engage
or die trying

After years of struggle,
the Australian Museum
site is finally live.

1. How does the site work
2. What’s in it for users?
3. What’s in it for staff?
4. Where have we succeeded?
5. Where did things go wrong?
6. What’s next on the site?
7. What’s next out there?

how does the site
work?

The site architecture has
been reduced down to
three levels: categories,
sections, assets.

Every piece of content is
an asset - no more
“web pages”.

There are a range of
different types of assets.
(pages, fact sheets, images,
movies, events, media releases,
publications, jobs, galleries, blog
posts etc)

Every type of asset
allows commenting
and tagging.

Author and user tags
allow users to choose
different pathways
through the site.

Author comments and
tags are flagged
differently.

Every asset has five
different navigation
methods.

Header
Navigation
Section Navigation Related
links
Other
sections Author tags
User tags
Footer links

what’s in it for
users?

Comment on
any asset.

Add tags to any asset.

“Favourite” any asset.

Create favourite sets and
share these sets
with others.

Upload their own
images, movies, audios,
comments, stories.

Apply for expert status.
help monitor, answer questions,
encourage discussion, create
content etc.

what’s in it for
staff?

Every staff member can
become an author.

Publish assets directly.

Own their assets.

Create their own
focused, passionate
and personal blogs.

Publish all content via
one simple system.

where have we
succeeded?

Well… we are live.

We did lots of user
testing on overall
concepts.

We have a custom build
back end (also heavily
user-tested).

Staff are overcoming
concerns about possible
misinformation in tags &
comments.

We have trained 120
staff. We are heading
towards decentralised
authorship.

where did things go
wrong?

The build included far to
much documentation
and doubling up.

Due to time constraints,
we did not user-test
some key areas.

The “light” design
became the “final”
design.

Some areas are not
working as well as
they should.

what’s next on
the site?

1 Adjust some
key areas

Three months after
launch we began
reviewing the website.

Over the next few
months we will fix
some of the
known issues.

2 Review/refine
commenting

Are people commenting
as expected?

What asset types are
people commenting on?

Are we responding to
and encouraging
comments
appropriately?

Comment dynamics - do
comments encourage
other comments?

Should we change the
labeling from “Add
comment” to “share your
story” or similar?

3
Explore
micro-
comments

“…the ability to not just
respond but indicate agree,
disagree, educational,
interesting is something I find
myself wishing I could be able
to do elsewhere online.”
USER OF RAVELRY

We are exploring
micro-comments or
micro-commitments.

For example:
Like
Don’t like
Informative
Too simple
Too complex

what’s next out
there?

There seem to be two
extremes of social media
engagement.

1. We gotta have it!
Believe in the hype.
“Our competitors do it”.
“Everyone is on it”.

2. Why should we?
“Why not just a website?”
“We have no time”
“Too frivolous”

So, where does the
Museum sit?

Audiences are
becoming more
fragmented.

We cannot expect to
engage with the wide
range of online
communities with
just a website.

As many people have
said before, we need to
go where the people are.

The Museum have been
dabbling in social media
for some time, but
without clear overall
objectives.

Here is our overall
plan of action for
the future.

1
Define our
social media
goals

a. engage new communities?
b. provide rich information?
c. inform and educate?
d. encourage discussion?
e. increase visitation?

2 Define
audiences

a. who are they?
b. where are they?
c. what are they talking about?
d. how do they communicate?

3 Listen

a. listen via media tools/feeds
b. listen to comments
c. listen to related topics
d. listen on facebook, twitter,
youtube etc

4
Define how
we will
engage

a. language/attitude/tone?
b. which staff will take part?
c. dealing with praise?
d. dealing with criticism?

5 Engage!

a. provide rich content?
b. share related content?
c. encourage discussion?
d. allow others to share?

6 Broadcast

Use tools to push
content to multiple
audiences.
tubemogul
feedburner
etc

However, we need to be
at each end destination
to engage with that
community.

7 Measure
& review

a. review aims regularly?
b. learn from mistakes?
c. avoid simplistic measuring
such as “follower” numbers

That’s the story so far…

thank you