and I are remote in most of what we do. We do take on the content that's off -site, for example, and so our counterpart, which can be a social media manager or even someone on their marketing team, they typically take on any in -house, like if they're featuring a volunteer, for example, you know, like filming their volunteer stories. -huh.
Andi Graham (13:53.236)
Mm -hmm.
Andi Graham (14:12.244)
Yeah, that kind of thing.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (14:15.624)
or trending content, exactly.
Andi Graham (14:19.476)
How do you account for, if you're going on, so do you go on site to do content capturing and get photography videos, things like that? Are you relying on what's in their archives and what they've kind of got access to?
Maria Robles Gonzalez (14:31.592)
Yeah, it kind of depends on what they have access to. The work we've done, we've been lucky. They've had a lot of things on the website or in a dry folder and we can access it that way. We have done a couple content capture trips, which are always super fun and we get as much as we can and work off of that. But yeah, I think it's already important for museums to have their collections accessible digitally.
And I get that can be like a big undertaking. So if they don't, you know, like working towards that is always good. But yeah, if they have stuff online, it's easy to for us to work off of it. But we've done. Yeah, we've done a mix of things.
Andi Graham (15:15.188)
Warren and I like to hear that because that means they need to have a really strong website before you can do great social. It's kind of the base, right? I mean, it's like your home base for everything else that branches out from there. And so having that exit, like, you know, great representations of the exhibits online, great library and archive of the ephemera and the elements online, I think is so important. So I love that.
Warren Wilansky (15:19.278)
Mm -hmm.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (15:27.912)
Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (15:40.072)
Yeah, it's an ecosystem, right? Like you have all these different places and yeah, if one place is built up, it just makes it that much easier for the other place to, for people to bounce around.
Andi Graham (15:43.124)
It is.
Warren Wilansky (15:51.406)
Yeah, Andi's right. Obviously, I have my own vested interest in that we build websites. So I'm always like to see an organization with have a great website or not have a great website. So they want to work with us. But all kidding aside, I think it's important. I mean, social media is what creates the connection. And then you're hoping that somebody will then delve deeper into that online area that the museum or the organization owns itself that they curate, that they actually take care of.
Andi Graham (15:56.116)
Heheheheh!
Andi Graham (16:00.404)
Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (16:00.616)
Yeah!
Maria Robles Gonzalez (16:16.936)
Mm -hmm. Yes, yes, exactly.
Andi Graham (16:19.032)
Yeah, I look at the website as sort of this base and then we do a lot of the marketing that's the content creation that's more long form. So blogging and things like that, SEO, a lot of paid media, and then social feels like the sort of icing on that cake. And it's what's sort of bringing people deeper into the layers so they can work their way down to getting increased engagement, which I think is all really useful. So.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (16:38.472)
Mm -hmm.
Andi Graham (16:44.468)
I'd love to hear if you have any examples you can think of of museums or creators doing really neat things in the space that we could check out.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (16:53.8)
Yes, I'll start with you just featured him, Nick from the Tank Museum. That's like the holy grail because as far as like museums joining the digital space and really making like their audience a part of it, I think that's a great example to look towards. Yeah, and you know, you can talk about the revenue too, which is I'm sure all museums are excited to see that example. I like I mentioned.
Andi Graham (16:57.076)
Yeah.
Warren Wilansky (16:58.126)
Heheheheh
Andi Graham (17:16.212)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (17:22.824)
I mentioned the Getty, the National Gallery of Art in the US has some really awesome social media content. I think museums, when they think of social media, there's this tendency to think of it maybe less so now, but there was a tendency before, at least with TikTok, to think of it as this really silly app where everyone's dancing, you know. Not so much the case anymore, there's still that, but there's this...
looming thought about, well, how is my brand gonna be perceived? Like, you know, the museum is still a respected place of authority. And I say that in like a, in a good way, right? Where you have all these artifacts and they're in charge of like linking people to the past, present and future. So anyways, how their voice would be perceived on social when they wanna connect with people at the same time and make lighthearted content. The National Gallery of Art, I think does a,
fantastic job of doing that. Like you'll see their carousels, they have some memes where they're still very like, I'm trying to think of the word. It's not formal, but it's still very like, it looks legit and they're still really funny, like, or really interesting. So that's as far as Brand Voice goes, that's a good one.
Andi Graham (18:34.516)
Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (18:43.144)
I think a lot of museums are, you know, we talked about digitizing their collections and putting things online and, you know, giving people the accessibility and then they can go off on their own and work with items. I think a lot of them are doing that. I had an offshoot thought with that. The Gaze Art, it's the Gaze underscore art on Instagram. my gosh, I keep bringing them up. They have some fantastic content. It's not a museum.
Andi Graham (19:05.14)
Yes, we've heard about that a couple times.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (19:12.84)
But I think it's a very cool example for museums to look at in terms of storytelling. And they use all these high resolution images. And the videos are just beautiful. And there's carousel posts too. But those are really cool social media posts. I've also seen museums like ACMI in Australia who have, and that's the Australian Center for the Moving Image. Or I think that's what it stands for. But they have a...
Andi Graham (19:13.268)
Mm -hmm.
Andi Graham (19:38.164)
neat. Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (19:41.928)
They have some digital experiences and then because they're the center of the moving image, they have like films that people can like stream online, like a digital cinema, which I think is super cool. I don't think we can access it being out of the country, but there's some really cool stuff being done. Yeah, off the top of my head, I think those are the ones that stand out right now.
Andi Graham (19:56.404)
Yeah.
Andi Graham (20:05.972)
Yeah, that's good. Gives us some more content to go follow for sure. I love that. So when I think about the National Gallery, or I think about the Smithsonian, I know because we work with some Smithsonian affiliates, the resources are deep. And I'm curious how you work with smaller museums and organizations that have not so deep resources. Is there any secret sauce that you as an agency could impart?
Maria Robles Gonzalez (20:10.184)
Yeah!
Maria Robles Gonzalez (20:23.352)
sure.
Warren Wilansky (20:29.422)
Mmm.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (20:32.552)
Cool.
Andi Graham (20:34.356)
to small teams who have to DIY themselves? Like how could they be planning their content better and producing better content on social?
Maria Robles Gonzalez (20:43.368)
Yeah, that's a good question. I think the first step is to take a step back and just kind of like review what you do have. And, you know, I briefly mentioned content buckets, just developing a strategy to guide you going forward. It does not have to be like, even if the content, I guess the range of the collection is not as deep, if that's what you mean. There's other ways to go about it. You can play off of...
the stories of the staff or the volunteers themselves, like, you know, maybe how they connect to a piece could be something like the curator led almost like docent tours where they talk about specific pieces or even like tapping into your visitors. The Huntington has, I think it's...
Andi Graham (21:17.076)
Hmm, yep.
Andi Graham (21:21.46)
Mm -hmm.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (21:32.264)
Yeah, I think it's the Huntington has done some really cool videos. They had a corpse flower, you know that that plant that when it flowers, it smells really bad. There was a series where they were interviewing people as they walked past it and asking them what the smell reminds them of. And that was hilarious. Like just like, yeah, you creating user generated content. So you can you can tap into your visitors too, I think, and let them tell their stories. And you're still sharing a diverse amount.
Andi Graham (21:38.964)
Mm -hmm.
Warren Wilansky (21:39.502)
yeah.
Andi Graham (21:49.684)
Hahaha!
Maria Robles Gonzalez (22:01.128)
or set of stories, which is cool. Yeah, there's different ways to go about it if, you know, compared to the Smithsonian, which yeah, I'm sure is like.
Andi Graham (22:03.124)
Yeah.
Andi Graham (22:10.164)
Yeah. Yeah. I just know that they have, you know, multiple team members working on every single role. And so it's hard to do that when you've got a small museum that's got three marketers and you know, they're all stretched very thin. It's how do they prioritize and focus their time? Like, you know, what's the best, best use for their, for their time. So that's always good.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (22:20.424)
Yes.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (22:32.872)
Yeah, yeah, I know that's a common struggle.
Andi Graham (22:36.82)
Yeah.
Warren Wilansky (22:37.294)
I mean, I think one of the benefits for a small museum to latch onto is that people don't expect high value, like high performing content on social media. In other words, things can be fleeting. It doesn't have to be high production value. It can just be something that you pass through.
Andi Graham (22:48.084)
Mm -hmm.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (22:48.36)
Mm -hmm.
Andi Graham (22:53.972)
That is so true.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (22:54.28)
Yeah, 100 % agree. I think, in fact, I think janky content does better because people like, I do, yeah, I think people are craving, or I know they crave authenticity. That's like, it's stated and then people have said it. And so when you do highly produced content, at least on social media, there's this perception sometimes, not always, that it's an ad.
Warren Wilansky (23:03.694)
You
Maria Robles Gonzalez (23:20.776)
depending on how you do it, because you can still have highly produced content. Like I mentioned, the National Gallery of Art more so and their images, it's still very high resolution and all of that, but it does translate well. Yeah, no, I think the more authentic, even lower production, like it does not have to be high production. People will relate to it. And it just looks more native to social media.
Andi Graham (23:28.98)
Mm -hmm.
Andi Graham (23:44.692)
Yeah, that's true. Published Before Perfection has always been sort of my approach. And I think unfortunately, well, I see this because I have a team and the team, the younger team members who often are the social media folks who get hired at institutions, while they're very creative, they're sometimes afraid to take too many risks.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (23:47.752)
Warren Wilansky (23:48.846)
Hmm.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (24:11.432)
Mmm.
Andi Graham (24:11.796)
they don't want to fail because they're just starting their careers and whatever that looks like. And I think social media is one of those places that you have to be willing to take those risks and you have to be willing to publish things that might not, they might fail and they might not land and you know, that sort of thing. But, I think that's one of those things that from a culture perspective is so important that we instill in anybody who's producing our content that yes, just try it, you know, as long as you're not breaking any rules, as long as we're not.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (24:39.464)
Right.
Andi Graham (24:39.924)
sticking within our core values, right? We're staying true to ourselves and our integrity. We've got to be able to take some risks. So.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (24:47.048)
Definitely, yeah, risk taking is so great on social media. Right, you have your limits, but yeah, you have, you just, you're not gonna find, people will latch on if they see something innovative. Like you're in a sea of content, you really are. And so if something stands out and you have to experiment to see something stand out, yeah, you can get great returns.
Andi Graham (24:52.628)
You have to, yep.
Andi Graham (25:14.164)
for sure.
Warren Wilansky (25:14.286)
I think also, I think the thing we all forget is that if something doesn't work, you can always hit delete. You know, like.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (25:19.88)
True, yes, yes, or you just keep, like some posts are just not gonna perform and that's fine. Like, you know, we've had it where you, we create a video and sometimes they're like, wow, we put so much work into this, it's still a janky edit, but like you really like planned it out and you think it's gonna land so well and compared to something that took way less time, like the really simple edits can take off. Like you really don't know until you, yeah, until you experiment.
Andi Graham (25:37.2)
Yeah. Yep.
Warren Wilansky (25:40.59)
Mmm, yeah.
Andi Graham (25:47.348)
Yeah, keep publishing, that's true. So do you have any tips or advice for aspiring young museum professionals that are interested in working in the museum field?
Maria Robles Gonzalez (25:49.32)
Mm -hmm.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (25:54.408)
yes, I saw this question. I loved it. And I think one of the best things you can do is volunteer or just spend time at the very public part of a museum, where you're seeing guests come in and have that in -prison experience. I think that's where it clicks what the museum's mission does and how people...
engage in person. I don't know, it sparks this really beautiful moment. I think it did with me at least. And that's what got me to work in the museum field. The science center I used to work at used to do what were called infusions. So like the people who typically worked in the offices would have the chances to go work like , you know, on the floor and like help people out and stuff. And I thought that I heard really good things about that too.
And I think just talking to people, you know, once you're in the museum field, even if you're not, I guess, talking to people and networking and just really getting to know everyone's perspective. I could see back when I was in the Science Center that it's very easy for different departments to get siloed and just like really focus in on like their work. And I think we see this in museums where the work can be overwhelming sometimes. And sometimes, you know, people take on
a lot of duties that are on top of their role. So everyone's very focused. And I think if you step out of your department and speak with others throughout the museum, you see all these things and you're like, my gosh, we could have been collaborating this whole time. So definitely talking to people and just putting yourself in those spaces would be my tip.
Andi Graham (27:43.988)
Yeah, get yourself out there. I that is it's so funny, but you just clicked for me. That's exactly the thing that I feel like marketers need to do more of. They need to have a great relationship with every single department at their organization, no matter what the organization is, because that's how they find the stories. And we don't realize how innately boring some people think their jobs are, but would be so wildly
Warren Wilansky (27:58.894)
That's good advice.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (28:00.552)
Mm -hmm. Yeah!
Andi Graham (28:12.756)
fascinating to somebody on the outside who has no idea these things were happening. I know we worked with an art museum in Florida and we were talking to one of their curators and she was telling us the story of they had just acquired a new piece and she gave us the whole story of how they transport the piece and all the decoy U -Haul vans and all of the like triple driving situations so that they didn't, they could never stop for gas. Nobody could ever get out of that. Like if they stopped for gas, no one could get out of the vehicle. There was always like three people.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (28:30.152)
Wow.
Andi Graham (28:41.94)
with eyes on the vehicle at all times. But there's like five different vehicles so that nobody knows which one has the piece in it if they did see somebody leave. And it's because these are priceless pieces of art, you know? And so it just, that to me, like, you don't want to show that stuff publicly, but sharing those stories sometimes just, I was like floored. She's like, Andi, we do this like every two months we're doing that. I'm like, that's so interesting. Like, why aren't we telling that story? So it's so cool.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (28:48.008)
my gosh.
Warren Wilansky (28:49.006)
Wow.
Warren Wilansky (29:05.774)
Wow.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (29:09.096)
Yeah, no, yes, yes, exactly. And I think also there's that curse of knowledge sometimes, especially with like the experts in different departments where maybe they are, they're very passionate about what they do and rightly so. And it takes someone else to hear their story, to phrase it in a way that can translate on social media, for example. Like I think sometimes either you don't know, like in that example you just mentioned, you don't know that you have like gold or.
Andi Graham (29:16.756)
Yes.
Andi Graham (29:37.268)
Yeah.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (29:38.312)
The way you phrase it is maybe not translating. So yeah, I think getting different perspectives is extremely, extremely helpful.
Andi Graham (29:46.292)
Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. It's been really lovely talking to you.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (29:53.128)
Yeah, I had so much fun. I'm like bouncing all over the place.
Warren Wilansky (29:56.718)
Haha.
Andi Graham (29:56.724)
Well, I'm good because it's so early in the morning for you. I appreciate it. If people want to find you online, how can they find you?
Warren Wilansky (29:59.79)
Yeah, lots of energy.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (30:05.448)
Yeah, so you can find our website at senditsocialmedia .com. I'm also on LinkedIn, pretty active there. And yeah, I think those are the two main ones. We have our Instagram at senditsocialmedia, which we post some fun content every now and then. But yeah, I had so much fun. Thank you, Andi. Thank you, Warren. This was really fun.
Andi Graham (30:12.756)
Yeah.
Andi Graham (30:20.147)
I've gotta go check that out.
Warren Wilansky (30:26.414)
Thank you, Maria.
Andi Graham (30:26.516)
sure and I will second you should go follow Maria on LinkedIn because her content is fantastic and just always a great perspective and insight into what's going on the world of museums and social media so thank you.
Maria Robles Gonzalez (30:37.128)
I appreciate it. Thank you.
Warren Wilansky (30:39.054)
Thanks.