The summer is winding down, the kids will be back to school in days if they’re not there already, and you’re looking for a last-minute diversion. Something that mixes culture with fun, that’s not too expensive, and that will enrich your life just a little bit. Maybe something like your local art museum?
Most communities are lucky to have a museum of some sort, but often these museums struggle to get by on a combination of donations, fundraisers, grants and endowments. A big marketing budget is usually never an option. Social media offers a huge opportunity for local museums to tap into a community and try to build up word-of-mouth about current exhibits and events and drive foot traffic to the museum.
For this installment of Social Media Smackdown, I selected two art museums in smaller cities: Tacoma, Wash. and Cincinnati, Ohio. Let’s get down to it and see who comes out on top.
Round One: Twitter
Each museum is active on Twitter: @TacomaArtMuseum and @CincyArtMuseum. I like how each museum’s Twitter handle is pretty obvious and descriptive.
Tacoma Art Museum: Following 304; Follwers 1,577; Tweets 644
Tacoma Art Museum has a really nice, even mix of original content promoting museum events, retweets of general art news and items of interest, and passing along local area happenings. They also do a good job of replying to people, despite the fact that they are only following back about 20 percent of their followers (which isn’t specifically a bad thing). It seems that one person manages the account, as it has a singular voice to it, but the bio doesn’t state who that person is.
Tacoma Art Museum seems to do a good job of promoting events using Twitter. For example, a recent tweet on a Friday afternoon let followers know about a local movie and subsequent lecture being given by the museum curator. Another tweet let followers know that kids would be admitted free through the end of the month. Following events, the museum often asks people to post and share pictures at its other social outposts.
Cincinnati Art Museum: Following 351; Followers 4,434; Tweets 363
Cincinnati Art Museum’s twitter feed is slightly heavier on the tweeted news links, but they still seem to manage good interaction with followers. And the links aren’t automated from a feed source, so they’re typically well-crafted “teasers” that take you to interesting parts of the museum’s Web site. For example, each Wednesday they tweet a “Work of the Week” which takes you to a photo of some obscure piece in the museum’s collection.
The account seems to have lagged on actively replying to followers lately, but going back just a few weeks I found replies thanking people for visiting, giving directions to nearby bus stops near the museum, and even responding to followers about the reduction in hours the museum made to save costs.
Both museums are doing a pretty decent job using Twitter to share news and get folks interested in their offerings. I think that while Tacoma does a good job mixing in other community events in its Twitter feed, it could even stand to do a little more self-promotion. Cincinnati has that part down, but it seems to have been slacking off on replies and interactions lately and needs to be careful not to become just a link feed. And both museums would benefit from adding the name the person or people behind the account to the bio so that followers have someone to identify. I also think it could benefit them to try and follow back more of their followers.
Point: It’s really close. While I like that Tacoma uses its Twitter feed to be a source of community info, I think Cincinnati does a better job of using Twitter to drive interest in the museum itself, which really should be the primary goal for these organizations. But Cincinnati doesn’t engage as much as Tacoma and in some ways is too focused on just tweeting links. I’m going to wimp out and call this a tie for now.
Round Two: Facebook
The Facebook fan page for Tacoma Art Museum has 325 fans. The info tab includes hours, public transportation information and directions, and links to all the museum’s social outposts. They’ve created an “Extended Info” tab that has links to all current and upcoming exhibitions and dates. The events tab is chock-full of events that range from simply admissions deals to community festivals, art camps and lectures. Tacoma Art Museum’s fan page only has a handful of photos, and with all the events they have you’d think they’d populate with more. They have also listed 21 other pages as favorites, many of them other museums or other popular places in the Tacoma area.
On the wall (which is the landing tab of their fan page), Tacoma frequently posts new content that often includes news articles about the museum and art-infused happenings other locations in Tacoma. It doesn’t seem that many fans are interacting with the page yet (very few likes or comments on the items), but hopefully the 325 fans are catching the fun tidbits that Tacoma Art Museum is pushing into their stream through its fan page.
Cincinnati Art Museum’s fan page, with 2,301 fans, has very basic info including location, transportation and hours, and they also have an extended info tab that goes into great detail (including images) of current special exhibits with descriptions, pricing, dates and links. It’s almost a little cluttered, though, and I wonder if that tab could benefit from less information overall and instead serve as teasers and send folks to a more detailed exhibit site. The page includes more than 100 photos from exhibit openings that the museum has posted, plus a couple from fans. On the boxes tab, there’s a feed from Flickr with more pictures. The events tab is also full of activities at the museum.
On the page wall (also the landing page), the content is primarily an automated feed of its Twitter account. I’m not really sure what purpose this serves, and it just comes off as looking robotic. It would be much more effective if a “real person” managed the page and selectively posted status updates and posts that allowed for more interaction among the fans.
Point: The pages are almost identical in type of content and structure expect for the walls. Tacoma wins here for keeping the wall posts frequent and interesting but not automating.
Round Three: Web site
I found the Web sites of each to be visually pleasing (which you would expect for art museums, right?) and relatively simple to navigate. I was specifically looking for how “social” the sites were: how interactive, innovative and how easy it is for users to share and save content.
The Web site for Tacoma Art Museum allows you to translate it into one of six languages from a flag icon on the home page. They’ve also installed the “Add this” widget to the home page to allow you to share the content to Facebook, etc. However, on subsequent pages the widget just appears as a tiny orange cross and I didn’t even realize what it was until I accidentally moused over it. I can imagine that someone less used to sharing content on the Web than I am would ignore this completely. But at least it is there as an option. The site invites you to sign-up for eNewsletters via a link in the sidebar.
One of the best sections of their site is the “Connect with us” area that alerts visitors about the museum’s social outpost. Icons at the bottom of the page invite visitors to become a fan on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. Separate pages detail the museum’s Flickr and YouTube account with an embedded slideshow of photos and video. The museum has free WiFi and they encourage visitors to share their experiences from right within the museum. However, this section is buried in the site. I think it would be much more effective to have a large “Connect” icon somewhere on the home page or even have social profile links right in the sidebar so people didn’t have to go searching.
Over on Cincinnati’s site, there appears to be a disconnect with social media. They do a few things well — an RSS feed icon in the upper corner takes you to a page where you can subscribe to events and news feeds and also includes a link to explain what RSS is and how to set up a feed reader — helpful. They also have some neat podcasts that they’ve produced that are available in the iTunes store and a video podcast that’s embedded on the site.
However, basically none of the content on the rest of the site is easily shareable. They have photos of thousands and thousands of the pieces in their collection cataloged on the site, but no one-click sharing option (to be fair, copyright may be at issue here). None of the events or exhibit pages have an opportunity to share, and despite sifting through their site I could not find any mention of their Facebook page, Twitter feed or other social outposts. Even the contact page was missing that info.
Point: Tacoma wins here for making visitors to its Web site aware of its social media presence (though not obviously) and for installing the Add This widget to allow visitors to share content across the Web. Cincinnati still has a very traditional site with little to no social media integration.
Round Four: Other social sites (Flickr, YouTube, etc.)
On Flickr, Tacoma Art Museum has both its own account/photostream and has also created a group pool that visitors can add pictures to. More than 385 people have joined the museum’s group pool and uploaded more than 1,700 images! On the museum’s own photostream, they’ve done something pretty cool — they uploaded more than 40 images of the museum plaza so that artists, architects and designers who were entering a competitive bid to redesign the space could visualize it and get a sense of the opportunity and hopefully capture it in their proposals.
Cincinnati has a group pool on Flickr with 38 members and 400+ images posted. It looks like the admin for the Flickr group has actively sought out images to add to the pool, and there are some really nice shots there. They also have their own Flickr account and have posted 195 snaps from exhibit openings and museum events.
Over on YouTube, both museums have dedicated channels (Tacoma’s is here and Cincinnati’s is here). Each has nearly identical number of channel views (3,200) and, haha, they are “friends” with eachothers’ channels on YouTube. Tacoma has posted 11 videos ranging from museum commercials to video depictions of how they actually install some of their exhibitions (like this Ship in a Bottle clip). They’ve added several related videos to favorites and have 78 subscribers to their channel. Their most recent video was posted seven months ago. Tacoma has also created a playlist of videos from a recent cinema competition that were shot at its museum.
Cincinnati’s YouTube channel has 100 subscribers but only three videos and the most recent one is a year old. They did attempt a video podcast two years ago that appeared to be in conjunction with an exhibition opening – it’s a 10-minute clip that contains an interview with an art fashion collector. It’s an interesting piece, but a bit on the long side and since there’s only one it appears that they abandoned the video podcast format. The other two videos are short promos for museum exhibitions.
Point: Again, it’s close, but I think I’ve got to go with Tacoma again. They seem to have kept a little more up to date with their Flickr and YouTube accounts and have more fresh and recent content. . I like how Tacoma does a good job aggregating other people’s content (like the playlist from the film contest)
The Final Verdict: Tacoma comes out ahead of Cincinnati in this smackdown. It’s great that both museums are dabbling in social media and seeing how they can get it to work (that certainly can’t be said for all arts organizations). Tacoma seems to be a little ahead of the curve on making sure that it is allowing visitors to share its content and avoiding automation of information, which can turn people off quickly. Cincinnati has made a good start, but could go much further by tying their Web site to their social outposts.
Previous Smackdown: Cannondale vs. Trek
Previous Smackdown: Columbus, Ohio vs. Columbia, S.C.
Previous Smackdown: Mountain Hardwear vs. The North Face
Previous Smackdown: Magic Hat vs. Bell’s Beer
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