Museums AssociationSocial Media and Museums

Mark Ellis@sparkellis

www.sounddelivery.org.uk

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First newspaper published

Computer1970170

21916 1930’

s2011

TVRadio

What’s changed?

Why Should We Care?• Last year 30.1m adults in the UK – about 60% –

accessed the internet every day• 19.2 million households with an Internet

connection in 2010, representing 73 per cent of households

• 43 per cent posted messages to social networking sites, chat sites or blogs

• 31 per cent of internet users aged 45 to 54 go online to post messages.

• 140 million tweets are sent a day • Around half a million new twitter accounts are set

up each day

How we spend our time online

http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/ukomrevealshowbritonsspendtimeonline190510.mxs

But its all young people isn’t it?

• More than two in five (43 percent) of Brits aged 55 to 74 use the internet frequently, says Age UK.

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• More than 500 million active users • 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given

day • Average user has 130 friends on the site • Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of

content each month • Average user becomes a fan of 4 Pages each month

A few statistics

Why do we want to use social media?

• To talk about issues that are relevant to us• To engage with visitors/communities with

similar interests• Finding cheaper ways of

communicating/marketing our events and exhibitions

• To get information that that might be useful to us

• Find new audiences?

Engaging with your online communities

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A Tale of Two Twitter feeds• Dr Samuel Johnson • Dr Johnson’s House Museum

Dr. Samuel Johnson’s House Museum - @drjohnsonshouse

• Just over 1000 followers• Tweets are from the staff• Updates on museum activity,

word definitions and interaction with other twitter users

Dr. Samuel Johnson - @drsamueljohnson

• Fake account taking on the persona of Dr. Samuel Johnson

• Over 33,000 followers• Frequent coverage in the

media, book of his best tweets released at Xmas 2010

• Tweets about modern topics in the “voice” of Samuel Johnson

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Torquay Museum, Devon

• Have a standard Fanpage• Have also created a profile for a sarcophagus

of a young boy on display in the museum, portraying him as a real (albeit deceased) boy

• Often referred to as a “friend finder’, this type of account is a creative way to reach your fans on Facebook

Speaks like a real person would, uploading images like you would on your own Facebook profile

Personable, using language that the followers will understand to describe what’s going on

Responds to interaction from the visitors, ensuring conversation continues

Giving information to the visitors of the museum in an original way

Encouraging people to interact with the museum’s other presence on Facebook

Why does it work?

• Original and engaging – Psamtek’s profile gets much more interaction than Torquay’s other fanpage

• An entertaining way to interact with your audience

• Can help to shed the “stuffy” impression that many young people have of museums

• More likely to be shared by your audience than a standard fanpage

“bloggers in residence”

Social Media Landscape

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Its up to you to figure out

what the *something*

is!

These are the tools that

allow you to do something