Meet the Woman Who Beat Out Hundreds of Applicants to Manage the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Commanding Social Media Presence

What does it take to get a gig as the social media manager for
the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Well, at least seven
interviews over the course of a month, says Claire L. Lanier,
who was named to the post last March.

It’s a role, she admits, that she never expected to get. When
Lanier, who was working as the social media and content manger at
the New-York Historical Society, saw the job listing online, she
hesitated to apply.

“It just seemed like an intimidating job,” she told Artnet News.
(Previous occupants of the position include Kimberly Drew, a curator and social-media
star in her own right.) About a month later, Lanier got a call
from the museum’s vice president for external affairs, Kenneth
Weine, who wanted to speak with her about the position. “My first
interview was on my birthday, which was coincidental and fun,”
Lanier recalled.

During the interview process, she met with members of numerous
departments. “I’ve never had that many interviews for the position,
but I wasn’t surprised,” Lanier said. “It’s a significant
responsibility to speak on behalf of the Met on social media.”

But the reality of it all didn’t really sink in until she was
invited to meet with Met president Daniel H. Weiss and
director Max Hollein. “At that point, I thought, this might be
real,” she said.

We spoke with the social media guru about how she landed one of
the most prestigious gigs in the New York art world, what it takes
to do her job, and how the Met’s embrace of social media is serving
its mission.

At the New-York Historical Society, you oversaw the
social media campaign for the museum’s blockbuster Harry Potter
exhibition. What was that like?

That was a major moment at the museum—probably the biggest
social campaign that I’ve worked on—and, as a Harry Potter fan, it
was really exciting. We started teasing the exhibition far, far
sooner than usual because we knew it would be crucial for tourists
and travelers. Our strategy was to showcase the works—really,
that show was about putting the Harry Potter world into the real
world’s historical context and
understanding the basis for these magical things. A bezoar stone is
actually a real thing—J.K. Rowling didn’t make that up.

What does your current job entail? Are there goals in
terms of growing the museum’s online following? 

I manage the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest
platforms for the Met. I hired a social media producer, Victoria
Martinez, in the fall, so there’s two of us on the team now. We
post every day, up to five times a day, depending on the
channel. Much of our time is spent researching and crafting
content, but that could look different depending on the day or
week. It may include being in the galleries to shoot photos or
video, building and designing interactive Instagram stories,
attending a program to cover live, or collaborating with other
departments on content development. We’re not super
quantitatively focused. We really gauge our success on how we’re
engaging our audience and educating the public.

How do you manage content across the different social
media channels? 

We often post almost the exact same content on all of our
platforms, especially when we’re talking about special exhibitions,
but we do notice differences. Naturally, the platforms have
different priorities, with Instagram being so image-driven and
Facebook being a place where we can share links to blog posts or
digital features.

Demographically, Facebook has grown with older generations
really dramatically in the past few years. With our “Play It
Loud” exhibition, we found that a lot of Baby Boomers on
Facebook were really responding strongly, remembering when they had
gone to a Zeppelin concert or different things like that. So we did
a Facebook live tour through the exhibition, which a lot of people
enjoyed.

How did you start working in social media, and how have
you seen that field expand since?

I think one of my biggest qualifications when I first
started—and I suspect this is true of a lot of social media
managers—was just that I was a young person and more well-versed in
the digital sphere.

I was working in a role that was part administration, part
communications, and I took on some of the social media elements. I
have a knack for taking a vast amount of information and distilling
it to a small amount of information, which is the backbone of a lot
of social media writing. I sort of fell into it.

When I graduated from college in 2008, I never could have
imagined that this was what I would be doing. Social media has
gone from being a very personal space—I remember communicating with
my roommate, who was in my room, via Facebook—to almost being like
a public square where major conversations are happening.

What was the biggest challenge moving to a large,
encyclopedic institution like the Met?

I come from an American history background. History and art
history are very similar, but I had to do my homework. I had to
make sure that I fully really understood the Met to make sure I was
representing it well. And the Met is so big in every way. It’s
physically large, the collection is massive, there are so many
staff members. Thinking about the daily experience of how people
interact with us, that’s probably the biggest challenge.

Social media comes down to voice, and how you’re talking about
what you’re talking about. It’s always been my mission to make
history, art history—whatever the scholarly topic at hand—engaging
for someone who maybe is not so interested. My goal is to bring the
voice down from the ivory tower and offer context that’s relatable.
It’s also about being playful and doing fun campaigns like
Caturday.

How do you balance the demands of different departments
that want their projects highlighted on social
media? 

It’s actually been easier than I thought! The staff of the
Met are really great and very attuned to social media and
respectful of our strategy. I want to be as supportive of my
colleagues as possible and showcase their work in as captivating a
way as we can.

One of our strategies is that we have 27 departmental
Instagram accounts. It’s an incredible opportunity for departments
to share more intimate, niche things. I have broad oversight over
those accounts, but day-to-day, they are managed by people in those
departments.

Working in social media, how do you approach your own
online presence? Are you also trying to build up your personal
following?

I do have my own social media, but how do I say this… it’s like
hot garbage. It’s not fancy. I don’t use my social media as an
avenue for my career or my personal brand. I just think about it as
a way to connect with my friends. Because I work in it, I treat my
own platforms very personally.

The post Meet the Woman Who Beat Out Hundreds of Applicants
to Manage the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Commanding Social Media
Presence appeared first on artnet News.