Why are we a Twitter 1st Museum?
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A short talk on a recent update to our social media strategy at the Royal Ontario Museum. Includes data and why this social media activity is important for the Museum's long term goals.
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Why are we a Twitter 1st Museum?
- 1. Why are we a Twitter 1st museum? @wrdodger #musesocial
- 4. Not playing flappy bird... - @ROMtoronto tweets on average 570 times/month - Customer service, collections, research, replies, programs, exhibitions, jokes, images, videos, more IMAGES!
- 8. Four years of data...
- 12. How are WE leading the industry?
- 13. #FNLROM
- 15. #atROM
- 20. Questions?
Editor's Notes
- Hi everyone, thank you all for coming out this morning, I wanted to take this opportunity to explain a recent update to our overall social media strategy, I also wanted to show you the data that we used to make these decisions, some of it I think will surprise many of you. I’ll also explain why this is important for the museum and also show you an exciting new tool and a few activations that we’re testing out this fall to deliver on this new strategy.
- We use various social media platforms to amplify our content, to share our research expertise, collections, programs, and exhibitions. *CLICK* We use facebook, our third largest platform by network size, we just starting to ramp up our instagram activity but it has become an important platform for us, we’ve been a leader on google+, our #1 platform by network size and much of the content we share on these platforms comes fro mthe blog. But twitter by far has given us the most value for our time, like the other platforms we use twitter to build relationships with people, in my opinion this relationship building is the most important aspect of our social media activity. Our two objectives for social at the museum are: - To Build connections with our community by fostering direct, timely, and responsive dialogue - and to Enhance the museum’s public profile by increasing awareness and understanding of the ROM as a resource of expertise in our research and collections areas
- Twitter allows users to create 140 character messages that can include images, links, and hastags called tweets - Tweets are public & discoverable by ANYONE - As your network grows, so to does the reach of your tweets - There is no ‘Pay-to-play’ like Facebook, you do not have to pay to reach your followers and beyond After about a year into this role I quickly realized that twitter was taking up the bulk of my time. But it was also providing the largest return on my time, we were having more conversations with people and doing more to build brand awareness on twitter than any other platform. We still post on the other platforms but we definitely recognized more activity and the value of that activity on Twitter. Around this same time, facebook instituted a few algorithm changes that pushed brands to pay to reach their communities. Right now, unless you buy ads on Facebook your posts only reach 15% of your community. Purchasing ads on Facebook is not something that we are in the position to do right now.
- So everyone has probably seen me doing this in our galleries, a lot. I can assure you I’m not playing games. Looking at the past year, @ROMtoronto tweeted on average 570 times per month, most of it is customer service related but we also share a ton of images, people love images! The benefit of social media is that we can share lots of content, we can be agile and jump on stories in the news that relate to our collections or research expertise, we can answer questions from our community and TALK to people in our own backyard and all over the world. That said, we also have to make sure our presence is consistent, that is it responsive and engaging. If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right and more often than not, this means going well beyond the monday-friday, 9-5 traditional work week. I’d like to give you a some perspective on all of this online activity so let’s have a look at some data. I promise I won’t put you to sleep and I’m sure many of you will be a bit surprised by the next few slides!
- Here’s a look at a typical 30 days of activity on @ROMtoronto: We sent out 584 tweets and received 946 retweets, we had 130 replies, replies mean that a conversation happened. We were mentioned 3,407 times and reached almost 31 million twitter accounts. A note on Potential impressions/Reach: Potential impressions are an important part of Twitter analytics. The number of potential impressions represents an estimate of the total number of times someone could have viewed a tweet. Reach is calculated by taking our follower count and adding the followers of any twitter accounts that interact with our messages to generate the total number of potential impressions. Overlap is not removed, just like many other forms of paid media (TV, bilboards, other forms of display advertising), it is difficult to say whether or not people actually saw the tweets. However, this number is crucial in evaluating the relative performance of your tweets in engaging followers.
- In the online world we value data over a three month time period so here’s our summer @ROMtoronto In this period we sent 1,578 tweets which achieved 2,721 retweets, 265 conversations happened, we were mentioned 8,312 times and gained almost 8,500 followers. With a reach of just under 80 million, that’s more than double the population of Canada. If anyone is doing the math, those 1,578 tweets constitute around 220,000 characters which is roughly 43,000 words OR using my expert googling skills I found out that 43,000 words is around the same length at The Great Gadsby. That’s not to say the work we do on social is on par with a piece of classic literature, I’m just trying to put the workload into context for you...
- Here’s what that activity on @ROMtoronto looks like since the day I took charge of the account, a little over two years. Not too shabby...I’m most proud of the 52,000 mentions and 2,181 conversations we’ve had with people in the last two years.
- And here’s all time data for @ROMtoronto. What we’ve seen over the last two years is that there is a huge return on our time spent on twitter, we are able to deliver on our two objectives more efficiently on twitter than any other platform. The picture that this data provides is one that shows an engaged community, a conversational one and one that helps spread our content. Of our 52,000 followers on our main account, a little under half come from the GTA, the rest are spread across the globe. This is a very important network of engaged individuals for the museum. I’m just going to highlight our reach, yes, that’s over 500 million, wait, half a billion sounds much better doesn’t it? @ROMtoronto has reached half a billion accounts in four years. Let’s just think about that for a second…... So you’re probably saying, so what? Half a billion people didn’t darken our door in the last four years. Why are all these numbers important for the museum? Well, keeping in mind our two objectives to Build connections with our community and enhancing the museum’s public profile by increasing awareness let me show you why this is important….
- Have any of you heard the name Colleen Dilenschneider? Colleen works for a research firm called Impacts, she also blogs her research findings here: http://colleendilen.com/ Colleen does a lot of research for museums and cultural organizations around the world, looking at visitor behaviour. These next two slides come from one of her blogs posts on what influences visitors’ decision making process. I’m going to read some of that post to you so that I can properly articulate her findings and why they relate to what we’re talking about today: http://colleendilen.com/2012/07/11/the-importance-of-social-media-in-driving-people-to-your-museum-or-visitor-serving-nonprofit-data/ This data indicates the index value or the relative importance on the right hand side of these two tables, of select factors she’s called utilities, on the left hand side, that influence the market’s decision to visit a visitor-serving organization (VSO), in our terms, a museum or cultural attraction. The way to consider this data is that utilities with index values greater than 100.0 bear a proportionally greater “weight” in terms of how the market makes its visitation decisions. In other words, a factor such as “schedule” with an index value of 203.5 is roughly 2x more influential in the decision-making process for a high-propensity visitor than is a factor such as cost with an index value of 100.4. The US Composite data represents the overall US population. The High-Propensity Visitor (HPV) data shows the index value for people who possess the demographic, psychographic and behavioral attributes that make them most likely to visit a museum or cultural attraction. In other words, by collecting data about actual visitors, Impacts was able to develop a “profile” of the types of people who are most likely to visit these types of attractions. In the end, every individual organization will have its own, specific list of weighted utilities that indicate the attributes of its visitors – but for the purpose of this example, the High-Propensity Visitors utilities and index values indicated here are an average for all likely US visitors to institutions like ours. It is clear to see that for the overall US population and high-propensity visitors alike how important “reputation” is to your market’s overall decision-making process. In fact, only “schedule” rates higher in terms of influence on your market. (“Schedule” summarizes not just factors such as your hours of operation, but also factors such as how your offerings align with considerations such as school and work schedules. It may sound obvious, but if your organization isn’t conveniently accessible for your audience during its preferred days and hours, then you are risking your visitation potential.) Just let me be clear here, when I speaking about reputation here, I’m talking about our reputation as a visitor serving organization, not our reputation as an academic and scientific institution. Again, we’re looking at what influences the decision making process.
- So we know that reputation is a major driver of visitation. But, what, mathematically, comprises your reputation? The answer is a combination of paid media (e.g. advertising) and reviews from trusted sources, particularly word of mouth and earned media – both of which are often facilitated or made entirely possible by social media. In fact, this study found that reviews from trusted resources are 12.85 times more influential in terms of your organization’s reputation than is the advertising that comes out of your budget. So that we’re all on the same page, Earned media refers to publicity gained through promotional efforts other than advertising, as opposed to paid media, which refers to publicity gained through advertising. Further to this study by Impacts, a Nielsen study in 2013 found that earned media (also described in the report as word-of-mouth) is the most trusted source of information in all countries it surveyed worldwide. It also found that earned media is the channel most likely to stimulate the consumer to action. http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2013/nielsen--earned-advertising-remains-most-credible-among-consumer.html Social media and online engagement positively contribute to our bottom line by enhancing our reputation, which is a significant driver of visitation. So no, half a billion people have not visited us in the last four years, but half a billion people are more aware of us than they were four years ago. Its up to us to hold their attention long enough to engage them, to give them something they can’t get elsewhere. So, not only do social media and other forms of online engagement help boost our bottom line, they are also wonderful tools that keep us connected to our audience.
- Now, let’s talk about connecting with our audience for a moment. After looking at our social media presence over the last few years, keeping in mind the data I just showed you, we decided to expand our presence on Twitter to include all 8 centres of discovery rather than the other social media platforms we have a presence on. With the breath of collections and expertise at the ROM, individuals are now able to create an experience that parallels their individual interests and is as unique as they are. Instead of diluting the conversations, as I admit was my initial concern with creating new accounts, we want to allow our community to drill deeper into our content and connect directly with the content they want. These new digital hubs aligned with the Centres of Discovery are supporting active networks with lively local and global communities that participate, share, and collaborate. Interested in contemporary art and issues? Follow @ROMContemporary. What about fossils and evolution? Talk to our palaeotologists @ROMPalaeo. Are you a Canadian History buff? I’m sure @ROM_Canada will be a place of lively debate! If you’re more of a fashionista with a passion for textiles, @ROMtextiles will be your place to go. Giving people the choice to interact with the content they want will only strengthen our diverse communities and the relationship people have with the museum as a whole. Just as in the physical museum, we’re not restricting dialogue, we’re encouraging it, the only difference here is there are no geographic restrictions.
- This connection with our community and providing spaces for dialogue is amplified by encouraging our staff to use social media as a tool to share their day-to-day and further connect with our community. I want to say thank you to all of you for making my job easy, I get messages all the time from my colleagues around the world asking how we get our staff so engaged with social. There is so much value in giving our community the ability to converse and interact with the actual people behind the scenes, the centres are the access points to our collection and research expertise and you guys ARE that expertise. It may not seem like much but we are leading the industry because of all of YOU and your willingness to include social in your day-to-day! So thank you, I hope I have shown you how valuable this activity is for the museum, so keep it up and let me know if there is anything I can do to help you in your social media journey!
- Now, we’ve talked about why we’ve moved our focus over to twitter, the importance of why we use social media and what it does for the museum. But we need to talk about what our community does for us on social. #FNLROM We were the first museum in the world to display LIVE user generated photos in the museum back in 2012 when we launched our photo wall at Friday Night Live. As with Colleen’s examples, user generated content or earned media is extremely valuable and how we interact with it, how we leverage it directly affects reputation and word of mouth. It shows that we value our community, their likes, interests, thoughts and opinions. In my opinion, this is the Return on Investment of social media, dialogue and building relationships with your community. If we do this right, we’ll be in a good position going forward This area of social media, the live display of user generated content has grown up quite a bit in two years. We have seen people interacting with the photo wall at FNL and sharing a photo of their photo up on the wall, we know it is popular, but I wanted to take it to the next level and put this content to work for us. There is a lot of publically available information on the social web and I wanted to find a tool that would allow us to interact with our community, to encourage the sharing of content but that could also inform some of our decisions internally with actual data.
- Just as a reference, here’s the data on our last season of FNL, as you can see lots of activity, lots of mentions, great reach. This season, I want to double that while gaining more insight into who actually comes to FNL, using big data and all of the publicly available info on social media, what they like, who they follow, etc.
- We’ve just entered into a new partnership with a Toronto based start-up called CrowdRiff. Their service seen here, called Lens (not to be confused with the O in our logo) will allow us to display user generated photos but it will also allow us to do so much more, CrowdRiff Lens merges social media accounts, user generated content and big data to provide a unique and very smart combination of tools in one platform. Here’s how it works. People tweet or share photos via instagram with a specific hashtag and a number of hashtags and keywords that I’ve entered into the system. The photos are aggregated into a private moderation pool. I then log in and moderate the photos, releasing the best ones to a public Lens like this one here. This is exactly like the tool we were using at previous FNLs, where this one differs is in the public engagement and data capture elements. Previously, the photos and user accounts would just sit there, with this tool we can put those users and that information to work for us. The beauty of it is, we’re not asking people to do anything they don’t already do in our galleries but by encouraging them to share, they build word of mouth for us and by recognizing their content we build our reputation as a public facing, engaging museum. We’ve just launched our #atROM activation, this one has only been running for the last two weeks with virtually no calls to action in our galleries...
- but here is an example from last weekend. This visitor shared this photo of his kids and it went into our moderation pool. I released it to the public Lens, which triggers….
- one of four automated tweets from @ROMtoronto that we created. The tweets let the person know that we saw their photo, liked it and put it on display in our online gallery. Then the magic happens. You can see here this person thought that was pretty cool.
- This is the ice breaker to further engage and build a relationship with this visitor. Just imagine what this guy is now telling his friends about his weekend? This earned media is SO valuable, instead of us telling everyone the museum is cool, this guys is doing it for us. As we have seen in the previous slides, the more people tell their friends and family how cool the museum is the more likely they are to visit. This visitor was so excited about this 1-to-1 chat with us that he shared ANOTHER photo!
- Sometimes, you get responses like this and you know you’re on the right track. This tool allows us to better aggregate user generated content, to help build relationships and generate more of that extremely important word of mouth buzz that I spoke about earlier. With the data capture capabilities it could also allow us to better target social media users if we decide to do an ad campaign, it could allow us to personalize e-newsletters and communications, making them as unique as the individuals in our community. This tool is exciting in the capabilities it allows us, something we’ve never done before but I think we do a lot of good for the museum on multiple levels. We’ll be using this tool for a year at various events and exhibitions. If you’re interested in knowing more about it and its capabilities, let me know.
- Any questions?