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Are you planning to use social media at your museum? Well, then you’re not alone. For the last few years social media has attracted huge interest and many museums are seriously considering building communities and allowing users to participate in creation of content – if they’re not already doing it.

Wednesday I attended the workshop Planning Social Media in Museums facilitated by Seb Chan from Powerhouse Museum and Angelina Russo from Swinburne University, Australia. And like in the workshop about web surveys the basic message was: If you’re going to do it, do it right! And as is the case with web surveys, a certain ‘community fatigue’ has occurred. There are so many communities and social platforms out there by now that if you want to start one more there’d better be an indisputable reason to do so. Don’t just do it because everyone else is. Carefully consider if there are users out there with a real interest in participating who don’t get their need covered already on existing social platforms. Also, don’t forget the implications for your institution. Communities tend to require a lot of staff hours to maintain and if you can’t honour that you will only be able to go half way.

This may sound discouraging but Seb and Angelina were just encouraging museums to do a reality check before entering into the domain of social media: Does your institution have the necessary capacity to not only set up the social framework but also keep it alive and kicking? What does your institution hope to achieve from engaging socially with users? And most importantly, are there users out there who need the social interaction you have in mind? One of the things you should be very specific about is setting up measurable goals for your social media effort 

• What are you trying to do?
• Who are you trying to reach (be precise)?
• How will you know your effort has been successful?
• Which methods best measure the success?
• Does success equate with visitor satisfaction?

Another possible approach to using social media is to engage in existing communities relevant for your institution instead of building new ones. Many communities build themselves around topics of direct interest to museums and there might be potential in hooking up to them. Seb and Angelina stressed though that this should be done with caution because entering a community of private individuals as an official institution is a delicate matter and demands that you think carefully about which voice(s) your institution speak with: The voice of the museum or voices of individual employees.

A reality check in your institution might take into account Seb Chan’s 5 rules of museum content for user interaction, developed in collaboration with Shelley Bernstein from Brooklyn Museum:

1. discoverable
2. meaningful
3. responsive
4. usable/shareable
5. available online, onsite and offline

If your content can answer to these criteria, and if you have the resources and the users needed to sustain a community, you’re on a good path towards creating meaningful social media interactions at your institution.

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community, Museums and the Web, MW2010, social media