Note: I originally wrote this article some time ago, well before current events had museum doors closed and everyone staying at home. It’s become all the more imperative to take our programs online as its currently the only way to continue to stay engaged with our community and continue to serve them. Even once this is over, online museum programming will still be wildly valuable and perhaps even expected by your community.
Programs, exhibits, events – all of these have one central measurement at their heart: attendance numbers. As museum professionals we worry a lot about getting people through our doors. I’ve been through more than one nervous day-of freakout where everyone started calling their friends and family and begging them to attend in order to make sure that we looked like we had a full house.
This is a two-pronged problem: First, how many visitors were actually engaged with the material, and more specifically how many non-family members felt they received value from the program/exhibit/event? Two, do we need people in the museum to have an engaged audience?
Richard Cohn wrote the book Do Museums Still Need Objects? It was a thoughtful reflection on the future of museums and their collections. I won’t pose whether or not museums still need audiences (As public institutions we absolutely do), but I will wonder whether or not we need them physically in our seats.
As museums, even the largest institutions have limited time, resources and staff available for any given project. We still want those projects to have an impact on the public – particularly our local community and beyond. We also want to continuously maintain, and even increase our attendance as often as possible as it’s a key barometer of how healthy our institution is. In addition to that, our responsibility to the public as well as calls for social equity remind us that we must constantly attempt to engage new audiences with our institution, mission, and collections.
But I’d argue that we’re going about it wrong, and not just because we’ve voluntold our family member to come to the 7th hands-on bauble making event this month. It’s because we’re not reaching out to our audiences where they already are, in a space they already feel comfortable with. A place that could be easily accessible to us as institutions with a relatively minimal investment on our part: Online.
Video has been a huge and ever-evolving part of the internet for over a decade now. We are well past the point of no return. TikTok, Instagram Facebook Live and Snapchat have made ever-easier and more accessible ways to create video snippets of our everyday lives. Juggernauts like Youtube and Vimeo and Skype continue to hold their ground as ubiquitous sources of communication, entertainment and learning. These forms of social media are used by a wide variety of audiences. Even my grandmother, who is notoriously tech-phobic and internet un-savvy, knows how to scroll through social media sites and watch videos there. Perhaps even more importantly – they are used prevalently by museum audience unicorns: Generation Z and Millennials.
Yet we continue to ignore this easy and obvious method of increasing awareness, access, and attendance. If we begin to provide video walk thrus of our exhibits – we can encourage physical attendance, or confirm interest for people who are on the fence about whether to wedge yet another thing into their vacation. We can give opportunities for education program attendance for kids who are unable to leave home due to an illness or who don’t feel comfortable in a crowd. We can offer lecture opportunities for millennials, who are too tired or too busy to attend a week night lecture on a topic they might otherwise be interested in. Giving them this opportunity to participate while they sweat it out on the gym treadmill or while having a glass of wine in their pajamas at home means we have made ourselves more relevant, more engaged and more willing to reach out to our communities in their comfort zones.
It has the added bonus of extending our reach as well. I may be the exception because I’m already a museum nerd, but I’ve used Google’s walk-thru feature on a number of museums around the world that I may not otherwise visit. I’ve checked out their collections on past perfect online or through their own creative user interfaces. There has been more than one program at another museum that interests me, but I can’t attend because of time or distance or money. These are all pains that museums are all too familiar with. Just the number of institutions that now have the Google walk-through option or collections online is growing exponentially. The future will be in video, mobile and online interactions – and it’s better to get on the forefront of these trends.
I already hear the dreaded buts coming…so before you go, read on…
But our programs cost something! Those are all free methods and we require money to keep these programs alive!
Fair enough. There are options out there to create paywalls for your videos – in other words, people will have to pay a fee to access them. You can do this for one video, or create a subscription or membership on your website that would let people access an entire archive or web series. You could also tie these paywalls to membership to your institution, an option that would increase your membership and add an additional member benefit.
But we don’t have a tech person on staff. Watching video may be easy, but making video is too complicated.
It’s not really. If you want to be ultra-low tech a simple smart phone with a camera will do the trick, which is likely something someone on staff has already. You can use an option like Facebook Live or Youtube Live to stream video content to your audience live and for free with no editing or tech skills required. You just have to have an account and know how to press the record button. This may even be the best way to do it as its important for your social media presence to be relevant, audience centered and down to earth. A quick video of your latest exhibit or program can be an intimate look into your institution that has the opportunity to grab visitor attention. The more often you can provide live, engaging and in the moment interactions with your audience online – the better.
If you want higher quality video, a camera with HD capabilities costs under $600. Many have wifi capabilities and can also be set up to stream live. You can also set one up to record the session and upload it later. If you’re willing to take the extra step there are plenty of video editing programs out there that are free, and even Adobe Cloud comes at a reasonable cost (something you might already have if your institution has other in-house media needs).
But we’re a small institution! We don’t have the time or money for this. It doesn’t apply because we’re only relevant to our local community anyway!
It does apply. In fact, recent studies show that your local community might value you less than those that visit your museum while traveling. Additionally, small museums are typically those that are most in need of higher attendance numbers. I’ve worked at smaller institutions – I know how those numbers can make or break you, not only with your board and with your financial backers, but how they can break your spirit if they are consistently unimpressive or on a downward slump. There are ways to advertise online now that are affordable and provide great opportunities to target specific audiences.
You may have a unique collection or a unique piece – you’re undervaluing your collections, staff, and worth by telling yourself no one but your local community cares. Even if we only want to count your local community – your local community still has many people in the demographics we discussed above, who still have the same challenges in attending in-person programs.
It is important to remember that with any of this – it is not an if you build it, they will come scenario. The internet is vast. Content is in a practical sense, endless. You have to target your audience through social media – letting them know where they can find you and your programs. You also have to post regularly, something that can admittedly be difficult to do with limited resources, but is necessary to keep your audience engaged.
It’s also important for your online visitors to have opportunities to participate: let them ask questions through Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat. Create polls. Create an institutional hashtag for people to tag the projects you have inspired them to create at home. Have a community chat hour once a week where everyone can get together.
Ultimately, engaging in this way builds a positive reputation for your museum: You try to be as inclusive as possible by giving access to those with limited time and money. You’re engaging people where they are and where they are most comfortable. You’ll also be building a reputation for being audience centered, willing to try new things, and for being at the beginning of a long curve of the changing dynamic between museums and technology.
What are your thoughts on integrating online programming into your educational program schedule? Have you tried it? What forms of social media have you used to explore it?