Telling great ideas and stories that stick

Photo by Andrew Beresford on Flickr.

Years ago I read the book Made to Stick by Dan and Chip Heath. Basically it’s about why some stories and ideas disappear and others stick with the receiver forever. What makes a successful story that is retold over and over again?

The book applied its own rules and stayed with me. Reading through a pile of unremarkable blog posts and museum brochures this week its lessons came to mind again. Here’s the slightly edited summary I wrote for internal use in 2007. I believe this message is worth sharing, even after some years. Useful for when you pitch your next innovative idea, give a presentation or simply write copy for an exhibition.

What makes a story or idea stick?

Successful communication alone is not enough to make ideas stick. An idea sticks when:

1. You can easily understand it,
2. You can remember it,
3. It’s effectively changing thoughts or behaviour.

To make sure your idea, story, pitch or presentation fits the above description, Dan and Chip propose the SUCCES criteria. Fulfilling these criteria will make your ideas powerful and successful. Read the rest of this entry »

I like museums – Using Facebook’s Like Button to connect with visitors

Facebook Like Button Stamp by design studio, Nation.

Facebook Like Buttons are revolutionising the web. There’re even rumours about Google going to use them in their search algorithm. Recently, at the museum, I’ve been adding Like Buttons to many of our websites and the results are significant.

Conversion is high and traffic from Facebook increased. Small and specific communities are built around projects, events and activities. We don’t have a physical collection, but I can see the same happening for objects in online collections.

Adding Like Buttons is as easy as copy-pasting. In fact, you can customise and copy the code on the Facebook developers website and have a Like Button online in under two minutes. Generic solutions might take a bit more skill and time (adding it to our 750+ activities in next week’s Week of History took about an hour).

With the ease and impact of the Like Button it’s an amazing tool for museums to connect with visitors and build useful connections online. Read the rest of this entry »

Stop talking, start sending – The information food chain and how museums should use Twitter

Photo by Pieter Pietserse on Flickr.

I read a newspaper. I read a newspaper because I believe a bunch of highly educated people are better at sorting through the myriad pieces of news the world produces daily than I am. My newspaper even prints the best tweet out of 90 million sent every day, that’s how good they are.

Newspapers don’t converse. Newspapers send information. And it’s good they do so, because they’re high up in the information food chain.

By now thousands of museums are on Twitter cs. There they sit and chat and retweet each other and make good initiatives trending worldwide. They’ve been told Twitter (and Facebook, blogs, etc.) is a conversation channel, not a publicity channel. They’ve been told to listen, not to send. So they desperately try to engage in conversation and mostly chat with each other.

Museums on Twitter shouldn’t converse. They should send information. That’s because museums, like newspapers, are high up in the information food chain. Maybe even higher up than newspapers.

I don’t say museums should use Twitter to shamelessly publicise their events and opening hours. I mean they should sort through the millions of tweets, status updates, blogposts, etc. to pick the best things and share these in a meaningful way with their audience. They should respect their position in the information food chain.

Read the rest of this entry »