As social media tools are becoming increasingly commonplace and valuable to historical organizations and museums it is important to keep the communication appropriate, relevant and inline with the organization’s mission, which is why it is important to have a strategy before going in and to have guidelines on how to best interact when there.

The following strategy worksheets and guidelines were developed for by Enterprise Technology and Local History Services at the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) as templates for use by other history organizations. The guidelines were created both from experiences here at MHS and by glomming good ideas from the guidelines of others around the web, such as the email guidelines which were wholly adapted from the University of Saint Thomas’ own email guidelines.

If you have not created your own, look at these as a starting point, if you already have your own, add these as tools to your arsenal.

Strategy Worksheet

• Social Media Strategy Worksheet (DOC)
• Blog Strategy Worksheet (DOC)
• Web Site Strategy Worksheet (DOC)

Guidelines

• Social Media Guidelines (DOC)
• Email Guidelines (DOC)
• Blogging Guidelines (DOC)

Also of interest is the Web Standards Guide (PDF) that was created by MHS’ Information Technology team last year which outlines good, better and best practices for designing and maintaining web sites.