Social media guidelines – why, what and how to use them?

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of questions about social media guidelines for museums. There’s been a lot written about the use of social media guidelines, so I’ll limit this post to my experiences.

Why use social media guidelines?

More and more people join social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook or blog about their life or work. Not everybody is a digital native with perfect understanding of the subtleties of the web. I think guidelines are to guide these people towards a rewarding and safe use of social media.

Social media guidelines help people:

• To benefit from the opportunities of social media.
• To engage in a constructive way in online conversation, be it about a museum or their favourite pet.
• To avoid doing things online they might regret, personally or professionally.
• To find their way in your organisation when they discover conversations about your organisation on the web.
• To feel comfortable while writing about their work online.

Social media guidelines are meant to enrich people’s online behaviour, not to limit it.

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Testing Amsterdam museums with Seb Chan

Last week I had the honour of having Seb Chan from the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney around. One of the things we did was drop by a number of museums in Amsterdam to see how they designed their audience experience, what was good about it, and what could have been better. This taught me a handful of useful things about audience engagement and interaction design I’d like to share.

Museums we visited were: the Tropenmuseum, the Amsterdam Historic Museum, NEMO, the public library, FOAM Fotography Museum, the Tassenmuseum. In addition I included the Hermitage which I visited alone.

1. Deliver what the visitor expects

Museums are basically boring. They’re not amusement parks and shouldn’t be. A lot of multimedia and interaction in museums does not convey the museum’s basic objective, which is to show beautiful artefacts. Therefore, as Seb noted, “most interaction in museums is like an action-packed trailer to a slow-moving French movie.”

The ‘Tassenmuseum’ (Bags Museum) is a small, privately held museum in Amsterdam with a predominantly elder female audience. They come to see beautiful bags and have tea. They come for the traditional museum experience. The Tassenmuseum delivers exactly this, with a very traditional exhibition approach and a comfortable café. The museum delivers what the visitor expects.

NEMO is a typical science centre. The second you walk into the museum, you hear and see kids running around. There’s lots of opportunity for them to engage with the installations and discover the fun side of science. That’s what parents expect when they take their kids to NEMO.

Interaction would be completely out of its place in the Tassenmuseum, whereas it’s a necessity in NEMO. The lesson: Use interaction only when the audience expects it.

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Practical advice on developing your presence on social media websites

One of my first jobs as a Community Manager for the Museum of National History was to build a presence on existing social media websites. There’s quite some literature available on social media strategy. That helps. I think I developed a strategy that could be the envy of all museums worldwide. (I’ll brag about that when it starts to pay off.)

However, what I noticed is that strategy is only one. There’s also the practical side of becoming active on social media websites. I didn’t read a word about that. I simply used my experience as a user and the small things I did in the past and thought this would work for a large ambitious museum as well.

That proved a learning experience. Looking back on the first month, I can already identify things that I could and should have done better. Therefore I’d like to share my practical experiences with developing a social media presence with you. Please share your experiences as well to avoid others to make our mistakes. Read the rest of this entry »