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.

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28 low-budget, easy-to-do things to do with new media for cultural institutions

Update 09/17/2010: Added 4 new things to do contributed by readers of this blog. Thanks!

Last week some of my colleagues and I hosted a new media afternoon with workshops for participants in the Week van de Geschiedenis (“Week of the History”). During this annual event hundreds of cultural institutions in the Netherlands organise activities related to history. Over 250,000 people all over the Netherlands visit debates, tours, lectures, special exhibitions… I believe this week has an enormous new media potential.

Quite some of the participating institutions have zero budgets, work with volunteers and have limited or no experience with new media. Some of the visitors of the new media afternoon asked me what they could do with new media – taking into account their limitations. I composed this list of 28 simple things to do with new media for small cultural institutions to help them.

If you know of other low-budget, easy-to-do new media activities, please add them. It’s highly appreciated by the many small cultural institutions taking their first steps in new media.

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What will you do with your new followers?

Next Monday, February 1^st, is “follow a museum” day. As there are a lot of museum with quite extraordinary collections, I think it’s worth following one or two for inspiration, information and entertainment. Therefore, I applaud the idea of follow a museum day.

However, I also have my doubts.

Followers seem to be the new currency. The more followers, the better. I strongly disagree. It’s involvement that matters. It’s not about the number of followers a museum has, but about the communication with its audience a museum has.

Jim hinted using Ad.ly Analytics to measure the involvement of your followers. I say 100 involved followers beats 100.000 uninvolved ones. (Read about the “benefits” of being on Twitter’s Suggested Users List by Anil Dash.) Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

How to use Twitter as a museum?

Internationally, there are a lot of museums active on Twitter. Unfortunately, most of them use Twitter only as a modern announcement board. There is very little interaction with their followers.

The Brooklyn Museum is one notable exception. In the museum they encourage visitors to send their feedback to their Twitter. Also, they reply, retweet and encourage visitors to engage in conversation. Not surprisingly, they have over 23,000 followers, which is the highest I’ve seen of all museums.

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