Recently someone used the term critical mass to mean you need a certain amount of followers/friends/fans to be successful in social media. Strength is in numbers, etc. “Of course MoMA can do that, with its gazillion followers.” I dare to disagree.
In primary school they taught me to address specific people when asking for help in a crowded place. An undirected ‘help’ would certainly go unattended. Later I learned this is called the bystander effect. People don’t help when there’re other people around.
A hundred thousand, or even a millions followers/friends/fans is a lot of people. If you tweet a question or Facebook a funding request or e-mail a petition, certainly some small percentage will respond. And maybe a small percentage of many is enough to do the trick. On the other hand, many, many more will not feel any need to respond. Bystanders.
I believe that if you know your audience, are creative and dare to specifically address your questions, you don’t need a lot of followers/friends/fans. Over the last months, every single campaign I did where I specifically asked some outdid those where I generally asked many. Even if “specifically asking some” was semi-automated. Even if the ties between the addressed individual and our institution were weak.
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 »
Good news for all fans of our National Vending Machine: this week we received confirmation of a significant subsidy to further develop the project. The great people at the DOEN Foundation will invest in improved visitor participation, a better website and information structure and activities to involve new audiences. Thanks!
These new funds allow us to work on some of our own recommendations for improvement. For instance, it allows us to put in practice the lessons about participation and crowdsourcing we detail in our Museums and the Web paper. Also, we can professionalize our outreach activities. Here’s some of the things we’re hoping to do with the help of DOEN: Read the rest of this entry »
Last week I was invited by Museum Rotterdam to the festive launch of a magazine that concludes the first phase of the amazing outreach and participatory project the city as a muse. The event – in a circus tent in a rundown part of town – was in many ways un-museum-like and (therefore?) I enjoyed it a lot.
After a recent shift in direction, which included removing “Historical” from its name, Museum Rotterdam tries to be a museum for all people in the city. The city as a muse is a project that searches for inspirational developments and initiatives among the people of Rotterdam and tries to connect this with the museum. The first phase of the project aimed at a group of women (‘De Vrouwen van de Velden’) who’ve organised themselves to jointly cope with the drastic changes in their neighbourhood.
The women are mothers, of varied cultural backgrounds, poor and extremely creative. Once a week they have breakfast together to discuss and organize. The urban curator of Museum Rotterdam joined them for a couple of months and conducted interviews, photo sessions and other activities to discover as much as possible about the lives of the women. The final product of this intensive cooperation is not an exposition, but a magazine like the modern glossies.
The women in the magazine represent themselves, but also a growing group of people in Rotterdam (and cities all over the world). It’s a compelling story of Rotterdam AD 2011.
Born in the early 1980s, Richard Branson, his bold endeavours and the iconic brand Virgin have been a constant source of amazement in my life. Everything Sir Richard touches seems to turn into gold (just look at the ad above!). So, what would happen if he said goodbye to galactic and bought himself a museum?
1. He’d cut a lot of the red tape
The amount of bureaucracy in an average museum is appalling. “The world is full of red tape, created by committees with too much time and an overbearing desire for control” Richard would make sure decisions were made fast and using the qualities of the people involved. Not hastily, but with determination, tackling problems when they arise and taking responsibility. If you can build an airline from scratch in three months, everything is possible.
2. He’d embrace change, challenge and innovation
“You’ve got to stretch to grow.” Nothing is sacred, especially not because it has been done so for years. If something were broken, Mr. Branson would fix it. “To win, you have to break the rules.” Innovation, not for the sake of change, but to improve the product. How often do you see museums repeating the same old trick that – honestly – doesn’t really work that well? It doesn’t cost much more energy to try something new. You might discover something great. Read the rest of this entry »
