Museum Marketing

Crowdsourcing the Museum

February 12th, 2010

Museums have long survived on the generosity of volunteers who carry out vital work to support the everyday work of the institution. Today I want to look at how volunteering is evolving for the digital world, with interesting projects which ask the public to volunteer their time online.

Crowdsourcing:
Crowdsourcing is the term used to describe people coming together online to collectively solve a problem. A task is collectively shared by those taking part, whether that is to label objects in a digital collection or to build an exhibition.

Here are few interesting ways in which museums are using crowdsourcing:

V&A – Search the Collections:

vanda

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has a collection database of 140,000 images, these are selected from a database automatically and don’t always show the object to it’s best. The V&A recently launched a crowdsourcing project to ask members of the public to help them to select the best images to use in the collections database.

There are over 116,000 objects which the V&A hopes the public with volunteer to help them sift through. You can sign up to help them and give the V&A crowdsourcing project project a go yourself here.

Memorial Exhibition Archive:

Most history museums do not deal with something as recent as the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, and the unique position which The September 11 Memorial and Museum holds, has given the organisation the opportunity to ask the public to contribute to the creation of their collection through their website.

The memories, mementos and pictures added to the collection will all contribute to ensuring that those lost on September 11th will never be forgotten.

Democracy:

Democracy was an exhibition of graphic design which took place in October 2009, this project asked the public not only to submit work, but also to curate the final selection by voting for which artworks merited inclusion in the final exhibition.

Once the exhibition opened, the public could still vote and change the layout of the exhibition space, which was digitally projected on to the gallery walls.

Tag! You’re it!:

While the V&A crowdsorucing project focused on finding the right crop for images in it’s collection database, this example from the Brooklyn Museum asks the public to instead tag the images with keywords to make them easier to find.

The Brooklyn Museum turned this task in to a game, encouraging people to compete to top the leaderboard of top taggers.

I am interested to find more examples of crowdsourcing within museums, is this something which your institution is using? Please leave a comment and share your project with our readers.

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Posted in Co-production, Crowd-sourcing | 4 Comments »

Mobile friendly museum

February 9th, 2010

Last month I wrote about the increase in people using mobile phones to browse the internet, 3% of web traffic in the UK is now from mobile phones, and half of that comes from iPhones.

These users are more likely to be looking for information on the go, and that includes searching for venue information such as what is on and how to find you.

With this in mind, my agency Sumo have been working on an off the shelf mobile friendly website for a museum, this doesn’t go in to pages of collection information, but does have the basics which people are looking for on the go.

mobile_friendly_website

Above is a picture of the same website, the first is how an iPhone would see this on it’s smaller screen, you need to hunt around to find the information you need to make a visit.

The version on the right is the mobile friendly test site based on the first website, the content management system on this allows museum staff to add as many exhibitions and events, as well as about us and visitor information.

This mobile friendly website is meant to be a low cost off the shelf solution for the rise in mobile phones for museums, and those accessing the museum via a smart phone would be automatically redirected to the mobile friendly website.

You can try the test website out here on an iPhone or smart phone and compare finding information on this to browsing the full museum website on your smaller screen.

I’d be really interested in anything you think we need to add in to make this work as well as possible, without overloading it with features.

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Posted in Mobile | 4 Comments »

Facebook for a Museum – Part 5

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.

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Posted in Facebook | No Comments »

Facebook for a Museum – Part 4

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.

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Posted in Facebook | 2 Comments »

Facebook for a Museum – Part 3

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.

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Posted in Facebook | 2 Comments »

Facebook for a Museum – Part 2

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.

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Posted in Facebook | 6 Comments »

Facebook for a Museum – Part 1

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.

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Posted in Facebook, Social Media | 3 Comments »

Follow a Museum Day

February 2nd, 2010

Yesterday was #followamuseum day on Twitter and the initial signs are that it was a success. The hashtag was used at least 6,000 times (I don’t think this is counting all the tweets as this service missed about 50 which I wrote myself) and the website received in excess of 10,000 unique visitors.

I want now to pause for a minute and ask you to share the number of new followers that your institution gained on follow a museum day and to ask what will you do next to engage with these people?

Share and Enjoy:

Posted in Twitter | 67 Comments »

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