Momentum is a tough thing. There’s a tendency that if something seems to be working, we don’t question whether it could be better, or more efficient, or we keep doing it because “that’s what we’ve always done.”

I spent a lot of early January asking questions and looking at data, specifically around audio at the museum.

• How many people really listened to our audio tour?
• Did they listen more onsite or offsite?
• What types of tours do they tend to prefer?
• Do they make it through the entire tour or just a few stops?

Museums are challenging what type of audio belongs in a gallery. Podcasts are making their way into these spaces. A great example of this is the Guggenheim’s new tour by Roman Mars of 99% Invisible. Listening to this tour made me rethink the types of audio we share and how we do it. I found the tour of the museum riveting, even though I wasn’t physically on site. And it made me wonder, would people prefer to listen to audio tours if they were a 10-15 minute podcast instead of 10 1-2 minute stops? Would they prefer if there was a host that introduced multiple voices rather than the curator or artist?

I started asking friends, co-workers, family, basically everyone: do you listen to audio tours in museums? Would you listen to a podcast about that museum instead? Basically everyone, regardless of age (though I admit my totally non-scientific anecdotal data gathering was primarily Gen Y and Z) preferred the idea of listening to a podcast on their way to the museum or after their visit, to actually listening to something in the gallery.

Using this as a starting point, I went to our audio data. We use OnCell and SoundCloud for our audio tours. When I started digging into the data, I noticed that over half the people who listened to the OnCell version you get through a mobile website were listening off site, perhaps before or after a visit, or because they wanted to experience the exhibition and couldn’t visit.

We’ve also done some experimental tours. For David Levinthal: War, Myth, Desire we chose to do a podcast with chapters instead of a traditional audio tour and we hired a podcast team to produce it. That tour has nearly three times the amount of listeners than our other tours.

The second most popular tour featured stories behind the works produced by Eugene Richards, and the third was a variety of artists who shared what memory meant to them in relationship to photography, some told stories, some crafted definitions, and one even wrote a poem.

This year, I want to use what we’ve learned and what we’ve seen works with our audience to test something new: a podcast preview of our exhibitions. It will feature a “host,” include multiple voices such as the artist and local experts, and will offer guests an audio introduction to the artist, their process, and the experience they will have in the exhibition.

The evidence shows this is a direction we should investigate, but there will be challenges:

1. This format takes more work to create. Unlike our traditional audio tour that has only some editing to remove breaks and “ums,” this would require thoughtful editing of audio to produce a coherent single discussion.
2. This format will take more funding. To get high quality audio, we’re going to need recording equipment that is better than what we have. It won’t be much money, but it will take some.
3. We need buy-in from the staff. If we’re going to invest in this format, we need to really make it part of the experience, create something worthwhile, and promote it well. That requires everyone to be on board with this new experience.
4. It also means being ok with giving up the whole one… this may be the most challenging. I think there’s a perception that some guests will be upset that there isn’t a traditional tour. But honestly, I think running this as an experiment will give us a lot of important data. Maybe we do have a bunch of guests say they don’t like this: GREAT! Then we’ll have that data to back up doing the old method.

Now, I’m off to read Hannah Hethmon’s Your Museum Needs a Podcast.

Every year, I take some time to think about what I’ve accomplished and what I’d like to accomplish in the next year.

Focus More on Instagram Stories

Even with my personal social media, I tend to be the type that takes the photo and then shares it hours or even days later when I’ve had a chance to think about what I want to say. This type of approach doesn’t really work well with the Instagram Stories feature, which is meant to share things as they occur in a playful manner.

However, Instagram stories are not going away- they are not a fad. In fact, they are increasing in engagement when the rest of the social media world seem to be decreasing. 

I resolve to make an effort to share more through Instagram stories. To achieve this goal, I’m going to:

• Make an Instagram stories strategy that is separate from Instagram; by treating it as its own channel, I’ll be able to produce content that is perfect for that style of interaction and use it to the fullest
• Set calendar alerts to remind myself every morning to check engagement; stories are difficult to track because we don’t have great analytics, so I’m going to make it a priority to check on them every morning
• Crowdcourse content and reshare content; I’m increasingly tied to my desk (or working remotely with my ten week old baby), so I’m going to double my efforts to get co-workers to send me content, and celebrate visitor content by sharing more

Bonus: create branded GIFs… this is one of my champagne dreams for the year. I’d love for us to have some fun historic GIFs we could share. Fingers crossed this happens.

Use Analytics More to Inform Strategy

I hate to admit this since I’m a huge fan of data, but when things get busy, analytics are the first thing I drop. Why? Because really diving into the quantitative and qualitative data takes time, time I don’t often have. Instead, I’ll do a surface check of the big numbers and move on. This year, I’d like to start paying more attention to the details of our analytics to craft strategies that are better informed.

Of course, I’m still tight on time so here’s how I’m going to do this:

• Take a little time at the beginning of this year to review all the different measures we could possibly look at and the institution’s broader goals to determine what are the most important
• Set a calendar event for myself every week, and a longer one each month, and an even longer one every quarter, where I dedicate time to creating a report that sums up what we are seeing from analytics and how it relates to our goals

Bonus: write up some qualitative thoughts and insights from each of these meetings as notes to myself that I can refer to. The double bonus would be taking the time to share those with the broader museum and social media community.

Build Something

I like to have one project each year that taps into my creative side and gives me the chance to flex my digital muscles. In 2017, I was able to work with my cousin, an artist, to create a video game for an exhibition, and I crafted a new front-end for a database. Last year, I started learning more about Photoshop so I could create engaging layouts and designs for our website and social media, and I developed an interactive skin for a different database (yes, this seems to be a recurring theme in my work).

This year, we’re hoping to tackle some big projects that will improve engagement in exhibitions, and I want to build something that gets visitors excited about what we do.

This goal isn’t as concrete, but here’s how I’m thinking I can do this:

• Find a project that pushes my skills; I want a challenge, something I can learn from, but something that is also doable. There’s a digital card project that fits, as well as a a project using an API that is possible.
• Write up the entire experience; when I was in grad school I would share the progress of my digital learning- I miss doing that, so I’m going to make this a priority with my next digital project.

Bonus: hide an easter egg in it for other nerds 😉

Work More with Influencers

This is a world that I’m still not totally comfortable with; even though we’ve seen some good results from doing events and programs for influencers. The influencer world is not going away, it is merely changing. Now, we’re seeing a trend towards micro-influencers and authenticity. That means finding people who are trusted within their little online communities; which is a tough thing to do.

My goal this year is to identify at least 10 influencers locally and 5 nationally that I can target. How will I do this?

• Start following relevant hashtags to find the micro-communities on social media and follow along to determine who fits our brand and approach, and would be good to bring to the museum.
• Create interesting private events for influencers, or public events led by influencers, that will attract new audiences. When we’ve done this in the past, it has been highly successful, so I want to make it more of a priority.
• Find a diverse range of influencers to fit the diverse range of visitors we have- not only do we want locals and tourists, we want researchers and scholars. This means finding people who aren’t traditionally ‘influencers’ to come out and share their experience at the museum.

Bonus: create a low-maintenance experience for influencers that would be VIP, cool and unique, but that doesn’t require a lot of staff time and is easy to repeat.

This morning I attended my first ever PRSA Coffee and Conversation. I usually don’t think of myself as a PR person, usually I see myself as more in the digital humanities realm than anything else, but the topic was one that I’ve been increasingly interested in and think is important for museums: turning your employees into social media ambassadors.

At a museum, there are often so many different things happening at the same time, it can be hard to know all of them, and sometimes, these missed opportunities are really cool and fascinating. By having staff at the museum share what they are doing, it provides a behind the scenes look for visitors, is an easy way for other staff to see what’s happening, and it provides the museum with easy re-shareable content.

There are downsides, of course. By getting staff to share, you run the risk of them sharing something inappropriate or just “not quite right” or off-brand. There’s also the chance that their personal social media accounts aren’t appropriate or are highly political and if they don’t make it clear that these aren’t the views of the museum then you could be in trouble.

Instead of thinking of all the ways that having employees as ambassadors could go wrong, I want to focus on how it can go right and the tactics we discussed for doing this. Here are some of my top takeaways from this event.

1. Reward employees who share great content

You probably already have people in your organization that are sharing great content and just need a little extra encouragement to share even more! Reward employees who share by acknowledging the great post in person, re-posting on the institutional account, or mentioning the great share to their boss. One person suggested making brownies for ambassadors!

2. Have a broader code of conduct that covers behavior on and offline

In order to protect your employees and the institution, you probably already have a code of conduct or handbook that outlines what types of behavior are appropriate and what are not. These often apply online and offline, so if employees are interested in sharing, remind them to check that code of conduct before they do.

3. Provide employees with training and examples of good sharing

What someone considers a “good post” can vary dramatically, so it’s a great idea to provide employees with examples of appropriate posts, like sharing photos that demonstrate good museum behavior and using the right hashtags. You may want to provide some positive guidelines and examples. Other institutions suggested creating a bank of images and text that employees are allowed to use if they want to share.

Personally, I provided the staff here at the museum with a list of ten things that make a great social media ambassador, including:

• Identify yourself online as a member of staff
• Be authentic and positive
• Share amazing things behind the scenes (if you have permission)
• Be a digital docent to our online guests
• Model good museum behavior
• Tag us, tag them, tag everyone
• Get involved with digital communities
• Provide details about collection objects if pictured (if you have permission to share)

Of course… the full presentation was illustrated with cat photos. But I’ll save that for another day.

In October, Nina Simon wrote a post on Museum 2.0 about creating a vision for yourself in your job, specifically looking at how this exercise could help her and her employees clarify their thinking for the future and empower them.

She wrote that “A vision is not a solution to a problem. A vision is a detailed history of the future. It’s a story written from the vantage point of a few months or years from now. It’s a story of what happened after you launched that program, gave that speech, conquered that challenge. What does the world look like in that future? What’s different about your life, your work? That’s the story a vision tells.” She continues to write that it one should “Put in everything you want to see happen–even if it seems impossible. Don’t focus on how you got there. Write about where you arrived.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about my job and my goals for the next year, and I keep coming back to that blog post. So instead of sharing my goals, I’m going a few of my visions for the next year.

My Visions for 2018:

• My colleagues feel empowered to create their own digital content to be shared online: they write blog posts, they take photos meant for Instagram, they suggest stories and opportunities, and become actively involved in our social media using their own personal or professional accounts.
  • Curators and assistant-curators share favorite objects, updates on the exhibitions they are working on, and behind the scenes looks at what their job consists of
  • Conservators and object prep share the work they are doing and how they often have to come up with creative and innovative methods to conserve the objects in the collection
  • Visitor Services staff and docents will share stories that they hear from guests, because they are our frontline and know first hand whether we are achieving on site what we hope to
  • Marketing, membership, maintenance, development and more will show how a museum is more than collections
• We are the go-to contact when any other museum, non-profit, or local institution is doing a social media campaign.
  • Whenever someone launches a new social media hashtag campaign, they think of us and reach out to have us join in and share our collections.
  • Whenever someone wants to do something fun and different to engage people online, they think of us and reach out to brainstorm interesting ideas.
• People come to the museum as a way to get inspired and share these work on social media, tagging the museum or the works that inspired them.
  • Visitors to our exhibitions, theater, mansion and gardens see these spaces not as static spaces, but as a place where they can go to get inspired, to ask questions, to have conversations, and think creatively.
  • By sharing the experiences of other guests and creating spaces where they feel comfortable, guests continue to share, discuss, and engage before and after the museum visit.
  • To aid in this, we have an international and local network of influencers around the world who help us to create content, share their experience of the museum, and help us promote the collections in new and exciting ways.
• We re-assess the ways we are using social media and the accounts that we have to create a more unified but also more personalized experience for our followers and guests.
  • Social media is dynamic, and so are we- we use analytics to look at all our accounts to see which are in need of a makeover, which are good to continue, and which should be decommissioned (or if new ones need to be created).
  • We experiment with new types of content and new campaigns to reach different audiences and re-engage our current fan base.
• I learn more about the ways that people interact and engage with social media
  • Over the next year, I keep up with the new scholarly research from across different disciplines about how people engage online
  • I seek out different social media and digital humanities groups to learn from, and continue to build my own knowledge of what is happening broadly in online spaces

What is your vision?