How Museums Can Use Social Media: Voice, Content and Conversation

A museum’s social media work should have a purpose people can recognise. That might be answering questions about a collection, sharing the work behind an exhibition or inviting a community to contribute knowledge. Choose formats that suit the people you want to reach and the time your team can give them.

The Museum of English Rural Life’s April 2018 Absolute Unit post is a useful historical example of a distinctive voice. The University of Reading later described a campaign that expanded the museum’s following, profile and visitor numbers. That account does not isolate the effect of one post, and the lesson is broader than copying a joke: use material your museum understands and make room for a genuine response.

The Twitter-era screenshots in this article are historical examples. They show approaches to voice and conversation, rather than current platform interfaces or exhibitions.

Start with the museum’s purpose

See social media as another tool for accomplishing your museum’s mission.

For many this means sharing a passion for art, history or science. Social media can provide a place to communicate this passion and test which stories resonate with your audiences.

Take the Tate galleries in England as an example.

Their mission is to promote public understanding and enjoyment of British, modern and contemporary art.

The historical examples below show ways Tate brought its collection into social media, including Instagram.

In these examples, Tate used its collection to introduce art into followers’ feeds in a light-hearted way.

The posts combined information and entertainment around British, modern and contemporary art, connecting the content to Tate’s mission.

In a similar vein, the American Museum of Natural History has a mission to discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.

The historical tweets pictured here show the American Museum of Natural History combining information about its collection with an informal invitation to read more.

Neither example reads like an advert designed to sell tickets to an exhibition or event.

However some in your organisation might encourage you to use social media for this.

One analogy to use to push back against this would be to compare social media to a cocktail party. Nobody would walk up to a stranger at a cocktail party and say, ‘Hey, I’m Dave. Buy my stuff.’

Like a cocktail party, social media platforms are a social space. Take time to build relationships and create content that brings value to those who read it. Pay attention to how people respond rather than assuming they will want to spend time with you.

Distinguish voice from tone

Finding the right tone of voice for your social media is something that most museums seem to struggle with, and it isn’t hard to see why. Museums are often long-established, respected and authoritative institutions and the way in which they approach most communications from wall labels through to advertising reflects this.

The tone may need to change for the situation. So what should museums be doing? My approach is to think of voice and tone differently.

Voice: This reflects your museum’s personality. For instance your museum might be authoritative, knowledgeable and open.

Tone: This is a subset of your museum’s voice which changes depending on audience, situation, and channel.

So while your museum’s voice remains consistent across everything that it does, the tone which it uses will be tailored to the situation. This is especially important on social media where a museum needs to humanise its tone of voice to suit the person to person nature of these platforms.

The historical Philbrook Museum of Art posts below offer another approach to bringing a collection into social conversation.

The tweet above introduces an artwork with a fun and relatable line which suits the person to person discourse of Twitter.

This is quickly followed by two tweets which add context to the first image, explaining more about the artwork and mentioning that the piece was on display in an exhibition at the time.

The first tweet shows that Philbrook Museum of Art understand that a different tone is needed when speaking to people on Twitter. They use humour to humanise their communication, before following on with information about both the artwork and the exhibition in which it could then be seen.

Not every museum uses humour on social media, nor should they.

The Van Gogh Museum in the Netherlands is known not only for its world class collection, but also for its scholarly research into the artist and his work.

They don’t tend to use humour on social media, but they do tailor the written style to make it feel more appropriate for a social network. For example the line ‘One of Vincent’s favourite subjects!’ certainly wouldn’t be how they’d describe this artwork on a wall label, but humanises this tweet in a way which fits with the person to person style of social media.

Exercise: Look through your museum’s social media posts. Does the tone represent the personality of your organisation and suit the audience and situation? Try rewriting a recent post in a personable, clear tone. Humour is one option where it fits; compare responses rather than making it a requirement.

Make room for conversation

While composing interesting, informative and entertaining social media posts is essential, it’s important to recognise that these platforms offer the opportunity to speak with your audiences not just at them.

Schedule the conversation as well as the post. Decide who answers routine questions, how difficult comments are escalated and when staff can step away. Review responses, saves, useful questions and completed actions alongside reach, using the definitions supplied by each platform. Plan cover and read more about supporting staff and responding safely online.

Ask questions when you genuinely want to hear the answers. Comments are among many possible ranking signals, and do not guarantee wider distribution. Check the platform’s own explanation, such as Meta’s Instagram feed-ranking documentation, and test what works for the people you want to reach.

Question-and-answer features can give members of the public access to knowledgeable people working in museums. The historical Ask a Curator initiative is one example; its later change is explained below.

Depending on the size of your organisation and your budget for software subscriptions you might want to invest in a service that brings all your social media feeds into one dashboard to make it easier to keep up with questions.

Work with relevant creators

Museums are not the only ones to attract large followings on social media. Over the past decade we’ve seen the rise of the social media influencer, individuals who have large followings on different platforms.

Some influencers have a reach comparable to that of traditional media, and influencer outreach is now commonplace in museums.

It takes a little research to build a ‘press list’ of influencers who matter, either in your geographic area or in your field, but the results can be impressive.

For an exhibition which I developed a few years ago, I made friends with four or five relevant influencers. Collectively they had over 100,000 readers in a niche relating to my exhibition each day.

Once you have a list of influencers who can be useful to your organisation, invite them to press previews and encourage them to post about your exhibitions, events or performances.

Use platform features thoughtfully

Relevant hashtags can help place a post in a wider conversation, but do not guarantee reach.

Hashtags offer changing ways to share your content with new audiences. And while many are spontaneous, others like national holidays or events like International Women’s Day happen every year.

The museum community also have their own social media events.

Ask a Curator was a sector-wide question-and-answer initiative. Read about the move from Ask a Curator to Ask a Museum, and check organisers’ current information before planning around a date or hashtag.

Choose conversations relevant to your collection and audiences. Include image descriptions and video captions, and obtain permission before reusing participants’ content.

Measure the work and support the team

It’s important to define success for your museum rather than compare follower totals with The Met, MoMA or Tate. A useful answer to a visitor’s question, a contribution to collection knowledge and a completed booking are different outcomes.

Reach and engagement show recorded online activity. They do not by themselves demonstrate ticket sales or physical visits. Use booking or visitor evidence when that is the question, and be careful about attributing a change to one post.

Record what kinds of posts get people talking and learn and adapt as you gain more experience on different social media channels.

Conclusion

Social media isn’t rocket science, but it can take time to find the right voice for your museum.

Make room for enjoyment, while keeping the workload and support for staff realistic.

Just getting started with social media? This article on how museums can get started with social media should help.