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TATE on Facebook

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

This morning I saw Jesse Ringham from TATE give a great presentation about the work that his organisation is doing with Facebook.

Jesse spoke about how TATE tries to communicate with it’s audiences on Facebook in a friendly and conversational style, providing a place on the social network where the public can find out about what is happening at their venues. Many of these people might not go to the galleries actual website, but are very comfortable browsing information on Facebook, which they see as their own online space.

One of the initiatives which I really liked was the use of a money off voucher which Facebook fans could print off and take to TATE Modern for a discounted ticket for the Chris Ofili exhibition. This has been presented by roughly 4000 people to date, and shows a real connection between those who interact with the museum online and those visiting an exhibition (not to mention £20,000 of ticket revenue).

TATE have a very active Facebook fan page, with most things that they post attracting large numbers (even hundreds) of comments. This kind of engagement just isn’t possible on the organisations own website.

It was great to hear about the work that goes on behind the scenes to keep the TATE Facebook fan page looking fresh, and I’d recommend that you go and check this out for inspiration if you are thinking about using Facebook for your own organisation.

Posted in Facebook | 3 Comments »

Facebook for a Museum – Part 5

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Facebook gives the administrator of a fan pages free statistics called ‘Insights’ to track how people are engaging with them on the social network.

Insights will give you up to date information about how people are interacting with your page in a number of ways:

Unsubscribed Fans:
Insight allows you to track how many people have unsubscribed from being fans of your museum on Facebook. This is an important metric which can give you a clear indication of whether the content that you are posting is appealing to fans. Look out for sudden increases in people unsubscribing and consider changing the frequency that you are posting and the content that you are posting if this happens.

Interaction:
I personally feel that interaction is more important for a museum then the number of people who become fans. You can view the number of comments, the number of likes and the number of views your content is getting in your ‘insights’ analytics.

Interaction per post:
As well as looking at interaction across your activity, ‘insights’ analytics also lets you view the interaction with your fans for each post. This is a great way to learn what is working and over time this can help you to improve your post quality.

Demographics:
As well as giving you information about how your fans are interacting with you, you can also access information about your fans demographics, how old are they, what sex are they. The chances are that this will differ from the visitor profile of your organisation and it is worth keeping this in mind when creating content for Facebook.

Page Views:
As well as showing you how people are engaging with your content, you can also see how many page views your Fan page is receiving, as your fan base increases, this should grow.

Other ways of keeping track of Facebook Fan Pages:
As well as using the ‘insights’ analytics you can track the success of your Facebook fan page in a number of other ways.

Bit.ly:
If you use Twitter, you will be familiar with URL shortening services like Bit.ly. While these are good for making website addresses shorter, they are also great for tracking how many people click through a link and this can be a useful tool to use on Facebook.

Google Analytics:
If you have Google Analytics set up on your museum website, you can track how many visitors are coming from Facebook and even track which sections of your website these people then visit.

Over the past week I have given an introduction to Facebook for a Museum, I hope that this proves useful and I’d be really interested if you think I have missed anything.

Posted in Facebook | No Comments »

Facebook for a Museum – Part 4

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Over the past week I have looked at why a museum should set up a Facebook fan page, discussed how you can make this look attractive to potential fans and touched on how to create engaging content.

In this article I am going to look at how you can promote your Facebook page to attract fans.

Start with your friends:
Virally building your fan base starts with your friends, simply click the “Suggest to Friends” link on your fan page and select those friends who you think would enjoy engaging with your museum on Facebook to become fans.

You should spread the word internally within your museum about your new fan page and get your colleagues to sign up, and suggest becoming a fan to their friends.

As your fan base grows you will find yourself linked to more and more networks of friends, and as people engage with your fan page this will feed back to the people who are connected to them, and encourage them to investigate your fan page for themselves.

This is why it is incredibly important to create good content which people can engage with, because good content will be spread virally.

Promoting your Facebook page in existing channels:
You wouldn’t produce a leaflet without your website address on it, and increasingly your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and You Tube sites are becoming just as important. With this in mind, you should consider signposting all your social networks on printed promotional materials.

As well as printed materials, you should also link to your Facebook fan page from your museum website, and talk about it in your e-newsletter and on other social networks.

I would also encourage museums to look at ways to tell visitors to the museum that they can be found on Facebook, whether that is a poster in the café or a notice on your information desk.

Facebook Advertising:
I haven’t seen any museums using Facebook advertising to promote a fan page (though I have used it successfully myself to promote museum websites) but this may be something you wish to consider because of the low cost and the fact that the people are obviously already on Facebook.

Facebook advertising also allows you to target your advert at people in your geographical area, and to target specific interests or age groups.

Search Engines:
I am always surprised at how hard some museum fan pages are to find, both with Facebook’s own search facility and with Google. Make sure that your page contains enough information about your museum that the person visiting it doesn’t need to go to your main website and that should provide enough content to make your fan page stand out in search engines.

Do you have other ways in which you have promoted your Facebook fan page? Please leave a comment and tell us what has worked for you.

Posted in Facebook | 2 Comments »

Facebook for a Museum – Part 3

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Yesterday I looked at how you can create a great first impression with a landing page for your Facebook fan page, and while this will help you to attract fans, you need to have interesting content to keep them coming back.

Why does it matter if people come back to your page? Because the more that a person interacts with your venue, the more likely they are to visit in the real world.

Update your status:
The status updates are one of the most important things about your fan page, because once somebody has become a fan of your museum, these update will appear in their primary news feed.

These status updates should be used to create engagement with you fans, don’t just broadcast information, ask questions and invite people to share their opinion with you.

Coming up with original content 365 days a year can be quite stressful, but remember that you can always post links to other peoples content (including stuff on your main museum website). Creating content which engages, informs, entertains or just makes people smile will keep them coming back to your fan page.

Remember the social media editorial plan:
I’ve written before about having a social media editorial plan for your activity on social networks. Ideally you want to plan out your updates in advance and where possible use the same content to feed both your Facebook status updates and your tweets on Twitter.

Respond to your fans:
As well as creating good content, you also need to respond to your fans comments and show that your museum is ready to listen and that engage with them.

Encourage your fans to add content:
Encourage your fans to add their own comments, pictures and video to the wall on your museums fan page. This will make your fans feel more engaged with your museum and has the added benefit of virally spreading information relevant to your museum to all of their friends through their feed.

Share your photos and video:
Pictures and videos are a great way to give people a behind the scenes look at your museum, whether it’s a picture of your new dinosaur being installed or an interview with a curator.

Another good way for a museum to use photos would be to hold an exclusive exhibition preview for your fans and then post pictures of this on your fan page for people to tag themselves in. Each time someone tags themselves in a picture, this will appear on their news feed to their friends. This could virally spread the word about your museum to thousands of people.

I mentioned Apps yesterday, and Flickr and YouTube Apps make it possible to link your content on these other social media platforms .

Competitions:
Competitions are a good way to encourage your fans to keep coming back. The prize doesn’t need to break the bank perhaps a ticket to a new exhibition or an invitation to a preview night.

One idea which I like, is to ask your fans to create a new profile photo for your museum, this is very simple, but really allows your fans to effect how your museum.

Don’t forget your goals:
It is easy to get carried away with Facebook, but you need to keep in mind that your reason for having a fan page, this should be to help your museum to achieve its goals.

This is why I’d recommend a social media editorial plan, so that your content is (to some extent) planned out with your goals in mind.

Posted in Facebook | 2 Comments »

Facebook for a Museum – Part 2

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Yesterday I discussed why you would want to be on Facebook and how to get started with a Facebook Fan Page. Today I want to focus on how you can make your fan page really stand out.

Landing page:
Adding a landing page on to your fan page is one of the ways which you can make a big first impression for new visitors, big brands like Coke and GAP have been using these for a while. The landing page below is one which my company recently created for the fan page of Seven Stories in the UK.

The landing page of the Seven Stories fan page highlights upcoming events, exhibitions and contains book reviews, this is all compelling content which gives a great first impression of the museum and the fan page.

The Seven Stories fan page has a content management system behind it, making it easy for the marketing team at the museum to keep the content fresh.

If you are interested in having a similar landing page designed for your venue, this is a service that my company Sumo provides for £1200 (UK pounds) email me at jim (at) sumodesign.co.uk for more details.

Looking good with Apps:
As well as creating a good first impression, your fan page needs to be packed with interesting content and one of the ways to do this is with Apps. If you have a personal account with Facebook then your probably aware of Apps, on a fan page these allow you to add useful functionality which will make your page more engaging and sticky for your fans.

Some Apps which you may want to consider adding to your museum fan page are:

Twitter App – this automatically pulls your tweets in to your Facebook

YouTube BOX – connect your YouTube content with Facebook

MyFlickr – connect your Flickr content with Facebook

There are thousands of Apps on Facebook, check out what other museums and brands which you admire have installed on their fan pages.

Posted in Facebook | 6 Comments »

Facebook for a Museum – Part 1

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

With over 300 million active users Facebook is the worlds leading social network, and has even ranked higher then Google as the world most visited website at times over the past twelve months.

The chances are that you are a member of Facebook, and as such you have a profile on the social network. Many museums also have a presence on Facebook, these aren’t profiles as you as an individual might have, but a Facebook page (something which is sometimes also referred to as a fan page).

Facebook groups v fan pages
Facebook allows you to set up two kinds of pages for your museum, either a group or a fan page. While the difference between the two may not seems obvious until you join the website, a museum will be better served by a fan page.

To view a group you need to become a member of Facebook, but anyone can view a fan page without logging into the website. This makes a museum choosing to set up a fan page more visible than one choosing to set up a group.

Secondly, if you send out any invitations or emails from a group, they actually come from the administrator of that group (complete with your picture), rather than the museum. If you instead choose to use a fan page then whatever you send to your fans will come from the museum.

Thirdly, a group is limited to 5,000 people whilst a fan page can have as many fans as you like.

Getting started with Facebook pages
To create a fan page you will need to be a member of Facebook. Once you have logged in scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on Advertising. Then click pages and then Create a Page.

Select the Museum choice of categories and enter the name of your Museum before clicking to create your page (be careful doing this as you can’t change it after you have selected a name for your fan page). You are given the option of keeping the page private, and I’d suggest that you do this until you have added content in to your page.

Posted in Facebook, Social Media | 3 Comments »

Cross platform Social Media editorial plan

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Managing the social media function of a museum can take a lot of time and effort, as I mentioned in my Step by Step Twitter Guide last week, I’d recommend an editorial plan to make your life easier, but one thing I didn’t cover in that article was how to manage a social media editorial plan across more than one social network.

Lots of museums have a presence on both Facebook and Twitter, and I think that it makes sense to look at the content that your putting on to these websites in one plan, with a lot of overlaps.

Lets face it, everyone has their own favorite social network and the only person who is going to be reading what you write on both Facebook and Twitter is you. This is good news for your workload, because you don’t need to think of cool stuff to write on each social network, just come up with one plan and then implement it across these websites.

So what is a social media editorial plan?
As I explained last week, a social media editorial plan is a diary of the actions you will take on your chosen social media platforms, this will cover the different activities which make up your social media activity.

- Listening
- Conversing
- Editorial / broadcasting

You might say that you will spend five minutes three times a day listening (checking what people are writing about your organization) and for answering questions or responding to comments and then ten minutes a day creating editorial or broadcast material.

It is this editorial or broadcast material which I believe you can save a lot of time on, by using the same message on your different networks.

You may for example say that every Monday you will post a picture of an object from your collection and ask you followers/fans to guess what it is. This could be posted to both Facebook and Twitter, saving you both the time and effort of creating different content for different networks.

Adding Hootsuite in to the process
Hootsuite is a website which allows you to broadcast to both Facebook and Twitter from one screen, allowing you can write one message and send it to both networks at once.

Hootsuite also lets you schedule these ‘tweets’ in advance, so you could plan your editorial posts for the month ahead and automate this, so that you only need to think about the listening and conversing functions day to day.

Planning your social media activity doesn’t of course have to stop you from posting more spontaneous tweets, but it can act as a backbone to your work on Facebook and Twitter, making it easier to manage and giving you the time to create interesting and engaging content.

Is your museum on more then one social media platform? How do you manage the content?

Posted in Facebook, Social Media, Twitter | 8 Comments »

What museums can learn from Coke!

Monday, December 14th, 2009

I just came across this interesting list of the top brands on Facebook. I have to admit that my first response was to find it slightly depressing that Coca-Cola has 3,996,163 fans while most museums struggle to get more then 20,000.

Then I took some time to look at what these brands are doing with Facebook.

Coca-Cola
When you arrive at Coca-Cola’s fan page you get incredibly rich content which really gives people a reason to become a fan, this includes links to music videos, free games, a free iPhone application and a selection of pictures and videos produced by fans.

The design is incredibly well done and this looks more like Coca-Cola’s website then a Facebook fan page.

Gap
Another really high quality fan page with great content. The ‘Cheer Factory’ lets people send a video Christmas greeting to a friend, create your own holiday celebration (mine was called Jimsmas), view a GAP advert, vote for which store made the best home made holiday cheer and download a free iPhone app.

JCPenny
American store JCPenny is another big brand which does a lot with it’s Facebook fan page. This does it’s best to try and push their products with links to their online store, articles on the latest trends, a gift guru which suggests presents for your Facebook friends and staff talking about their favorite gifts (from JCPenny of course).

Big brands versus the museum
Now lets look at a museum Facebook page, I have chosen the Design Museum in London. The Design Museum seems to be doing a good job of keeping it’s wall up to date, but when compared to the examples above the content doesn’t seem to be that deep and I don’t think visitors would stay on the page for very long.

The easy response to this would be to say that these brands have large budgets while the Design Museum has a limited amount that it can spend on it’s Facebook activity, but it doesn’t need to cost a fortune to create a more engaging first impression.

This is an example from the planetarium at Thinktank, the Birmingham Science Museum, for me this creates a much more interesting first impression then going straight to the wall as shown on the Design Museum example.

Looking at the how big brands have created a more interesting first impression on Facebook, I took a look at how the Design Museum page might look if we borrowed some idea’s from Coke, GAP and JCPenny.

The first block contains information about an upcoming exhibition, this could switch through information about all the current exhibitions.

On the right hand side of the page we have items from the Design Museum shop, these could change daily.

The page links to video content and podcasts which I found on the Design Museum website, this is really great content and it would be good to push this on Facebook, and finally I have added in a section for people to download free iPhone wallpapers, that would be a easy to produce give away.

So, can museums learn something from Coke about how to make a bigger impact on Facebook? I believe they can, but I’d be interested to hear what you think.

Posted in Facebook | 13 Comments »

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