Why Your Nonprofit’s Number of Social Media Followers Doesn’t Matter
January 23, 2012
(…nearly as much as most organizations think that they matter)
Would you rather have 100,000 Facebook “likes” from folks who never visit your museum or donate to your cause, or 10 Facebook “likes” from folks who do?
It’s important to have an ongoing presence on social media because customer interactions build powerful word of mouth marketing opportunities, it is important to be accessible, and transparency is an increasingly important social priority for successful businesses. However, I’m always surprised when I start working with an organization and the marketing department’s social media strategy focuses on gaining Facebook likes or Twitter followers rather than engaging online audiences or getting people through the door. This happens all the time. Really... it happens all the time. It’s a good idea to aim for high quality followers, but focusing on collecting sheer numbers is a waste of time and using this as key metric for success is a distraction. Having thousands upon thousands of social media followers is not necessarily indicative of an engaging online presence and may not be working to your organization’s benefit at all.
Your number of social media followers can and should be used to track growth and engagement, but aiming simply for high numbers misses the boat. Here's a photo tip from John Haydon.
Social media follower numbers are a big tease. They are displayed prominently on social media sites and organizations yearn for a way to measure ROI for social media. Thus, organizations often measure success based upon the pure number of people who follow them. These marketing managers are distracted. Goals for social media should be no different from the greater goals of the organization. At the end of the day (for museums, for instance), that goal is to increase visitation, evangelism, and educate or inspire the public. An organization’s ability to do this is not dependent upon the number of followers or likes that they have, but the quality and level of engagement of those followers. Stop focusing only on this number and making it a single point of celebration.
The value of social media followers:
To reference a metaphor that I use frequently, engaging folks online is like managing and setting up a community marathon race. If getting runners to complete the marathon means that you’ve converted the individual into a donor, then getting a “like” means that somebody has signed up to join your training program. Generally, training programs are important to have for many reasons and there’s reason to pay attention to the number of people who sign up. However, not everyone who joined the program will finish the marathon… and many more people will likely complete the marathon who haven’t signed up for the program (or who aren’t represented in your “likes” on Facebook).
Though number of “likes,” followers, and subscribers is far less important than the quality of the evangelism in these folks, likes actually do have some value on their own- it’s just not as significant as some make it out to be. It’s important to understand how this number (alone) can actually help your organizations reach its goals on social media:
- Social media followers are self-identified evangelists and collecting followers increases the likelihood that people will see your message thanks to placements in newsfeeds or the Facebook Ticker. However, they do not mean that people will share, promote, or engage with your message- or even that their level of evangelism reaches beyond that single “like” or “follow” click. Focus on engaging audiences and inspiring conversation (which increase your reputation, a proven driver of visitation to a museum) instead of increasing your sheer number of low-level followers.
- An organization’s number of social media followers often indicates credibility to potential donors or visitors. However, a small number of followers isn’t likely to deter high-level evangelists who feel a connection to your organization. This benefit of having sheer high numbers of social media followers does not outweigh a misdirected effort to focus on this metric above all else. Try to get social media followers when you can, but aim for individuals who are likely to communicate your message and don’t make sheer numbers your top priority.
What should you measure instead of focusing entirely on your number of social media followers? Your organizations’ conversation rate, amplification rate and applause rate are good places to start.
The whole point of collecting social media followers is to get them to do something.
Recently, Rick Schwartz (@ZooKeeperRick) of the San Diego Zoo aimed to prove the “power of social media” by taking on a challenge to get 30 new Twitter followers in 3 days. Rick more than succeeded; he reached 30 followers in just the first day and collected over 96 new followers by his deadline three days later. The goal of this was- very simply- to gain followers… Any followers. In this case, it was likely that the audience reached in this initative could be classified more as social media fans than zoo advocates so it’s hard to say if this experiment demonstrates a certain level of evangelism or even strengthens Rick’s online influence… But he achieved his goal and made a point: “social media can get the word out, and quickly.” All too often, this is where social media goals end: after the initiative to get more social media followers ends. But what’s the point of having any followers at all if not to spread a message? Why exert an effort to get followers if there isn’t even more effort put into getting these followers to do or support something?
On social media, Rick is a huge marketing asset for the zoo. He is engaging, fun, and tweets great conservation and animal information. In several ways, he is a living message and accessible personality for the zoo who helps fulfill the zoo’s goal to educate and inspire. He’s proved that getting numbers can be achieved (especially when it’s timely and urgent), but he has his eye on the greater point of social media for nonprofits:
Focusing efforts on achieving high social media follower numbers misses the point of social media and does not even guarantee that followers will be active, engaged, or share your message. However, making efforts to attract high quality evangelists online is a worthy goal that helps your organization achieves its mission in the long run. Design your social media strategy for an outcome that meets the organization’s goal (inspiring visitation, securing donations, or raising awareness) and don’t be sidetracked by sheer follower numbers. The goal isn’t just a high number. The goal is a high number of high-quality social media followers who will actively support your cause. One person who believes in your organization is worth far more than one million people who don’t.
What Facebook’s Changes Mean for Museums and Visitor Serving Organizations
September 26, 2011
With over 800 million users, Facebook is moving its focus from growth to engagement. This means big changes that will necessitate an evolution of how museums and visitor serving organizations think about engaging folks on Facebook.
Mark Zuckerberg explained on Thursday at the f8 Developer Conference in San Fransisco that Facebook is about to roll out some big changes and new features in the next few weeks. Some of these changes (like the Ticker on our right sidebar, for instance), are upon us already. More changes, including the public launch of Facebook’s new and famous Timeline, are on the way. These big changes will affect how brands interact with people online, and change-up the way that museums are connecting with the public. Here’s what Facebook’s new changes mean for museums and visitor serving organizations:
1. The focus on social applications means that content is (still) king– but with a way, WAY fancier throne: Because Facebook is turning its focus to engagement, organizations and brands with high levels of creativity are most likely to be organically rewarded and shared by users. One of the biggest changes that Facebook is launching is Timeline. The aim of Timeline is to tell the story of a person’s life through past and present Facebook content. Facebook is branding it as an online scrapbook of your life. In sum (and in my own words), it is a very intense, longer profile that aggregates past statuses, comments, and Facebook activity, and makes it public. You can check out a video preview of the feature here. Though some folks are already giddy about how much they like Timeline, others are already warning folks about privacy, noise, and the potential inundation that users will likely feel from brands– specifically, those that are Facebook’s partners like Spotify and Netflix– which will play big roles in Facebook’s changes. At f8, Zuckerberg was explicit about two, key goals of Facebook’s changes: to help folks fill out their Timeline by helping them to share important information, and to help people discover new things. That second point sounds like a good thing for all brands on Facebook. It also sounds like there will be a lot of noise and competition for prime spots on Facebook users’ Timelines.
Brands come into play in the Apps feature of Timeline. This is a new part of your profile where users can add apps to share what movies they’ve watched, what music they are listening to, etc. This is also the prime real estate that ZAMs will be going for with apps. Experts are predicting that the apps that survive and get shared will be those that are the most engaging. That is, they inspire conversation and provide compelling content. Unlike joining Facebook and just aiming for “likes,” organizations are going to need to get active. Rising above the noise won’t be easy, but there’s one thing that everyone seems to agree upon: “Your content is going to need to be absolutely amazing.”
There’s another incentive to put even more creative energy into creating compelling content: boring brands will have low visibility, and may not be seen at all. People will be able to “vote up” and “vote down” the importance of actions on their Timeline. Over time, Facebook will pick up the pattern and automatically vote up or down content that fits the user’s patterns. Recently, we could see notifications like, “Jessica likes The Field Museum.” Already, however, this information is often reduced to a coming up in the Ticker (small, ongoing, right hand feed) if it comes up at all. If the Field Museum doesn’t have an engaging presence on Facebook, then the Museum’s content will be “voted down” and won’t make it very far– let alone onto a person’s Timeline. The new goal of Facebook is for people to share and interact with more content. If your organization isn’t providing this content, it’s not going to be shared easily. But that’s not all that bad news for nonprofits! Nonprofits are often considered masters of storytelling. Joe Green, the president of Causes.com is already excited about the potential for these Facebook changes to bring us one step closer to changing the world for the better.
2. Building up the “walled garden” means organizations will need to broaden their marketing strategy– AND celebrate evangelists. Facebook is already a “walled garden” (term from Fast Company), meaning that it is a closed network. Because people are gatekeepers of their own friends and the organizations with which they engage, information doesn’t just go from outside, inward to you. (In other words, if neither you nor your friends are fans of Adidas, their messaging won’t make it into your newsfeed). Recently, the obstacle for organizations has been attracting new evangelists to engage with their brand. This is only going to become more important… because the walls on the “walled garden” are growing taller.
Netflix, Spotify, and other Facebook partners will be automatically integrated into users’ App section of their profile. This means that Facebook is pulling more partners inward for users. Organizations will have to compete with these already-integrated social apps and will need a broader marketing strategy in order to attract attention and infiltrate folks’ Timeline.
While it will be important to “go broad” with a social media strategy, evangelists will also be more important than ever. This is because they are the people who will be most likely to prioritize your brand within the “walled garden.” They will “vote up” your brand’s messaging and incorporate pictures of their family at your museum in their Timeline. I will guess (if I may be so bold), that as it gets harder to penetrate users’ profiles in a significant way, the word of mouth marketing value of organizations that pass through the gate will be higher.
3. Increasing “passive sharing” means ZAMs must become a part of other people’s stories (through their own openness). There will be more brand sharing on Facebook, but it will be harder to be a brand that makes an impression in a meaningful way that is likely to result in earned media or word of mouth marketing opportunities. In the words of Todd Wasserman in Mashable’s recent article, brands will have to integrate into users’ “digital autobiography.” There will be a mix of direct and passive sharing that will likely change the way that people think about brands in their day-to-day lives. Throughout his presentation at f8, Mark Zuckerberg spoke under the context that we all (Facebook users) want to share everything with our friends. And though that seems strange, perhaps he’s onto something… The guy has a pretty good track record. He says, ” The future is heading for a greater openness.”
I think museums are visitor serving organizations are heading in the same direction. We’ve seen time and time again that transparency pays off when it comes to online engagement. I’ll argue that a key to being a nonprofit organization (or any kind of company) that survives in an online sphere is proving that they are out to achieve something good and worthy– and being transparent about it. That’s easy for nonprofits! They have a bottom line of achieving a social mission. Our task, then, is letting that social mission shine through engaging content and compelling storytelling that allows people to relate, react, and interact– not only with the organization, but with one other. Visitor serving organizations will need to go social with their social missions online. If you ask me, it’s something that I believe we can do– and perhaps were made to do.
What’s the take-away? That everything that is already important for ZAMs and visitor serving organizations existing online will be even more important and those who are not up-to-speed risk falling away. Creative content, storytelling, transparency, and inspiring evangelists are already critical for a successful online identity that achieves a specific goal (say, increasing attendance by elevating reputation). They will all become even more important, and the organizations that are falling behind in these arenas risk dropping out of the game of online marketing. It seems to be true: the more things change, the more they stay the same… even in the reality of online engagement.
A Marathon Course for Online Engagement in Visitor Serving Organizations
September 19, 2011
I am currently training for the Chicago Marathon. As a total newbie to this whole “running” business (I’m not worthy of using the word in relation to myself without quotations yet), I’m learning an awful lot about training, timing, pacing myself, and creating a plan for the course. As I run through the woods in the Midwest, fighting off mosquitos and hoping that a selection from my holidays playlist isn’t the next song on my iPod (try running to I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas… in September. It throws you off a bit), I often find myself thinking about the parallels of this journey, and how zoos, aquariums, and museums engage audiences online. …Yes, I think about these things in my free time.
As it turns out, the metaphor of a marathon might be a useful way to think about engaging folks in an online space. This is especially true when contemplating how ZAMs should approach online engagement on the more popular social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. In this metaphor, individual online advocates are the runners. , The course is the path to effective online engagement that ends in getting people through the door, and it is the organization’s job to put on the event and get runners across the finish line.
1. Recruiting runners to enroll in your marathon: securing positive earned media and organic (not sponsored) reviews. This process involves inspiring folks to become your Facebook fan or Twitter follower so that they can step up to the marathon starting line and engage with your brand through updates and all of that compelling content that organizations work so hard to create. This is a hard task, and of course it is critical (or why be on Facebook?). The best way to do this is to recruit runners to enroll through word of mouth marketing. This can be done most easily by folks who are already advocates (have already completed the marathon. See #7). Luckily, tools like positive reviews on TripAdvisor and Yelp can inspire visitation if a potential “runner” is out-of-market or does not personally know an individual who has experienced the institution.
2. Developing a training program to help runners make it through: achieving Facebook “likes.” The parallel between online engagement and running a marathon crossed my mind while presenting social media best practices to an aquarium client. During our discussion on Facebook, a member of the marketing team asked me, “What do ‘likes’ mean? Should we celebrate these?” It’s a good question. The answer, I would say, is that on a social media platform, a “like” on Facebook means that someone has enrolled for your organization’s engagement “marathon” by signing up for a training program… and it’s the role of the aquarium (or other visitor service entity) to help get potential finishers in shape. A “like” means that someone has clicked on your Facebook page and self-identified as a potential visitor or advocate. That person has given your organization the “OK” to appear in their newsfeed and engage them on a daily basis. They have taken the first step and opened up to your organization, and now the ZAM must rise to the occasion and facilitate the connection. However, it’s important to remember that signing up for the training program does not mean that a runner will eventually finish the marathon or even get to the starting line. Also, many “runners” who aren’t enrolled in the training program (not following your organization) will complete the marathon. In other words, “likes” are not the most important form of measurement for online engagement. In fact, sometimes they can be a distraction.
3. Treating runners at aid stations: inspiring connection through organic, behind-the-scenes content. This is super important! These are the surveys, fun facts, photos, videos, blog posts, behind-the-scenes snippets, anecdotes, jokes, contests and data that ZAMs share with fans and followers to make them see the organization in their newsfeed and think, “Hey! That’s cool!” This is how organizations keep engagement going, and build upon this engagement so that the organization can “connect” with potential visitors who are compelled by the organization’s social mission (or, just want to see that exhibit in person). Here’s what I’m learning in my training: aid-stations are incredibly important. I know, personally, that I cannot run a marathon without water, or perhaps some lemon-lime Gatorade. Most runners cannot finish a marathon, or even a half marathon, comfortably without aid. Similarly, it is much harder for friends and followers to engage with your organization online without aid (read: relevant content). This is also the area in which I do the most work and the area in which ZAMs and other nonprofit organizations struggle the most. The secrets here aren’t tough (but every organization seems to struggle with them): be human, be transparent, be real (don’t over-plan) and listen to what your audience is saying.
4. Completing a half marathon: Securing an on-site visit. If we were marathon course-planning slackers, we’d stop here. We’ve accomplished an awesome goal: we secured a visitor– perhaps a whole family! This is not a small thing.We’ve contributed to the double-bottom-line of a nonprofit organization by both inspiring (hopefully) an individual with the organization’s social mission and also by contributing to the organization’s financial bottom line in the form of admission. But there’s still a long way to go to really help runners reach their full marathon-running potential. It would be a disservice to think about the online engagement process as ending here. We are only halfway done!
5. Breaking out the goo around mile 17: providing avenues for half-marathoners to share their experiences, and facilitating and rewarding this sharing. This is a bit like #3 and it is equally important. Compelling content comes back into play in this part of the journey, but it relies more heavily on interactions. This is where word of mouth marketing is at its best. Encourage visitors to share their stories and experiences, celebrate their pictures, videos, and anecdotes. Remind them, if you can, to post about positive experiences on Yelp and TripAdvisor. During mile 17, runners should be actively recruiting runners for the marathon, and the organization should be facilitating this recruitment by continuing to inspire connections with online audiences by rewarding interaction and sharing visitor stories.
6. Finishing the marathon: A past visitor inspiring new visitors to come to the organization. When positive reviews from trusted sources (friends who have been to the organization before or credible earned media sources) inspire more people to visit, then the marathon is complete, in a way. Engaging content has been utilized beyond simply the clicks that it secures. For this reason and many others, it is silly to place too much weight on the number of clicks that a particular piece of content receives. For instance, a YouTube video may receive only 100 views, but if that video inspires those people to visit, and those people share their experiences through word of mouth marketing (online or in-person) and inspire more visits, then those mere 100 clicks have significant worth… far more than the weight that we typically put on the concept of only 100 clicks. However, this does not mean that every bit of content is a success in engaging audiences. It is critical to listen to online communities and create content that is most inspiring to your audiences. Or, content that you notice receives a response.
7. Placing in the marathon: The original visitor becoming a member, donor, or long-time advocate for the organization. Okay, in a real marathon, not everyone can place. But we nonprofit-folk try to be optimistic. The goal in this particular marathon is to get everyone to win, beat their own PR, place in their age-group– however you’d like to see it. This occurs when online and on-site engagement are so high, or personal buy-in is established so well, that the visitor or evangelists carries out an activity that strengthens the long-term bottom lines of the institution. The development of these folks is most frequently the aim for online engagement. Like any good marathon, if runners have fun, they’ll want to run it again. Thus, alongside this track, it is critical to continue to engage communities online. This especially includes members, donors, and advocates of the organization.
Good luck to all of you nonprofiteer marathoners out there running races this season! And also to all of you online-engagement-marathon planners! We’re rooting for you! And, if you happen to be in Chicago on October 9th, root for me. I’ll take all the support that I can get! See you on the course, folks!
Barriers to Adopting Social Strategies: Resources
August 26, 2011
(Or, How Being Scrappy with Resources can be Okay for Your Organization on Social Media)
The question of resources (who is going to run social media and how much time and money will it take?) is often a barrier for zoos, aquariums, and museums looking to adopt social strategies. I have saved this example for last in this series of four barriers to adopting social strategies, because it has the biggest “let down” factor. The let down? The amount of resources you dedicate to online engagement is up to you and your institution. (Clear-cut answers are so much sexier.) There is no right or wrong answer… except that you get yourself on these platforms and start experimenting… Like most things, scale and growth will require investment, but start small. Have one person take the reins and increase staff support as you uncover success in engaging audiences online. Though the amount of time and energy required to get involved in social strategies depends on the institution and the available resources at hand, there are a few helpful tips to help you maximize your resources– or at least ease your mind in the area of resources when considering barriers for adopting social strategies.
But as a quick side, I want to share a presentation that I gave on August 9th that was hosted by the wonderful Tennessee Aquarium. The presentation is called The Best of The Best of Online Engagement and it highlights an Academy-Awards-of-such of how museums have moved forward in the area of online engagement over the last few years. Consider this resource shared! Now, back to business:
Here are six little tips to consider when your organization becomes overwhelmed or apprehensive regarding resources in taking on social media or online initiatives:
1. Don’t leave it to your intern (but listen to your intern!) When social media first showed up, it was a thing for the intern. PR savvy folks know now that social media is a very important part of a marketing strategy. I’ll reference the Bass Model again: the coefficient of imitation (word of mouth marketing, peer reviews, earned media) are over ten times more effective than the coefficient of innovation (paid marketing and advertising). Again, there’s also data to support that your organization’s earned media is more important than your organization’s website. Give the role of running social media to the wrong person/intern and you might just have an incredibly embarrassing situation on your hands— a “Marc Jacobs situation,” I’ll call it. While hilarious to read from a distance, an intern going nuts on your Twitter account hardly helps your brand.
Though we’ve moved past leaving social media entirely to the intern, it is still fiercely important to listen to your intern (and young people in general) when engaging audiences. Young people are generally masters of online engagement. Gen Y grew up with it and can use it with sincerity, they are “gatekeepers of dirt,” and perhaps best of all, they are generally energetic. Folks can smell a communications dud from a mile away. A person just going through the motions on social media usually won’t cut it. Tap an intern’s knowledge and energy.
2. Work on an effective scale for you. Remember the Brooklyn Museum example? They gave up Facebook and Twitter accounts for their 1st Fans initiative and moved to Meetup.com. They were using too many resources and their operations online were not producing their desired outcome. Thus, the Brooklyn Museum shamelessly and publicly switched it up. They did less to achieve more. If you’re going to get involved on a platform, do it well. Be unafraid to be thoughtful about the time dedicated to social media. Do only what works for you… and if you can, try to do something unique to engage audiences in a way that meets your goals (and then share it with me so I can tell other people about the cool stuff that you are doing, if you’d like!)
3. It doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money. Okay, okay. Groupon is pretty big… but it’s not usually worth it. In general, it’s great to reward folks who interact with you online, especially because we are finding more and more that folks look to social media for discounts (Thanks a bunch, Groupon). Discounts and special offers are only one way to do this- especially for ZAMs. There are other creative ways to reward your fans on Facebook and Twitter. Check out those links for some simple ideas. But it’s not just about getting involved on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. The best of the best in audience engagement create their own social opportunities online. And hey, the cost of building a social networking site has dropped to nearly nothing.
When it comes to running a campaign, social media consultancy can get pricey, and this is especially sensitive for nonprofits. Connecting with your contacts within the industry can help side-step some of these fees and you can meet a lot of these folks online. Here’s my “Museos” Twitter list for reference—and I follow a LOT more terrific people who share incredible resources online on a daily basis (Drop me a line on Twitter if you’d like me to add you to the list). Associations can help, too. I’m a massive fan-girl of the American Association for State and Local History and AAM’s Center for the Future of Museums. I love them because they are run by insanely refreshing, forward-thinking people with an eye to the future. And yup, the future has it feet in online engagement. They (and other associations) are dripping with resources.
4. Use content on many networks (but use different messaging) It’s cool. You can cheat this way. Just pretty please don’t auto-connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts. The platforms are different and so are the way they are used and the people on them. Also, posting only Facebook statuses to Twitter doesn’t allow people to interact individually with your brand. From the other side, posting Twitter statuses to Facebook will alienate fans with hashtags and individual Twitter-based shout-outs. And these shout-outs are important (though here’s a fun resource on the best time of day to tweet). I’m focusing on Twitter here because Twitter users are critical for achieving earned media. Folks on Twitter are several times more likely than non-Twitter users to publish content, contribute to wikis, share coupons, post on blogs, review products, and participate in online forums. This means they are several times more likely to contribute weight to your brand.
5. Tap into your hub and use it to achieve your goals. This is a personal one from my own experience working with ZAMs.: create a hub. (You may already have one and not know it, but knowing this space (a blog, portion of your website, etc) is your hub is critical. A “Hub” is a place where you aggregate content and send people who find you on social media platforms. In other words, it is a page that all of your online initiatives point toward. In my experience, blogs (separate or on the website) serve s the best hubs. The best reason to have a hub is to help you reach your online goals. For instance, if you’re primary reason for being online is to get more visitors through the door, then your social media platforms should link to content on your hub, and your hub should have a clear next-move: driving people to the ticket purchasing page. If you have a hub, you can control the message on the hub. This will help you achieve your goals. This is my favorite little article to explain hubs.
6. Other departments are your friends. Here’s the part of the post where I remind everyone that social media does not entirely belong to the marketing department. I know, it happens in nearly every post. And here it is. I’m not saying that the PR person cannot (or shouldn’t) run social media, but I’m saying that the PR person (or any person, for that matter) cannot run social media without content provided by other departments. Social media and social initiative online often involve having an insider perspective of an institution as a whole- not just an insider perspective to the marketing/PR department. So get out there, talk to volunteers, spend some time in membership and learn the little anecdotes. It is the raw, organic stuff of compelling content.
Have other helpful hints to share on the topic of managing resources (time, money, etc) when using social media? Please share them below!
Barriers to Adopting Social Media: Uncertainty
August 8, 2011
(Or, 5 Things You Need To Know When Developing and Carrying Out a Social Media Strategy)
Adopting social strategies- such as taking on innovative social media initiatives requires institutions to change how they think about communications. Creating this change requires removing four, distinct barriers: buy-in, radical trust, uncertainty, and resource issues. I have discussed buy-in and why social media is critical for institutions, and most recently, I gave an example of radical trust in action in the ZAM (zoo, aquarium, museum) community. Today’s post is on uncertainty- the biggest beast of the bunch. Also, the cartoons here are by the wonderful Tom Fishburne.
Uncertainty regarding “proper” use of social media and social network integration is a logical reason to be hesistant about taking on social strategies. There are hundreds of social media platforms and it’s easy to become overwhelmed. To make things even more interesting, I’d guess that most people are conversant on less than half of these top fifteen most popular social networking sites. This doesn’t mean social networking sites aren’t extremely important. It does mean that there’s a lot of chatter going on in regard to social media, and it is critical to delve into social media with a clear understanding of what you hope to gain. Otherwise, you risk getting lost in the “noise” surrounding online engagement. Whether you want social media to inspire audience connections to get folks to buy an on-site ticket or make a donation, or you want to educate potential visitors, start a revolution, or just raise awareness of your brand, a clear goal for each initiative- and your overall strategy- is absolutely imperative. For instance, if your goal is to drive ticket sales but link paths do not end up on the ticketing website, then there’s a huge missed opportunity to meet your goal.
Managing and developing social media strategies on behalf of an organization is not for the easily distracted, but it is a job for the open-minded and curious. Knowing (roughly) what’s happening in the social media world is important because it allows you to explore new opportunities, but it’s also important to keep your eye on the ball. The best folks I have found are those who say, “Holy cow! This random, new social networking site is sweet!” and then step back and ask themselves if it helps meet their organization’s stated goals in a creative and engaging way. If the answer is no (or it’s not worth the resources), they simply sigh and register for shelfari personally. In fact, this is a good transition to my first point below.
5 things that you need to know when developing and carrying out a social media strategy:
1. There’s power in your people. Some professional social networking sites for museos allow individuals to connect, in turn strengthening their organizations. Social media lives in a world where the personal and the professional mix together. And like most incredible things, this is both a risk and a terrific opportunity for reward for organizations. Employees can share links with their own personal/professional networks, which has high word-of-mouth value. Help them do that by creating a social media policy. ..Ugh. I hate the word “policy” in the name for this common document because it implies a rule, and a rule implies that you don’t really trust your people. It’s important to trust your people…but a good social media policy empowers people simply because it states clearly and openly what is allowed and what is not. In my experiences with organizations, this has been especially important with young people, including teens and interns. I love Gen Y (holler to my people), but it’s true: the youngest of us are sometimes lacking a filter online. A good social media policy inspires these natural, online connectors and creators to work their magic and share their stories. Next generation engagement for your ZAM? Your young people will do it naturally. Empower them. Have a clear social media policy that allows them (and others) to do their thing and even mix personal and professional. Let them be real, but also let them know any boundaries. Your legal department also thanks you in advance.
2. For social media non-users, help them understand.. especially if they are a gatekeeper for compelling organizational content. It’s obvious: if nobody on your PR team knows much about creative engagement online, then there’s no key champion for developing and carrying out social strategies. If nobody on any of your teams knows much about social technology (I stand by it: good social media doesn’t belong solely to the communications folks), then it’s even harder. To make matters worse in zoos and aquariums, unknowing husbandry staff can be the biggest bottlenecks for signing off on messaging and creating transparent videos and photos that build online connections.This makes sense when it comes to precious animals with low survival rates. Some zoos and aquariums have rocking caretakers with a social presence, but for other organizations, clearing up uncertainty around social media and getting everyone on board and comfortable with it is no small task. It’s still critical. Baby-step this relationship because it’s important. These folks are sometimes treasure-troves of valuable, connection-inspiring anecdotes for online engagement. Let ‘em know!
3. Your breakthrough will happen when you realize that it’s not about you. Here’s another one where it looks like Captain Obvious took over my blog, but this is a really hard lesson- especially for some of our best and brightest traditionally-trained marketing folks. It’s just a different way of inspiring connection with a brand, and it’s critical online. Transparency and trust are key to an effective social strategy. Inspiring engagement means inviting folks inside of your organization and creating a relationship in which they have the ongoing opportunity to peek behind the scenes. This requires not “selling,” but “sharing” your product/mission. Talk to your online audiences like you would talk to a friend. Be human. Putting up sturdy walls to protect the organization will backfire. In fact, the more you trust your audience and make it about them and their relationship with you, the more they will likely trust you in return. For a great example carried out by the Shedd Aquarium, visit my last post on radical trust. A sure way to break trust online and alienate online evangelists? Break news in print or on other sites before it’s released to your online audience (though breaking it at the same time is fine). You can think of your online community as special, online “members.” They are involved. They are special. They want to talk to a person, not an overly-professional, opaque, robot-like professional entity. (Grabbing my computer back from Captain Obvious and moving on…)
4. Test it. Fix it. Repeat. It’s not usually going to be an immediate success. I know that’s not cool. Your strategy will be a success over time, however, if you take the opportunity to listen to your audience, ask for feedback, are open about the initiative, and don’t get too attached to how you originally began doing things. You must do what best meets your organization’s goals. One of the best examples of this is when the Brooklyn Museum famously discontinued Twitter and Facebook accounts for their 1st Fans program. They wrote about it on their blog and shared their experience. In the end, they moved their strategy to meetup.com. In sum, they assessed how each platform was working for them in regard to reaching their goals, shared findings and were transparent with audiences, didn’t give up on social media but picked a platform that worked best for them and most of all, they weren’t apologetic about ditching platforms (even the most popular ones) that didn’t help them meet their goal of using social media to facilitate on-site engagement. Giving up 1st Fans on Facebook? Ballsy, some might argue. But it’s working for them.
5. Own it. It’s an active platform, not a passive one. That means you cannot just hop on Twitter and expect for it to make any amount of difference at all. If you’re going to put your organization on any social media platform, it is important that you keep it up-to-date and active or you should close the account. Even if your staff isn’t logging on every day to check out your Twitter feed, other people are seeing it. If it’s forgotten, your brand looks messy and you organization looks out of date and disorganized. That’s not a good way to look, especially if you are a museum fighting the old reputation that these institutions are stagnant,increasingly-irrelevant places (lies…). There’s more to it than just being active on social media if you have an account. You need to treat each platform differently. The tones and uses of even Twitter and Facebook are very different, so directly Tweeting Facebook statuses is a marked “fail” most of the time.
6. Social media and social strategies are evolving. So have confidence and be innovative. Only risks and new initiatives can push the envelope and help all of us to discover the incredible potential of social media and social networks. Individuals are spending an increasing amount of time on social networks. There’s an opportunity for exploration in this realm. By the same token, social media still takes an bit of experimentation to see results. It is not just the future. It is most certainly now.
And, because it never hurts to be overly-explicit, here are some things you probably already know, but you can take them for the road:
- Pick measurable goals. Pick some that you can manage, such as responding to every inquiry on social media within two hours or aim to have two-point people for each initiative.
- Buy-in from upper level management is critical, especially if you have the ability to take some risks and do some learning.
- Don’t try to take on everything at once. It likely won’t be as effective if you don’t have a grasp on each part. Do what you can, well.
- If you’re first starting, devise a strategy that you are sure you can sustain, but shoot for some creative initiatives.
- Get pumped and let your personality (the organization’s personality) shine through. Also, if you don’t believe in what you’re doing and saying online, nobody else will believe it either. Nothing’s worse than a droopy social media presence.
The Fundraising Process
*This post is directed toward museum professionals, but these simple fundraising to-dos translate to nearly all nonprofits.
In March, I spoke about how zoos and aquariums can engage audiences using social media at the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Mid-Year Meeting. Before the session started, I asked folks to raise their hands according to which department they served in their institution. No less than 30 of the 40 people in the room worked in marketing and PR departments. About eight or nine people worked in education, conservation, or husbandry (which is important; online engagement is an effective tool for education)
…and only one person was part of a development department.
Social media does not belong to the marketing department. In fact, the museums that use it best focus on engagement and education. Social media and online engagement are incredible new tools in our ‘museum professional’ toolboxes… Social media informs. It educates. It creates connections….So why aren’t fundraisers getting with these new tools like the marketers?
Creating an effective social media presence requires collaboration with multiple museum departments. Utilizing social media within the development department is just plain smart. I don’t just mean utilizing social media to help meet a museum’s bottom line through mobile giving campaigns (like this one) or publicizing membership events–though it can be used very effectively for these purposes. If marketing, education, and development can work together to track social media interaction and engage audiences, then it can benefit all three divisions.
Here are three easy, low-resource ways that social media can help development departments build connections and keep a pulse on donor engagement:
1) Note interactions with donors on Facebook and Twitter to monitor buy-in.
An advantage that the development division has? They know who the donors are. Engagement of these folks is particularly important and may lead to further giving. Figure out which of your donors ‘like’ you on Facebook and make it a habit to skim your organization’s Facebook page at the end of each day (or week, even) to see if a donor engaged on the site. This information helps you keep a pulse on your donors. For instance, you may just have a better chances making a formal ask to someone who you know is seeing and interacting with your content. That person is actively keeping tabs on the institution and engaged on a day-to-day basis (and you know it).
2) Make a private Twitter list of small and large-scale donors- and make a point to interact with them.
Retweet them, @ reply them. Whatever you do, don’t ignore them. Because Twitter is a site for active engagement and open information-share, there’s potential to summon excitement and connection through this platform. It’s a bit more difficult to create direct conversation on Facebook. Quick Google searches can often indicate whether or not a specific donor has a twitter account. It’s easy to quickly search and compile a list of donor’s Twitter accounts to pass along to the marketing department (or whomever is managing social media). Give them the list and ask them to keep tabs on these folks using Twitter’s private lists. This way, followers cannot see your donors, but the person running social media has a quick and easy way to remember who to keep an eye on and engage.
3) Take note of donor’s interests through social media to hone your story and find your connection.
Social media profiles and activities can provide a lot of personal information about donors. Marketeers use this information to help trace their demographic, but fundraisers should be using social media to fill in gaps about donors’ interests so that they can be more efficiently ‘courted’ at events and on-site. Checking up on social media activities doesn’t just help by uncovering that, say, a donor is running a half marathon next week (which may or may not be useful to you). By utilizing your museum’s social media channels, fundraisers can learn a lot about what it is about the institution that engages the donor. If someone tends to ‘like’ statuses about specific events or artists, that gives you a peek into their interests– And even better than that; it gives you a peek into your shared interests.
Some fundraisers make it personal by being the face of their cultural center’s fundraising efforts for certain donors. When using social media, transparency is critical and this method banks on that fact, in a way.
Generation Y has incredible giving potential, if you can tap into it- and they are on social media. In fact, many of us were raised with virtual connections and it’s an easy way for us to communicate. Fundraisers who can figure out how to use this medium by keeping tabs on and engaging with donors virtually may have a big advantage in the long run.
*Photo credits to Tushneem’s Ramble
How Planned Parenthood Used Social Media to Create a Win-Win Situation for their Cause
February 21, 2011
Over the weekend alone, more than 357,000 people signed Planned Parenthood’s online open letter to Congress to oppose the recent vote from the House of Representatives to bar federal funding for the organization. Planned Parenthood utilized social media to help reposition themselves from a “losing” situation (facing cuts in federal funding) to more of a win-win situation (garnering public support and raising awareness and passion for their cause).
Nonprofits rock at using social media because it supports storytelling, inspires personal connections, and heightens the transparency required to attract donors. It does these things better, and at less of a cost, than a Superbowl ad (or most any ad, for that matter). But there’s an ongoing tension between social media and its ability to have a direct, positive monetary impact for organizations. Like so many actions in the world of nonprofits, it’s hard to monetize and determine the ROI of the effort in terms of dollars.
Planned Parenthood has created a win-win situation: If Planned Parenthood succeeds in overcoming the recent vote to bar federal funding for the organization, then they will have a monetary benefit that resulted from online engagement efforts (they kept funding that might otherwise be lost). But if hundreds of thousands of social media users signing an open letter causes no change in government action, Planned Parenthood still wins. They’ve managed to create a compelling call to action that got their cause into the newsfeed of millions of people in an urgent and compelling way that folks are likely to remember. These people are potential donors with a new reason to contribute. If Planned Parenthood inspires government funding or not, it was still a huge success to summon potential donors who may give money to the organization, should the cuts go through. If your nonprofit organization is going to lose federal funding (which is almost never a “win”), it probably doesn’t hurt to capture hundreds of thousands of hearts in the process.
For better or worse, this case illustrates some interesting ideas about how people relate to causes via social media. Here are some observations that may have led to the organization’s online success:
1. Planned Parenthood’s open letter made it easy to be an evangelist for a cause. Signing the letter takes less than a minute and the letter may have received a lot of attention for that very reason. It made caring about a cause easy and it let people think that they were doing something extremely significant. And they actually were, indeed, becoming evangelists for something significant. Public service and social causes are growing increasingly important to us as consumers (read: supporters and donors), which also may have aided in inspiring thousands to sign the letter. This is over-simplified, but here’s the point: making the letter easy to sign made it easy for people to do something “good,” and because that’s cool and you are cool when you support social change, people want to share that they support it. Result? Lots and lots of easy evangelists.
2. The call to action wasn’t the most important one. It was the most urgent. The call to action isn’t for monetary support, though that would be more active and likely have a bigger impact than adding your name to a letter that may or may not be considered significant in the eyes of officials. Although I hope that it is, it’s not a stretch to see how this online letter might not be taken too seriously. Case in point? The Facebook group called “We Hate the New Facebook, so STOP CHANGING IT!!!” has 1.5 million fans. Not even Facebook cares to listen to the group and it’s on their own platform. Like the Planned Parenthood letter, there’s no threatening action here to make leaders think these people care all too much when it comes down to it. The letter and its support could easily be written off as something that may have more to do with exposure than passionate belief that funds formally allocated to Planned Parenthood shouldn’t go somewhere else. Putting your name on an online letter is something, but it’s far from the most active thing that Planned Parenthood could ask their supporters to do. In fact, Planned Parenthood didn’t seem to ask for active donations at all in their I Stand with Planned Parenthood campaign. Was that the right move? Maybe. Maybe not.
3. Planned Parenthood has cultivated 400,000+ emotional investors just online. That’s a lot of potential passion and a lot of visibility. The above points are far from proving on any level that the social media push was not a great idea for the organization. In fact, though it likely wasn’t the primary goal, Planned Parenthood succeeded in creating a large-scale spread of the most valued kind of marketing: word of mouth. Facebook is interesting territory for marketers. It’s a great way to create conversation and spread your message. However, it is a relatively closed network compared to, say, Twitter- where statements can be searched and seen by anyone. To expand your fan-following on Facebook, you need to get other people to spread your message so that it comes up on the newsfeeds of the users’ networks. Planned Parenthood mastered this by sending a follow-up email to each person who signed up for the open letter with a prominent button asking you to make the message your Facebook status. It was easy and it worked. It’s likely that all 400,000+ supporters knew about Planned Parenthood before coming across the letter, but now those supports have done three valuable things:
- learned more about the organization, assuming they read the letter they signed
- took action to support the cause (emotional investment)
- and many stated their support publicly (solidifying their emotional support and integrating it into their online identity).
4. What Planned Parenthood does next, counts. The organization has built incredible momentum and Planned Parenthood will likely have to do something to harness that momentum before it dwindles. If you’re a museum person, this is the same problem that the Museum of Science and Industry faced after they chose their Month at the Museum winner. How do you keep people engaged for the main event? In this case, how do you get these people to stick around to see if Planned Parenthood gets federal funding? More importantly, how can you utilize this momentum to get people to help support the organization financially if it doesn’t…. or even if it does? There’s a lot of potential here, and there’s a lot that nonprofit organizations can learn about the role of social media in advocacy through what happens next.
As a side for museum-focused folks out there (and others!), Planned Parenthood isn’t the only organization that risks losing funding. There are some scary anti-museum amendments being considered by Congress for FY 2011. While reading about Planned Parenthood, it’s hard not to wonder what the online museum community would do if a severe anti-museum amendment threatened the industry that we both care about fiercely, and that supplies jobs to fellow museum aficionados. Nonprofit organizations in general can learn a lot by watching and supporting Planned Parenthood’s efforts right now. Particularly with regard to the evolving tool of social media which will likely play a growing and important role in advocacy, enagement, and summoning public support to create and realize change.
Please weigh-in with comments about lessons you are taking away from the situation and interesting tidbits that may help shape how nonprofits can use social tools to cultivate political support.
41 Ways Museums Are Merging Social and Tech to Engage Audiences
October 18, 2010
In preparation for the IMLS webinar series- Connecting to Collections- I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite ways that museums are merging social and tech to engage audiences. Part of the series, Using Social Media to Tell Your Collection’s Stories, will take place from 2:00pm to 3:30 pm EDT on Thursday, October 28th, 2010. I’m pleased to be serving as commentator, and working with presenter Nancie Ravenel (@NancieRavenel) of the Shelburne Museum. This series is free and you can register here to learn more about how museums are utilizing social and technological elements of communication to engage audiences and stay ahead of the curve.
Technology is a powerful tool for cultivating community, and the merging of social and tech in museums is occurring more and more frequently. Here are my 41 favorite examples of museums building social capital through social media and technological endeavours.
Let’s start with some museums that are making the most of social media and online community engagement’s most powerful and basic building blocks:
1. Twitter. Are you following The Women’s Museum on Twitter yet (@TheWomensMuseum)? This is just one museum. There are over 871 museums on twitter.
2. Facebook. The California Science Center gets visitors involved by featuring a Fan Photo Of the Week on their Facebook page. Simple, yet effective.
3. YouTube. The Renaissance Society has its own YouTube Channel that allows folks to access gallery talks and events after they’ve happened. In fact, a lot of museums have YouTube channels.
4. Flickr. Which museums are using Flickr as a valuable photo sharing resource and a way to communicate with visitors? Here’s a taste.
5. Website. Have you noticed how many of the nation’s most visited museums feature social media information above the fold on their homepage?
6. Social Media Pages. The Art Institute of Chicago has a whole page devoted to social media and interactivity. So do many other museums, like the Smithsonian (well, they have many pages….)
7. Blogging. A crew of professional sailors teamed up with Pacific Science Center educators to sail Around the Americas. Good thing they’re so social; they used a blog to take us along for the ride.
8. Mobile Applications. The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis hosts Art on Call, which allows you to listen to tours on your cell phone. A lot of other museums offer this feature. MoMA was ahead of the curve when they created a mobile app for audio tours in 2008. They’ve recently revamped the app.
9. Foursquare. Become the Foursquare Mayor of the Vancouver Police Museum, and you and a guest receive free admission AND a 25% discount in the gift shop.
10. Virtual Conferences. The American Association for State and Local History made their annual conference accessible to folks who could not get to Oklahoma City this September by putting some of their best (in my humble opinion) conferences online in an interactive format.
Museums are taking interaction even further and building upon Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, mobile applications and web-based platforms. Check out these initiatives, competitions, and downright cool ideas (in no particular order):
11. Looking for a short-cut to becoming a museum-displayed photographer? The Denver Art Museum gives community members prime gallery realty by featuring a Flickr Cascade Installation that displays photos of the museum taken by Flickr users. Even cooler? They give proper attribution to each photographer.
12. Mixing social and tech isn’t just for older folks. The Walters Art Museum gets families talking by highlighting an interactive game featuring their lovable mascot: Waltee’s Quest: The Case of the Lost Art.
13. Please just visit the Adobe Museum of Digital Media. No need to take off your PJs or put your shoes on.
14. This list would be silly if it didn’t include the Museum of Science and Industry’s Month at the Museum. Out of 1,500 applicants, Kate has been chosen by project judges and the public to spend a full month living in the museum.
15. Now this is super sneaky. Three cheers to the International Spy Museum for creating themed geocaching adventures with a fun twist.
16. The Contemporary Jewish Museum melds art, technology, and Judaism through their new LINK initiative which bringing in monthly speakers to explore the intersection of Judaism and new technologies. I love this post about Jaron Lanier’s talk.
17. I could go on forever about how the rock stars at the Brooklyn Museum engage audiences through social media. But I’ll just give you this example. Oh! And 1stFans must be included. Okay. Done.
18. Combining Twitter and Flickr to engage visitors in science education? It’s no problem for the Museum of Life and Science in North Carolina. They created NameThatZoom- an interactive game moderated by the museum in which folks are shown flickr photos and challenged to identify those photo via twitter using the #namethatzoom hashtag.
19. Remember playing capture the flag as a kid? Try playing it as an alternate reality game at… (are you ready?)… The Smithsonian American Art Museum.
20. Meet SCREENtxt, a real-time live text messaging and photo streaming location-based social network created by The Mattress Factory and updated/created by museum visitors. Get confused there? Their blog helps explain. Oh, and I cannot forget The Mattress Factory’s iConfess!
21. Did you know that on September 1, 2010 over 340 museums took part in Ask a Curator Day on twitter and #askacurator became a trending topic?
22. If you’re a tech tinkerer, you can’t really beat tinkering at the Maker Faire in Detroit at The Henry Ford- the birthplace and showplace of one of the world’s most famous tinkerers.
23. Like to babble about art (or rather, babble about cool videos about art)? A lot of us do. And we do that on ArtBabble, thanks to these museums.
24. The planned hijack of LACMA’s twitter account by The Office star, Rainn Wilson, could easily have been called “Operation: Who’s stuffy? Not This Art Museum.”
25. When art museum directors at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the New Orleans Museum of Art talk trash regarding the Superbowl, everybody wins.
26. The Skirball Cultural Center’s lovely Build a Better World Project encourages you to share how you are making the world a better place via Facebook, and hopes you’ll pass the message along using small decorated tokens as powerful community symbols.
27. The Smithsonian National Museum of American History tapped into talent by conducting a YouTube competition (O Say Can You Sing) featuring folks signing the National Anthem. The winner (out of over 800 entries) got to sing the anthem at the museum and at the Baltimore Orioles vs. Atlanta Braves game on Flag Day. Check out the winners contest entry below:
28. Want to see something cool? Try making The Getty’s Augsburg Display Cabinet and experience augmented reality at it’s best. As it is, this project may be high on the tech and low on the social aspect. But trust me, you’ll want to show a friend.
29. If it weren’t for twitter and YouTube, so many folks wouldn’t know about “Those About to Die, We Salute You,” the downright awesome staged battle featuring warriors represented by The Queens Museum of Art (the hosts), Brooklyn Museum, The Bronx Museum, and El Museo del Barrio.
An image from the battle. Click for more photos and video.
30. This is the public wiki for the Smithsonian’s Web and New Media strategy process. Prepare to learn.
31. Folks at The Autry created Trading Post, a site to facilitate conversation between the museum and its visitors regarding current events.
32. One of the most powerful and important jobs of museums is storytelling. Please check out Culture Shock, a site full of digital stories by people in the North East of England.
AMNH's new application allows you to share museum findings on social media.
33. The Australian Center for the Moving Image has created Generator, a “creative studio space for teachers and students to explore exemplary work by their peers and industry professionals. Comment, tag, and share creative work and education resources.”
34. The Auckland Museum’s Hybridiser is an interactive kiosk where visitors can create their own orchards and then share them with folks in their social networks.
35. The American Museum of Natural History’s new mobile application, Explorer, has many highlights. My favorite? It allows you to easily share finds in the museum with your own networks on Facebook or Twitter.
36. Open Museum is like “Facebook meets Blogger and Flickr for the visual arts.”
37. Could you inspire America in six words or less? The National Constitution Center asked folks to aid Barack Obama in their project, Address America.
38. We’ve covered that there are over 871 museums on twitter… but I don’t think I mentioned that museum artifacts are hitting the social media space, too– and making folks laugh in the process.
39. Follow treasure maps, decipher codes, uncover hidden objects- The Smithsonian American Art Museum’s multimedia scavenger hunt, Ghosts of a Chance, is downright cool.
40. The Guggenheim says YouTube videos may be art. In fact, they took the time to go through 23,000 video submissions to create a short list of videos to be featured in the museum.
41. The Virtual Museum of Canada allows visitors to create their own museum and point members of their online networks to the collection.
Do you know of a cool way that a museum is merging social and tech that you think belongs on this list? Please feel free to comment with additions below. Please feel free to provide links!
* Photo credits: Top image from www.ieplexus.com/blog/
Museums are placing higher priority on engagement. With the social media revolution upon us and nonprofits’ growing reputations for utilizing social media to build connections and share stories, it’s no wonder museums are turning into community centers. Nearly every museum has a link to Twitter or Facebook these days, but museums are actually doing much more to engage their audiences online.
To illustrate the growing importance of social media as a mechanism for creating connections and increasing community engagement, I’ve taken screen shots of the websites of three of America’s most visited and successful museums. I am highlighting not just traditional social media, but also media that is social (online collaboration, sharing of resources, technology in strengthening the community, etc).
- Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, or the most visited museum of 2009. (Washington D.C.)
- Social media comes first: Links to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, and podcasts are accessible via the Natural History Museum’s homepage. In fact, this was the single most visited museum in the United States last year, and it is also one of the only museums in the top 25 most visited museums that gives social media such a prominent space on its homepage. This is most likely a case of correlation over causation, but if the most frequently visited museum in the country doesn’t put social media icons below the fold, why do so many museums make visitors scroll to the bottom of the page to see them?
- Mobile applications are front and center: The most prominent item featured on the museum’s homepage is the announcement of a mobile application, MEanderthal, for iPhone and Android that highlights the museum’s Hall of Human Origins. The application is engaging, as it allows you to morph back in time to see what you might have looked like. Not only that, iPhone users can use iSmithsonian for free to get updates on museum happenings. This museum is successful, and places a strong emphasis on both engagement, and keeping up with the times.
- Engaging community events that educate: This isn’t new for museums; there’s always interaction taking place. The museum is currently celebrating Savoring Sustainable Seafood, which features events that are open to the public and aim to engage the community. The Natural History Museum’s website is devoted to personal connections and accessibility.
- The Getty (Los Angeles, CA)
- Community building through resource sharing: The Getty’s website doesn’t just supply museum information, it also serves as an online resource in education for parents and teachers. The website has ideas for art activities and lesson plans. Through these efforts, the museum shares it resources and strengthens the community.
- Collaborative content: It might seem natural for art museums to view one another as competitors for visitors and donors- and perhaps they are- but Southern California’s art museums put their missions to inspire and educate first in the creation of a virtual exhibition. In this case (like the one above), the museum uses technology to build bridges and generally strengthen the community.
- Blogs as a space for interaction: This popular museum understands the importance of allowing visitors to interact with the museum through blog comments. Moreover, the blog provides readers the opportunity to see what happens behind-the-scenes at the museum. Allowing folks to take a peek behind the curtain make The Getty more transparent, accessible, inviting, and gives a sense of trustworthiness.
- Calendar of public programs: The inclusion of the calendar reminds website visitors that all the good stuff isn’t just online. In fact, the best stuff takes place within the museum. The calendar is an important inclusion here, as it puts a focus on experience and interaction.
- The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, IL)
- INTERACT and creative engagement: The Art Institute of Chicago puts the bulk of its interaction in one place– on its own page off of a tab on the homepage between members and shop. And this page really does include many links to social media, and media that is social. There’s even a My Collections feature that allows users to log-in (a great measurement for engagement) and build their own virtual art collections. Curious Corner features fun and educational online games for kids. A person could spend hours on this interact tab of the website (Truth be told, I may have gotten caught up in it a time or two…)
- Microblogging may be worth fitting on the page: The museum’s twitter stream is shown on the site. Not only that, the Twitter stream shows pictures of the folks/organizations with which the Art Institute is communicating. Like the blog at The Getty, the use of this social media tool puts a voice to the institution and makes it appear more personable, trustworthy, and transparent.
- A way to learn more: It’s not new to highlight a sign-up for an organization’s e-newsletter on a site, but the simple act asks the visitor for engagement and lets them know that the organization is an evolving entity with more to say!
If the best of the best museums place a high priority on engaging audiences through media and technology, then there may be a lesson here for smaller museums struggling with whether or not to delve into social media. The key may be to start thinking about the internet as a flexible medium through which to connect with visitors.
I work with zoos, aquariums, and museums in the realm of audience engagement using social technology. I specialize in creative community involvement, new media, nonprofit sector evolution, and the role of Generation Y in the workplace. Learn more about me 
