20th October 2009
This article was written by Scott Billings for Museum Practice, Autumn 2009.
MARKETING
The temptation to use the internet’s many channels and communities for marketing is great. Thousands of people can be reached at once, often in well-targeted groups.
And if a museum starts a Facebook group or Twitter feed, its “fans” and “followers” are just waiting for marketing messages to tell them what’s going on at the museum - right? Well, not quite, because marketing, in the conventional sense, sits rather uncomfortably in the world of social media.
In many ways, social media are a great way of spreading the word about what a museum is up to, especially if people are involved in those activities. The problem is, the net answers back. Or rather, individuals do - and that is where it gets tricky, at least from a branding and marketing perspective.
A recent scuffle centred on the Museum of Modern Art (Moma) in New York illustrates this. In May, New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz used Facebook to comment on the galleries at Moma, which he felt significantly under-represented the work of female artists.
The museum’s chief communications officer, Kim Mitchell, responded to the Facebook group, but in a press release-style statement, using a regal-sounding “we” that irked many online readers who seemingly felt shut off from a proper dialogue by Moma’s corporate communications department.
Without scrutinising the precise language, it is sufficient to say that the museum thought it was engaging with people through social media, while others found Mitchell’s tone to be impersonal and inappropriate for a web 2.0 community that expects discourse.
Saltz was also criticised for using Facebook rather than a more open forum to air his opinions, as only Facebook “friends” could respond directly.
NEW MEDIA, NEW RULES
This episode demonstrates how marketing, public relations and branding do not work in the same way online as they do in traditional advertising, posters, leaflets or direct marketing.
Commenting on Moma’s response to the growing online conversation instigated by Saltz, ArtsJournal.com editor Douglas McLennan wrote, “Traditional PR notices are not only ineffective in this new era of many-to-many communication, but can make things worse. And what might have been a real opportunity to meaningfully engage this community has been lost.”
This is a sticky subject that, for most institutions, is still in formation and flux. If you are thinking of reaching out online for marketing purposes, first think carefully about how you will respond to conversations - favourable or critical - when they develop.
Where does the museum’s voice reside? Is it with the press office, the marketing team, curatorial staff, the director, or all of these? How do you want your brand to be projected and how closely do you want to police it? Do you care about negative comments and will you engage their authors?
Almost certainly, the view on these types of question - and the structures and processes that support it - will have to change as you engage online, as Fiona Romeo, head of digital media at the National Maritime Museum, London, explains.
“Typically [at NMM], every piece of communication would be controlled with style guidelines, editing and so on. Interviews would be run through the press office and everything was centrally controlled. But over the past couple of years we’ve been moving towards more distributive content.”
The web will serve up a multitude of views about a museum and given that these cannot be controlled, it is better to learn how to respond. Traditionally, bad press is often ignored in the hope that the story will soon blow over. But online comments usually hang around indefinitely, and they are searchable.
Nina Simon, a consultant on museums and web 2.0, advises organisations taking their first steps towards social media to start by searching review sites such as Yelp, TripAdvisor or Qype to see what people are saying about the institution.
“If reviews include incorrect information, add your own comment giving helpful information. If there are negative comments you want to address, commiserate, be friendly, and help them know that you care,” she says.
You can do the same for blogs, again commenting where appropriate. This is a good and simple starting point to familiarise yourself with the web 2.0 environment and is also a type of “soft” marketing.
TWITTER YE NOT?
The biggest social networking story of the day, Twitter, is perhaps the hardest to pin down from a marketing point of view. Some museums are using Twitter to post regular updates on exhibitions and events, as well as converse with the public. Its 140-character “tweet” limit is ideal for quick updates and short question-and-answer conversations.
However, it is informal by nature and the “voice” of a museum’s Twitter contact is typically individual, not corporate. This is a good thing perhaps, but it does have brand and public relations implications.
“Twitter could be the hardest social media platform to take your brand into because it is a person-to-person platform,” says Jim Richardson, managing director of branding consultancy Sumo.
“You need to have an individual [twittering for your organisation] who understands what your organisation is about and understands the medium. They need to be perceived as ‘that cool person who Twitters from the museum’, rather than the institution itself.
“But the content that this individual tweets can be based on your brand. If I’m tweeting for an art gallery wishing to inspire people to engage with art, this forms the basis of all my activity on the site, not just about my own exhibitions, but about other inspiring things.”
Richardson does not recommend Twitter as a public relations vehicle per se, but rather as a way to engage audiences “with interesting conversations”.
Having said that, Twitter is a great mechanism for quick updates, along the lines of “still seats left for tonight’s screening” or “6-9pm tonight, free bar (while stocks last)”, which were recent tweets by the Museum of Childhood in London to promote its First Thursdays events: direct marketing in anybody’s book.
Facebook is perhaps easier to approach in a straightforward marketing sense because it has a section for event details - and, unlike Twitter information, it is not limited to 140-character updates.
Facebook users can become “fans” of their favourite institutions and they do - in droves. The Design Museum, London, boasts of its 46,000 fans, the Tate has almost 12,000, and the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), London, more than 10,000.
MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS
So what does everyone get from this “relationship”? “We keep them updated with news, information about exhibitions and events, and we run competitions and special offers,” says Mark Hook, the web content manager at the V&A.
“The benefit to the online audience is that they always know what is going on at the museum and they are able to enter discussions with us about areas of particular interest. The benefit to the museum is that it is a chance to get feedback from people who are engaged with what we do and it is also an opportunity to reach new audiences,” he says.
Social media are great at getting the message out and reaching new audiences but the feedback is trickier to handle. So marketing in web 2.0 is marketing, but not quite as we know it.