It’s been a really interesting month working with museums around New Zealand on their social media activities and strategies for building audiences. I’ve run four workshops for Te Papa National Services Te Paerangi – in the process, meeting fabulous, passionate museums, archives, gallery and library professionals who are curious about social media. Here are some themes that have stood out for me (to find out what the museums thought, read our workshop blog):
* Use of social media is much more nuanced than it used to be. For example – whether serendipitous or intentional – Te Papa has two twitter feeds, each for a different purpose. One focuses on promoting events, happenings, exhibitions and giveaways, and the other profiles interesting items from their collection. MORE MORE
* Whether we personally like it or not, a professional presence on Facebook enables organisations to intersect with the social lives of potential audiences. Research indicates that social interaction can be a pretext for participation, and also that people are increasingly influenced by recommendations from family, friends and even strangers over traditional forms of promotion. Facebook and services like it encourage your ‘fans’ to market your service for you.
* A website is important but not enough. A website centralises information about your organisation – social media distributes information. Some people will follow you on twitter or fan you on Facebook so that they don’t have to go to your website – your information gets fed to them in their own personal compilation or version of the web.
* Virtual visits are something that museums need to value as a legitimate cultural experience. They can generate physical visits – web cam footage of Te Papa’s colossal squid had people turning up to see it in the flesh. Curating online makes your collection or service accessible to audiences who are remote and may never be able to walk through the doors.
* For resource-strapped organisations, a blog or Facebook page may give them a low-cost web presence and also greater flexibility if they are part of a larger website run by a parent organisation. It’s also an opportunity to present a less formal, characterful and behind-the-scenes personaltiy. Of course, these activities don’t promote themselves – audiences won’t automatically appear – they need feeding. THere’s also plenty of opportunities out there to leverae other people’s efforts – sites like nzmuseums, nzlive and tourism ventures.
* ‘Under the radar’ activities are giving way to an interest in building social media into communications and marketing planning. Linking your activities to your vision and marketing objectives will help ensure your choosing the right tools for the right reasons, prioritising what your resourcing can manage, as well as thinking through the implications of organisational social media policy, branding and so on.
Joining the great examples of what NZ museums are already doing with social media, these organisations have established new social media activities since the workshop:
Great examples of museums’ use of social media, the tools and other links – see the workshop blog.
It’s been a really interesting month working with museums around New Zealand on their social media activities and strategies for building audiences.
We’ve run a series of workshops for National Services Te Paerangi (Te Papa), meeting passionate museums, archives, gallery and library professionals who want to find out more about what social media can do for them.
Here are the five themes that have stood out for us:
- A professional presence on Facebook enables organisations to intersect with the social lives of potential audiences. Research indicates that social interaction can be a pretext for participation, and also that people are increasingly influenced by recommendations from family, friends and even strangers over traditional forms of promotion. Facebook and services like it encourage fans to market your service for you. Museums reported some successful forays into audience building via Facebook.
- Virtual visits are something that museums can value as a legitimate cultural experience. Virtual visits can generate physical visits – web camera footage of the dissection of the colossal squid had people turning up to Te Papa to see it in the flesh. Curating online makes your collection or service accessible to audiences who are remote and may never be able to walk through the doors.
- Use of social media is increasingly nuanced and discriminating. Te Papa has two twitter feeds: one focuses on promoting events, happenings, exhibitions and giveaways, and the other profiles interesting items from their collection. Ideas for blogs generated by workshop participants ranged from working with the community to identify unknown objects in a collection to presenting a characterful, behind-the-scenes museum personality.
- For resource-strapped organisations, a blog or Facebook page may give them a low-cost web presence or greater flexibility if they are part of a larger website run by a parent organisation. A website is important but not enough. A website centralises information about your organisation; social media distributes information. Audiences may visit your website rarely but receive your twitter updates regularly.
- ‘Under the radar’ activities are giving way to building social media into communications and marketing plans. Linking your activities to your marketing objectives will help you choose the right tools for the right reasons, prioritise what you can manage, as well as think through the implications for organisational social media policy, branding and so on (see this post on the workshop blog about social media strategy).
We’ve heard from a few workshop participants who’ve set up blogs and twitter accounts, including these two new blogs: Runanga Falls and Presbytarian Research. Check out the workshop blog to read about what participants thought and to get links to great examples of museums’ use of social media and articles and tips on using social media effectively.
