On wine, coding and simple questions

Photo by Wendell (lurking) on Flickr.

This week I did a wine tasting with a Dutch wine critic. That was fun. Of course we talked about the difference between supermarket wines, new-world wines, old-world wines etc. Regardless of tasting over seven thousand wines per year and obviously having a very refined taste in wine, our host applauded the simple unpretentious wines most people drink. He mentioned how his very first wine came from a carton. It’s simple and cheap wine that might be the first step of a life-altering journey through the wonderful world of wines.

(He also repeatedly mentioned that a lack of knowledge about wine is completely unrelated to a good taste for wine. Even beginners easily distinguish the good from the bad when testing blind. I think the same applies to (all) arts and culture.)

I recently fell in love with Codecademy. Not, because I’m keen to learn JavaScript, but because the very first thing their website does is to ask me to participate in the simplest way possible: by writing my name. Then, five or six of the simplest tasks later, I have earned a badge, connected my Facebook account and become addicted to (learning how to) code.

For an expert it’s tempting to ask challenging questions, “What is your favourite Monet painting?” or “Which historical figure do you think is represented on this vase?” Challenging questions might provide new insights (to the expert). The answers to simple questions rarely surprise. Read the rest of this entry »

A quest for relevance

Photo by Stephanie Schuldes on Flickr.

To succeed in our never-ending quest to make culture and the arts more relevant in the lives of people, all we have to do (online) is approach the right people at the right time and place with the right message through the right communication channel.

Simply put, don’t tweet about overflowing toilets unless you want to make a point about the pressing need for maintenance funds. And in that case, be sure to ask at the beginning of the month, when people just received their paychecks.

The museum of the 21^st century is as successful in being relevant to people, as Google and Facebook ads are. (Or, if you prefer, will be in the near future.) In fact, we can use the very tools Google and Facebook ads provide us to prove that the more relevant we make our content, the more likely they are to engage with it.

In the chart below I’ve plotted a number of Facebook ads we ran. The potential reach of the ad is on the horizontal axis, on the vertical each ads true reach (normalized to a similar number of impressions per ad). The CTR chart of the same data is very much alike.

Without a doubt, ads aimed at a specific target group, with a specific message, almost always outperform the more general ads.

Read the rest of this entry »

What to do if ‘they’ are not online? – 7 actions to promote new media in your museum

Photo by Ally Oop on Flickr.com

“My organisation does not see the importance of social media.” Does this line sound familiar to you? Or, “I’m the only one doing new media, the curators simply don’t care.”

I often hear this line. It was one of the leading themes of questions people posed between sessions at MuseumNext. I believe it’s the responsibility of the new media department to get the rest of the organisation to become active on social media. If ‘they’ are not online, ‘you’ should do something about it.

In this post I’ll address some simple things you can do to make your curators, marketing team, mother and small pets go online. Please add your secret recipes to the comment section.

1. Make social media useful to ‘them’. Figure out, in open conversation over coffee etc., what your colleagues are looking for personally. An old friend from primary school (Facebook), the e-mail address of an old colleague (LinkedIn), a cheap car (eBay). Surprise them with an email with a link. “I googled around and found this for you.” This will introduce them to the power of new media.
2. Subscribe to blogs related to expositions and projects your institution is working on, and share links you find online with the people working on the projects. Doesn’t have to be tech-related. Merely the fact the internet can provide stuff ‘they’ didn’t know about increases trustworthiness of the medium. Read the rest of this entry »

Integrated media strategies for museums

Photo by Kristian Vinkenes on Flickr.com

One of the recurring themes at the recent MuseumNext conference in Edinburgh was what I call the “holistic” or “integrated media strategy”. Social media or technology is not an isolated department within the whole of the strategy of an institution, but a core function such as communication, education or finance.

This means it’s no longer about having a great Facebook strategy within your team. It’s about having an overall strategy for all media (new and traditional), connected with the activities you do and the expositions you host. A strategy that is interconnected and continuously attracts new visitors, retains the old ones and engages them with what you do.

The museum as a media producer

If you think of media as communication channels (and is there any other way to think about them?), museums are media producers. We’re very much like the BBC, HBO and even Walt Disney, apart from that we’re not into it for the money, but for “the arts”. For-profit museums understand this point very well, presumably.

In my opinion, there’s three levels at which a museum does things: 1) new and traditional media, 2) activities and events with the audience and 3) the physical expositions that you put up in a building. Most of our campaigns are focused at getting people to visit us (3). Not everybody, however, will always be able to visit us. For instance, because the buildings not big enough. New and traditional media (1) as well as activities (2) allow us to reach more people. I use the model below to remind me of this.

This model is all about people moving from one level to another (up and down). It’s in these movements the advantage of an integrated media strategy becomes clearest. Read the rest of this entry »

How to measure engagement and participation? An experiment with Google Analytics

Photo by filmingilman on Flickr.com

Every now and then someone asks me how our new media activities influence people’s engagement and participation with our museum. In a quarterly internal report we try to quantify these intangible concepts for the sake of decision-making and project design. For instance, it helps us talk about ROI of different media efforts. In this post (and probably some future ones) I’d like to share some of the experiments we did in measuring engagement, participation and other tricky statistics. They’re by no means perfect, and with your comments I hope to further develop tools to measure online success.

A model to determine different levels of interaction

Not every hit to your website or online collection is similar. Some visits have more interaction, and others less. To make a distinction between different levels of interaction I use a simple model I was first introduced to by Marco Derksen (see below).

At the far left are all visits to your website. ‘Reach’ I define as true visits (not the ones that bounce within a couple of seconds). Good content gets people engaged, and an invitation has them participate. Finally, when participation is acknowledged, some visitors will become enthusiasts about your website or institution and spread the word.

Although you might use different terminology, you probably recognize the rationale behind this model. Every step to the right means more interaction as well as a smaller number of people who actually reach that phase. For a handful of enthusiasts you might need to welcome thousands of visitors.

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