On message

Wednesday, September 9th, 2009

Social networking sites present great opportunities for dialogue with visitors. But you have to accept that along with praise will come criticism

BUILDING DIALOGUE

Social media are about interaction. When it works well, this interaction can lead to proper dialogue and the formation of a “relationship” between those involved.

It is this simple underlying appeal that accounts for the huge success of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and the many interconnections of the “blogosphere”. But this apparent simplicity belies a thorny complexity when it comes to museums and heritage organisations interacting online.

Most museums say they want to interact with visitors to build relationships and encourage dialogue, but are they really prepared for the web 2.0 world? Too often they don’t really know why they want to have these conversations or how to handle them when they arise.

“[Museums] don’t have the resources or policies to support real dialogue with the public, even if they are present in social media-land. They may be in Rome, but they’re not ready to do like the locals,” says Nina Simon, a museums and web 2.0 consultant.

EMBRACE THE FUTURE

A handful of museums around the world seem to have changed their culture and philosophy to embrace online social media. The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia, the Tate and the National Maritime Museum in the UK, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum and Brooklyn Museum in the US are all pretty advanced in this area.

If you are thinking of using social media sites or museum blogs to interact with the public, a good starting point is to look closely at what these organisations are doing.

At Brooklyn Museum, Shelley Bernstein, the chief of technology, claims that dialogue and interaction are now intrinsic to their work. But have they had to change to achieve this? “The easiest way for me to answer this question is to say we live with technology and these tools differently now,” says Bernstein.

“It’s more about ambient awareness - it’s a fifth of what my job entails here, but it’s always on in the background: nights, weekends and even on vacation. That’s not a bad thing; I encourage institutions to find the people in their organisation who live these platforms much like our audience do. They are going to be the most natural at managing the presence in a way that is very fluid.”

Much of the challenge lies in how a single institution with limited staff and time can effectively communicate with many individuals, some of whom are not complimentary.

Take an example on the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) Facebook page made after a recent event held at the museum. A visitor wrote: “I was so disappointed. What an over-priced, uninspiring exhibition and such half-hearted late-night ‘events’. Do not pay £11 to see the Baroque exhibition, it’s a total rip-off!”

This may be an isolated opinion, but you really have to respond, which the V&A did, albeit in a fairly cursory fashion, by saying it welcomes feedback. Spurred by this, the visitor then offered more specific criticism of the design of the Baroque exhibition, which the museum then failed to respond to, at least publicly.

The V&A has almost 10,000 “fans” on Facebook, so these interactions are significant. As Simon notes, a Facebook group is one of the most time-consuming of the “cheap” options for developing web 2.0 activity, but it can reach a lot of people in a targeted manner.

“If you have staff members who are already using these social networks, you can quickly broadcast out to a large group of people at infrequent points and provide a place for that group to meet and interact with each other,” she says.

Another option for starting interaction and discussion is to host a message board on the museum’s site. The site of the UK Science Museum’s Dana Centre, for example, features a Discuss area where people can talk about science, technology and the environment by setting up their own topic threads. In this sense it is simple and easily maintained.

But according to Maya Mendiratta, programmes developer at the Dana Centre, without regular plugging and content changes on the site’s homepage, participation is pretty low.

“We have discussed ways to increase participation, but they all require web editing and we are really lucky if we get one hour of the [Science Museum] web team’s time a week. So I would advise that if you are setting up a forum, you get as much web-editing experience as possible and set it up so you can do it yourself.”

FAN BASE

One of the most developed programmes of social networking is the Brooklyn Museum’s 1stfans (see link below). As an internet-enabled version of a traditional member scheme, 1stfans links an online community directly to museum events.

Information about exclusive member events is delivered via Facebook, Twitter and Flickr to encourage people to visit and mix in person with museum staff, artists and other 1stfans members.

In fact, the Brooklyn Museum has a Community section on its website, dedicated to all its online interactions. Here, users can leave comments about their visit, join a “posse” and contribute to the museum’s online collection, as well as read blogs and watch videos. By all accounts, the Brooklyn Museum presents one of the most holistic approaches to web 2.0 interaction in the museum sector.

“Brooklyn has a community-driven mission, so for us, reaching out in these types of forums is very natural and makes sense overall,” says Shelley Bernstein.

“It’s less about PR and more about community and outreach, and our participation online in this way is very similar to what our visitor services staff do when people come inside the building or what our community manager does when she reaches out to the local communities.”

Whatever your reasons for engaging in social media, remember that some form of dialogue will follow, and the way this is handled will affect a visitor’s relationship with the museum.

Perhaps the most important thing is to have an awareness of potential stumbling blocks before heading online “socially”. Be clear at the outset what kind of dialogue or relationships you want and focus on that dynamic, not the technologies or platforms.

This article was written for the Working Knowledge section of Museum Practice, Autumn 2009.

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