This document discusses strategic approaches for museums to engage digital audiences through content, conversation, and audience engagement. It provides three case studies from the Nordic Museum in Stockholm of engaging young audiences through an online cosplay competition, collecting social media photos through sponsored posts for an #openstockholm project, and collecting content related to the #metoo movement through online dialog and interviews. The key lessons are that museums must create great online content, engage in conversations on social media in an authentic way, support sustainable conversation through high quality content, allow time for experimentation, use cross-departmental teams, and see the museum experience as digital-first and an ecosystem beyond just exhibitions.

1. The Museum Experience
as Digital First
Strategic Approaches to Content, Conversation
and Audience Engagement
Plateforme 10. Rising to the Challenge. Digital Innovation in Museums
Le Musée au défi. Quels rôles pour l’innovation numérique?
Lausanne, Switzerland, April 28, 2018. Kajsa Hartig, Nordiska museet / Nordic Museum, Stockholm, Sweden

2. 3h/day

3. Mobile phone the most
common way of
accessing internet.
Age 12–55 in Sweden
http://www.soi2017.se/allmant-om-utvecklingen/allmant-om-internet-sammanfattning

4. #digitalfirst

5. “Most people’s experience of World
Heritage is now a digital one… this shift
in ‘visitation’ means many people who
engage with World Heritage will never
physically travel to the actual site.”
Cristina Garduño Freeman
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Australian Centre for Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage (ACAHUCH),
University of Melbourne

6. “Most people’s experience of World
Heritage is now a digital one… this shift
in ‘visitation’ means many people who
engage with World Heritage will never
physically travel to the actual site.”
Cristina Garduño Freeman
Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Australian Centre for Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage (ACAHUCH),
University of Melbourne
#digitalonly

7. What are
museums for?
112 likes!

8. Connectors between people, time
and worlds, spaces for
conversation and discussion, and
a place for social action to be
initiated.
@johanlindblom, @DariusAryaDigs and @mpathyDesigns

9. Value-added content and
sustainable conversation with the
purpose of audience engagement,
as part of the museum experience
starting online and delivered across
the museum ecosystem.

12. #DIGITALFIRST
The Museum Experience
starts online!
Content,
conversation
and audience
engagement

13. Content
Creating value?
https://imgur.com/nZ5cvl2

14. This is not
content!
Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Read more: https://medium.com/@johanbelin/social-is-
killing-content-and-maybe-itself-in-the-process-
17f1d06332ba

15. Conversation
This is where it starts

16. Audience
engagement
Reach through
the white noise online
Facilitate
Empower
Collaborate
Co-create
Collect

17. Photo: Kajsa Hartig, CC-BY

19. Digital first:
Three cases

20. Cosplay <3
supernatural
beings
Young audiences discover
museum collections
Purpose
Engage a new
young audience to
discover and use the
museum collections

21. Photo: @colbellocosplay

22. What we did
Online competition
Blog – guest posts and experts
Social media content
Social media takeovers
Behind the scenes meeting
Open lecture with experts
Swedish Cosplay Championships

24. #openstockholm
Collecting social digital
photography
Photo: Cassandra Ljungberg Karageorgiou, CC-BY

25. What we did
Sponsored posts in social media
Online collecting
Dialogue with informants
Perform interviews
A follow up survey one year later

26. #metoo
Collecting content related
to a viral campaign

27. What we did
Sponsored posts in social media
Online collecting
Dialogue with informants
Interviews with organizers of events
Social anthropologist analysing the stories

28. Success factors
What we learned
Photo: bernavazqueze, Flickr, CC-BY-SA, https://flic.kr/p/dAtzGK

29. 1. Create great content
2. Take part in ongoing online
conversations in a personal way,
responsive and with emotions.

30. 1. Sustainable conversation
2. High quality content delivering real
value
3. Time and space for experimenting
4. Cross departmental teams

31. 1. Museum experience = Digital first
2. Museum experience ≠exhibition only
3. Museum experience = ecosystem

32. Success comes when we
have capacity to combine awe
with sustainable conversation
and new perspectives – in the
entire museum ecosystem.

33. Thank you!
Kajsa Hartig @kajsahartig