Within museum social media forums, I often overhear discussions about how to find the best trends, hashtags or events to build content around. It can be challenging to navigate the many day celebrations (National Ice Cream Day, World Polka Dot Day, International Left Hand Day) and hashtags (Caturday, TongueOutTuesday, NailedIt).

Before you get buried under the avalanche of options, hit pause and do some homework for me. Go look in the mirror and flex for a little while.

What does your museum have a lot of?

Antique cough syrup bottles? Paintings of cats? Rusty 18^th century tools? Taxidermy fish?

What is your museum beloved for?

Historical house with amazing tour guides? Big fountain sculpture kids throw change in? That photo collection of street graffiti from the ‘70s?

What does your museum want to be known for?

Got the biggest collection of weevils in the Americas? A collection of fiber art by a lady no one has heard of? Working display of phones through the ages?

When you need to flex your museum’s assets, what do you lean on? Pick a few things that exemplify your museum.

No, we’re not looking at the day calendar or trending hashtags yet. You just started flexing your assets. Who are you flexing at? Who are you trying to start a conversation with?

I’m going to leave audience for later because that’s a whole blog post on its own. But you should know what you want to flex and who you want to flex at, so HOW should be the easy part.

Cat paintings at local millennials – heck yea, start a regular fun #Caturday tradition.

Vintage farm equipment at community seniors? How about quick videos where you pair a community elder with a young’un to talk about how the thing worked and demonstrate it if possible. (Yes, they’ll fly on Tiktok and Facebook.)

That collection of graffiti photos? Lean into that and make up your own tradition. #DecodingStreetArt Once a week break down how one piece was made and what it means.

This is a long way of saying that you should lean into your assets and flex your museum instead of jumping on trends all the time. If one fits, have fun. But every museum exists because it has something to be treasured. And our jobs as digital content creators is to use our tools to flex our museum.