Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

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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

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 »

Conversationalists?

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

ladder

Many of you will be aware of the Forrester Research ladder of social media participation, which categories the different ways in which people use the internet and more importantly, helps you to analysis whether your social media plans will work with your target audiences.

Due to the rise in micro-blogging, Forrester has added a new rung to it’s ladder for those they’ve dubbed “Conversationalists”. This group tweet or update their social networking status at least once a week and account for 33% of the online population in the US (compared with 70% who consume social content and 59% who use social networks).

Conversationalists are 56% female, more than any other group in the ladder. While they’re among the youngest of the groups, 70% are still 30 and up.

So what does Conversationalists mean to your social media plans?
The fact that Forrester have added this category really emphasises the growth in Twitter and the changes which Facebook have made in response to this.

Museums need to take advantage of the opportunity that Conversationists offer them, by becoming part of the conversation themselves. Hundreds of Museums are already on Twitter and these institutions are on the right track. If your thinking of joining them then this step by step guide to getting started on Twitter is a good place to start.

Posted in Social Media, Trends, Twitter | No Comments »

Foursquare for Museums

Monday, January 18th, 2010

marsh_cafe_flyer

I have been hearing a lot of people saying that Foursquare is going to be the next big thing, and I thought you might be interest in knowing about it, or if you are using it, you may wish to share your experience in the comments below.

What is Foursquare?
Foursquare is a location based game which encourages people to find and share interesting places (restaurants, museums, bars, etc) with friends.

People play Foursquare via Smartphones “checking in” or “leaving tips” about real world locations as they go about their everyday lives.

Information that you are putting in to Foursquare about the locations that you are interacting with is pushed out in to Twitter and Facebook for your friends to see and left on the Foursquare page for that location so if someone checks out your gallery, they may have written a review of an exhibition for other Foursquare users to see.

To encourage users to “check in” they receive points for visiting places, and the person who checks in to a location the most get’s made the Mayor of that location.

Museums and Foursquare
The Vancouver Police Museum is one of the institutions who have embraced Foursquare by offering incentives to the person who is Mayor on the game (and in doing so encouraging people to visit the Museum).

The Mayor of the Vancouver Police Museum gets free entry for themselves and a friend and 25% off in the gift shop.

foursquare_iphone

Brooklyn Museum also offers incentives to those who “check in” on Foursquare, offering a one year 1st fans membership to their mayor on the first Saturday of every month.

Looking at Foursquare a few Museums are offering similar incentives.

The next big thing?
Foursquare is being hyped as the next big thing, so perhaps now is the time to make yourself aware of what it is all about, even if it is just to see what people have written about your Museum in the game. Whether Foursquare makes a big splash or not, I think this kind of location based review will become popular in 2010 to some extent.

Is your Museum is using Foursquare in some way? I’d be interested to hear about your experience.

Posted in Foursquare, Social Media, Web 2.0 | 3 Comments »

Social Media policy for a Museum

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

As I mentioned in my Museum Marketing Trends 2010 blog post at the start of this year, people are increasingly talking about putting policy, guidelines or frameworks in place to help to set out how people in Museums are using Social Media.

I found these documents that may be useful to anyone looking to write a guideline for their organisation.

- IMA Blog Guidelines

- Powerhouse Museum Blog Policy

- BBC Guidelines for use of social media

- Red Cross – Social Media Handbook

- Smithsonian Web and Social Media Strategy

- UK Government Template Twitter Strategy

- UK Civil Service, Code of Conduct for online Participation

- Walker Art Centre, Blog Guidelines

If you have produced or seen a guidelines that you think it would be useful to add to this list, please leave a comment below.

Posted in Social Media | 5 Comments »

Social Media Handbook for Museums

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

notes

Earlier this week I had a meeting with a Museum Director about how his organisation is approaching Social Media, he had a few questions about how to handle this and having read my blog had invited me to go and offer some advice.

I mentioned some upcoming social media events which might help, but he said something along the lines of that he didn’t need inspiration, he believed in the benefits of Social Media, he was looking for more practical guidance as to how to move forwards on websites like Twitter and Facebook.

I said that I would think about how I could best help his organisation with this practical help and returned to my office, where over the past few days I have written a handbook for Museums using Twitter and Facebook, these ‘chapters’ have turned out to be more then guides to two social networks, they are the start of what I intend to be a practical handbook for social media for Museums (also covering things like Flickr, You Tube, Blogs etc).

Readers of this blog are always very generous with their helpful comments, and now I need your input. What should a practical handbook on social media for the Museum contain, what have you struggled with, what challenges have you faced, what problems do you have with developing social media for your institution? What questions should a book like this answer?

Posted in Social Media, Social Media Handbook for Museums | 12 Comments »

Five free tools for listening to social media

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

listening_to_twitter

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you might remember the five step social media plan for museums which I posted last year, in this I suggested that the first step for any organisation thinking about using social for marketing is to learn how your audiences are using these spaces and what they are talking about.

This makes a lot of sense because it allows you to work out how you can best contribute to these conversations.

Of course with several social networks to consider, and countless conversations to track, how can you effectively listen to what people are saying about your museum?

Help is at hand in the form of these five free tools which will help you to keep track of these conversations.

Google alerts – Google Alerts let you set up searches on keywords and receive email or RSS alerts every time they show up online.

Tweetbeep.com – This is similar to Google alerts, it allows you to set up alerts on keywords and receive an email notification every time they are mentioned on Twitter.

Twitter search – The advanced search function gives you a really great tool for seeing what people are talking about on Twitter. Museums might find the ‘Near this place’ function especially useful.

Backtype – This search engine covers lots of social media spaces, but it’s particularly good for keeping an eye on what people are talking about on blogs.

Social Mention – This is a great social media search engine which covers lots of networks.

If you know of any other effective tools for listening to what people are saying in the social media space, I’d love to hear about them and try them out.

Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »

Tips for measuring your Museums Social Media

Thursday, December 17th, 2009

bitly

With falling budgets and fewer staff one of the big trends in museums for 2010 will be measuring return on investment. I think that will be felt across all the activities in the museum, but I want to focus on how you can measure whether your social media strategy is working for your organisation.

Many museums tell me that their management are still skeptical about how much social media can help them to achieve their goals, and now is the time to start to prove what is effective and to ditch the websites which are not working for your organisation.

I’d suggest that you start with a benchmarking exercise:

How many followers or fans do you have in social networks?
This should be easy to find out. I’d track this week by week and look for how new fans or followers find you.

How much traffic is your website getting via social networks?
Your websites stats package should be able to tell you not only how many visitors you are getting through social networks, but also the depth and length of their visit.

You should also keep a record of other traffic sources to your website so that you can compare the contribution that social media makes to other sources.

What are people saying about your museum?
Use the website Socialmention to check what people are saying about your museum and keep a record of this. How many positive comments are you getting a week? How many negative?

You should also record conversations that you have with fans and followers. This kind of interaction is key to social media and an engaged audience is a loyal one.

What are people clicking?

If you post links on social media websites you should try using services like bit.ly or Hootsuite which let you track the number of people clicking on the links that you post. This will give some indication of the amount of people taking action and engaging with content that you post.

This also tells you what your audiences are interested in learning more about, but you might find that the link title matters as much as the content.

How much time are you spending on Social Media?
It is useful to know how much time you are spending on your Social Media activity, broken down by platform.

But what about your goals?
As you are doing this benchmarking exercise, you need to start to think about what your goals are? Perhaps it is to increase the reputation of your museum, to attract more visitors or create awareness of your exhibition programme.

Goal 1 : Increase the reputation of your museum
Now you have benchmarked your social media activities:

  • Measure the growth of your fans and followers.
  • Measure the conversations about your museum on social networks.
  • Measure any blog posts about your museum.
  • Measure click throughs to your website from social networks.

Goal 2 : To attract more visitors
Now you have benchmarked your social media activities:

  • Ask fans or followers if they have visited a new exhibition.
  • Record people mentioning visits on social networks.
  • Record click throughs from social networks to the making a visit page on your website.
  • Include social media in visitor research.
  • Hold a special event for followers and fans.

Goal 3 : Create awareness of your exhibition

  • Measure the number of conversations, links and retweets about your exhibition.
  • Measure click throughs from social media spaces to information about the exhibition on your website.
  • Look for positive reviews of the exhibition from fans and followers, and retweet.
  • Ask those visiting the exhibition to tweet reviews (with notices in the museum)

By recording progress month on month, you should be able to build up a picture of what is working and how much time you are having to spend to generate these results.

Are you trying to measure the impact of your social media activity? What is working for you?

Posted in Measuring, Social Media | 5 Comments »

Why museums should blog

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

museumlondon

It seems like there is always something new to get excited about on the internet, conference backchannels buzz with talk of web 3.0 and museums using the semantic web, augmented reality and crowd sourcing. So why am I talking about blogging, isn’t that so 2005?

Why museums should blog
Blogging is a brilliant way for you to give audiences the chance to see a different side of the museum. There is a genuine interest in what happens behind the scenes in a museum or gallery and a blog gives you the chance to give those interested in your organisation a deeper understanding of the work that goes into an exhibition, research, event or education programme.

It can also provide information in bite-size chunks, perfect for casual browsers, and can give you an outlet to create build-up for something, such as with posts about the stages of preparation for a large event.

A museum blog is a brilliant way to increase the website traffic that you get from search engines, because a blog is regularly updated with rich content full of links. In my experience a museum can expect its traffic to rise by around 10% by adding a blog.

What to write on a museum blog?
Your starting point should be to think about your audiences, who are you writing for, and what would they be interested in? Remember that your visitors are fascinated by what goes on behind closed doors, so think about photographing exhibitions being installed, write about your exhibit of the week or talk about the ghost in the basement.

I would recommend that you are very careful not to post any press releases about new exhibitions on the blog, as the formal style of a press release would jar with the informal written style of a blog. You should try and keep your blog posts to under 500 words and use sub-headings to break up the text and make it easy to skim read.

Who should write your museum blog?
I think it would be a mistake to try and write a museum blog alone. A client of mine recently decided to set up a blog, they decided that they would to have two new blog posts per week and decided that it would take ten members of staff to accomplish that. They asked for volunteers from across the organisation, and asked those interested in being involved to write a sample blog post (to check they could write). One important thing to note here is that these individuals came from across the organisation, each bringing a unique perspective on the work that takes place behind closed doors.

How often should a museum blog?
A blog is meant to be updated regularly, and I’d suggest that you aim for a new blog post every week, to do this you really need to have a number of people writing the blog and encourage people from across your organisation to put idea’s forwards.

Get ready for a conversation!
Though at first glance a blog may look like a publishing medium, every blog post tends to invite comments from readers and you need to be ready to respond to these comments. This is a great way of gathering feedback and connecting with and getting to know your audience. It is worth thinking about how you will respond to feedback, some of which may be negative. Be open to the points that people put forward on your blog and always be prepared to learn from your audiences.

Posted in Blogs, Social Media, Web 2.0 | 8 Comments »

Google earthquake hits museum marketing

Friday, December 11th, 2009

I recently read an article which described the changes that we have seen in the internet as the warning tremors before the earthquake hits, and the new version of Google which has started to roll out this week could be that earthquake for museum marketing.

google_latest

Take a look at the screengrab above. At the top of this you will see that this says ‘Latest results’ this pulls the latest information from social networks and new channels (it’s call real time search). This means a major change in the information that people will get when they search for your museum.

In the old Google, you knew that if someone searched for your museum, the first result would be your website. With the new Google, the first result is more likely to be someone talking about you on Twitter or Facebook. This could be a favorable review or it could be someone complaining about bad experience.

A museum who is itself active in the social media space will have some control over what these results might be, while an institution which hasn’t entered Facebook and Twitter will be much more vulnerable to these changes.

I think this will force museums who are not yet in this social media space to embrace these technologies, even if that is by just actively listening to what people are saying about them on sites like Twitter (try SocialMention.com).

The new Google is rolling out at the minute, are you ready for it?

Posted in Facebook, Google, Social Media, Twitter | 1 Comment »

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

This clip from the Wizard of Oz was used by DK from MediaSnackers at a conference we both spoke at last week to illustrate the point that those speaking on behalf of an organisation on social networks need to be themselves, rather then trying to ‘be the brand’.

I really liked the comparison.

Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

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