Jim Breitinger, Director of Marketing, Natural History Museum of Utah

Sabrina Sanders

8 years ago

A little about Jim

Jim Breitinger was an early blogger- he first started by creating emails with stories and pictures that he would send out to friends and family. The positive feedback from these emails fueled his interest in telling stories through the new digital media and soon after started a blog. After finishing a bachelor’s degree in Marketing, with a minor in History, he worked in communications and marketing with companies like Novell. But, his interests in meteorites took him on a detour to becoming a meteorite dealer where he traveled the country educating people on meteorites and selling them out of his Airstream. A master’s degree in Environmental History rounded out his education and furthered his passion for storytelling and true content. Utilizing social media in a professional capacity since 2008, Jim has found the perfect place to bring his education and personal interests together at The Natural History Museum of Utah (NHMU). The museum uses four social media platforms, a blog, a mobile app with “share” functions, and of course a website that connects with social media.

You can listen to our conversation at the bottom of this post.

Interview Highlights

“…creating social media content is woven into everything else I do so estimating the time spent on it is tough…”

We talked about having ‘buy-in’ from your Director and Board for social media programming. Jim said some of the people in charge may admit they don’t understand social media but they know the value of utilizing it for the museum.

Jim knows it is important to have a social media strategy, and one that it is firmly grounded in the museum’s mission and brand. Jim says “engaging socially is another way to reach people, and another way to fulfill our mission -so we can really expand our reach.”

At NHMU, the different social media platforms are utilized in different ways to show the broad scope of programming at the museum The blog Jim started for the museum has a strong emphasis on science and communicating their research, where Facebook is utilized more for marketing events. The idea of evergreen content is an interesting angle for social media that Jim talks about with regard to their blog.

The exhibition program at the museum is robust and we discussed the place social media has in the exhibition development process. With ten permanent exhibitions, and the temporary exhibition space changing every 5 to 6 months, I wanted to know how they used and integrated social media.