Alexander, do you think IRM has an entire committee proof-read all the reports coming out of the various IRM department updates?

Keeping donors, potential donors, customers, and potential customers updated should be a major part of any organization or business. How do you find the time to keep the bathrooms clean? Idk... you just do cause if you have filthy bathrooms business won’t be as good as if you have clean bathrooms. Same with marketing and updates... doubly so when you are relying on donations from people across the country and across the globe.

Now each organization can choose how the updates are handled, maybe they all need to filter through a full time marketing / pr employee, maybe they just need to be assigned to a volunteer who just posts the “5 minute” Facebook updates.

[quote="Alexander D. Mitchell IVI shudder when I see (as I too often do) posts made to FB pages by business owners or members that either look like they have a fourth-grade command of English at best, write posts as if they're on Twitter, or are tone-deaf to how unprofessional or lackadaisical some of their communications sound.[/quote]

I've felt that very much for the past couple years, Twitter in particular.

I've done enough major projects over the decades to have some sympathy for this group - but agree that they have not done a great job of controlling expectations, which is after all about the only thing that can control. There are ways to keep excitement and interest without committing to a series of deadlines based on wishful thinking - and until the project is about 90% done it is all wishful thinking.

If you're both lucky and smart, you put such privileges to post in "your" name in the hands of people who can be trusted to post competently.

That would promptly end, of course, the day that someone with posting privileges posts a controversial, inflammatory, or otherwise "politically incorrect" remark on said accounts. (Say, for example, questioning or attacking a major railroad or transit agency from whom the IRM may have to ask favors some day.....)

Hey, stupider things have happened.

IRM has multiple departments reporting... they seem to be clear on just posting work status info and not getting into politics.... I’m sure if someone posted something inappropriate it would be fixed. You’re making too big of a deal of it imho.

I need to join as a member of IRM... I’ve been referring to their site to see how they handle their blogs in relation to this discussion and yeah.... those guys just do it right. Other too of course, friends of C&T comes to mind. You clearly know and see where your Money is going when you donate.

CZ he may have been talking in general and not about IRM as an example of needing repair. His point is valid. For instance go back through this entire thread about #1309 and see the accusations, talking very close to smack from a bunch of people who are not really involved but have opinions based on feelings and emotions. Some are based on facts some are not. But if each of us represented a museum or organization would that BOD be happy with our posts? A lot of unprofessionalism has been posted here on RYPN. People who have never drove rivets or worked under or in a locomotive are commenting on all sorts of things they have no expertise in. Again, pretend your the representative of your museum and fell into the trap of bashing another organization or contractor. Very easy to do and I have been guilty of it as most of us are. You feel passionate about a subject and you say it like you see it. Happens to the best of us.

Many people feel empowered when they sit at the keyboard. We have all been there and most of us who are passionate about trains will be again. So to choose your spokesman carefully and not just because someone is willing to do it is very important. Regardless if it is IRM, WMS or whoever. And maybe I am wrong about all this too? Regards, John.

I was using IRM as a generic example as well.

One of the most vocal in this thread is Ross... this isn’t a group of people who’ve never worked on, under or behind a steam locomotive. I’m not an expert at all, but I’ve helped fire, been a conductor behind and, many other job titles around steam locomotives.

I also love Western Maryland, it was such a perfect railroad with a good grade, 25 mph running, historic stations, turntable and wye, features like a tunnel and big curve.... nice scenery, nice history, perfect duration for the average train rider (Strasburg is a bit short, Durango is a bit long, WM is juuuuuuust right). I’m a fan. I took my mom up to ride the last year 734 was running and we had a great time riding in the vestibules and man o war car.

I want to ride western Maryland behind steam again! I want them to succeed. The current management doesn’t give me any cofficdence I will see those 2 things...

This post is getting OT, but I don't know why anyone would criticize IRM for lack of information about restorations, they update their various FB sites regularly. For example, IRM just posted these photos today on the IRM Diesel Shop Facebook page, of their restoration of Minnesota Transfer 200's cab. https://www.facebook.com/pg/IRMDieselSh ... ?ref=notif

Personally, I think a website without comments would be easier to manage (ARR 557 groups' page comes to mind as a good one: http://557.alaskarails.org/restore/index.html), FB posts tend to attract such useful comments as "Why isn't that person wearing safety glasses?" (in the photo) or "Isn't a waste of money to restore an old steam engine?" etc. which would just annoy the h$#@ out of me. Some preservation/ excursion groups' (Coalbrookdale comes to mind) FB pages have stopped posting about restorations and switched to stock photos of people drinking wine etc. and I'll bet the humbugs are a reason.

I will speculate, based on my own experiences with Facebook, websites, journalism, marketing, railfanning, and the American commercial market that this has FAR more to do with the AVERAGE Facebook user having far more interest in when they're running the next children-focused event, what the dinner train menu is, what wine is in that glass, and what breweries are pouring at the railroad museum's annual craft beer fest than in the minutiae of rust-scraping, paint schemes, or "what whistle will it have?!?" (the latter has become the stock meme of FB railfanning's self-mockery of slobbering foamers--and not without cause).

The proper job of GOOD social media promotion (and advertising) is to evangelize to the unaware, not preach to the converted.

Having said that, FB posts from the likes of the IRM's various sub-divisions, or "Latest From the Shops" posts here, have a narrower, far more focused audience--and should.

And I hate to say this, but quite often the "drying up" of social media posts or other such promotions more accurately reflect a lack of new or good things to share and promote. When I was covering craft beer in the Northeast, I've put certain pubs/breweries on "death watch" when their posts shrivel to meaningless prattle--and I was usually right.

Usually right ??? Really ???

Ross Rowland

Ask anybody who's had to follow food and/or entertainment venues for a newspaper or magazine, Mr. Old Geezer Who Adds Nothing Useful To The Discussion With A Personal Attack.

When a venue stops posting on Facebook or other social media, it means one of three things:
1) The venue has nothing new to promote, no budget to pay for advertising, and/or a management that has stopped caring;
2) The person that was doing the updates quit or was fired, and the venue stupidly didn't retain control of the accounts (rare, but has happened);
or 3) The venue somehow feels it has no need to promote itself because it's now the hottest thing in town (for this month, at least) and there's a line down the block to get in (again, for this month....).

Sure, it's possible to make big money and promote yourself without social media, or even a website if you want to remain basically invisible or have a specific market niche (like selling water in the middle of a L.A. traffic jam gridlock, or illegal business models). But an astute observer can often gauge a place's current functioning and long-term viability by observing their internet presence (like the website that was created in Geocities in 1996 and hasn't been changed since except to be migrated to another server).

To bring this back to the topic at hand, this describes WMSR and #1309. As I remember, early on, they were regularly posting on FB; then the CMO left.

And it got quiet for a very long time.

#1309 is close my heart, I love the look of the brute. That and my car broke down in the museum parking lot right beside #1309, just before closing, and I spent a very long four hours waiting on the tow truck.

Bob

Or, the person who quit, died, or got fired was the only one in the organization who thought that disseminating current information was worth the effort.

The same thing happened to the FEC 148 restoration Facebook page. Nothing has been updated since April 1st and had featured regular updates before that. There's a separate thread on the FEC 148 restoration farther down in "Interchange".

It would appear that when the US Sugar folks decided to end Scott Lindsay's leadership of the project in favor of hiring a " cheaper" contractor on April 1 that lots of progress stalled in addition to the neglected FB page.

As the old true saying goes....you get what you pay for.

Ross Rowland

And another old true saying by Benjamin Franklin.