Resources :: ZERO ONE

Going Social:
Single Museum Looking for a Good Community. Not Afraid of Commitment.

Social networking sites are quickly becoming a converging point for key technology, media and cultural trends and the number of users flocking to these sites are staggering. , According to Wikipedia Facebook has 70 million registered users, MySpace has over 110 million users, LinkedIn has 22 Million and one of the newer sites, Twitter, just over a year old, already has a million plus users. Museums can tap into this audience and energy.

A social networking site is a web site that allows users to interact and share data with other users - visitors looking for like-minded others. Some of the big players are:

Facebook: one of the largest and most popular of the social networking sites in North America and Canadian adoption has been particularly high. According to the Solution Research Group which conducted a study in 2007, 8 million Canadians - about one in four - have a Facebook profile page. Facebook members create a profile and connect and interact with other members

MySpace: similar to Facebook but a little edgier. It is where bands and artists are converging and is generally a younger crowd than Facebook.

Twitter: while this site has the same connectivity features as other social networking sites it has become popular for it's micro-blogging service. It allows users to create updates or 'tweets', text-based posts of up to 140 characters letting others know what they are doing or passing on information

YouTube: a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. In January 2008, 79 million users watched over 3 billion videos on YouTube.

Flickr: similar to YouTube but Flickr's focus is on photographs. As of November, 2007 Flickr was hosting more than two billion images.

There are literally hundreds of similar sites with different audiences: LinkedIn, a professional networking social site, WeeWorld, a two dimensional networking site, Piczo, a site popular with young girls, Orkut, a Google social networking site popular in Brazil and hi5 and Bebo, two popular sites in Europe. More are springing up every day.

Join the Fun

Below are few ways that museums can leverage these growing online communities. Don't be intimidated, most of these solutions are easy, quick and cheap and won't require a computer science degree.

1. Listen to the conversations

If you aren't already one of the 25% of Canadians that have joined Facebook, give it a try. It's easy and, as with the vast majority of these sites, free. Understand the technologies and you'll be a step closer to leveraging them to bring more traffic and interest to your museum.

You can monitor what people are saying about your museum in their blogs with blog search sites such as Technorati.com and Google Blog. This is not only a great way to gage the online community interest in your museum but also a necessity for maintaining your online reputation.

There are also networking site devoted to museum professionals: join the Museum and Educational Social Network, a social networking site for those in the field or Exhibit Files, a community site for museum professionals to post their exhibition development case studies for review or comments.

2. Join the conversations

You are the experts in the museum world - answer questions, join discussions, let potential visitors know you exist and get them excited about your museum.

You can broadcast news and events via sites like Twitter or Facebook or take your expertise a little further as the library world has done. Librarians around the world celebrated the first annual Slam the Boards AnswerFest on September 10, 2007. It was a day-long event where librarians 'invaded' various answer sites such Yahoo! Answers, Amazon's Askville and Wikipedia Reference Desk to show the expertise in libraries.

3. Shape the conversations

Now that you have a bit of experience, take it up a notch and start shaping the conversations. Create a Facebook group where you can share information with others - the Glenbow Museum, the Comox Air Force Museum and the BC Sports Hall of Fame and Museum are a few of the many museums that have a Facebook page. You can tap into a community that wants to hear what you are doing.

Set up a Flickr site and post some of the more intriguing objects in your collection - the Smithsonian recently uploaded 6,288 of their images to Flickr. Take a video of your space and post on YouTube - consider it a commercial of your latest exhibit. If a Sweet & Funny Cats Compilation, the video promoted on the home page of YouTube as a write this can get half a million views in less than a day, think of a what an entertaining museum video can garner.

If you are really ambitious, start your own social networking site. Ning is a website that allows users to create a social networking site on any topic. You can create discussion forums, integrate with Facebook, add photos and events and sign up new members. It's free and Ning walks you through an easy set up. The Indianapolis Children's Museum took it a step further and set up Tree of Promise, a social network created to augment a new permanent exhibition, The Power of Children.

These are a few ways that museum can find their online voice, claim their relevancy and attract a few new visitors along the way. True love awaits in social networking.

David Alexander (david@zeroonedesign.com) is one of the geeks at Zero One Design.