Museums and Social Media or If Statues Could Talk

How often do you go to an art museum? Every weekend? Once a year? Or maybe it happened a good while ago? (Don't worry! If you are an absolute beginner click here 5 Ways to Enjoy a Museum).

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

To begin with, I would like you to pay attention to the following statistics.

In this picture you may notice that the Louvre (Paris)*, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), the British Museum (London) were the most popular museums on Facebook and Foursquare in 2013. And there is a very low probability that the situation will change in the nearest time. Sure, most of these museums (if not all) deserve attention to go there and enjoy the arts, to fall in love with, to have an opportunity to learn more about other beautiful feelings which are accessible to a man. However, despite the many years of experience and a stable reputation, it should be noted that these museums have a very strong support on Social Media. Just take a look.

@MuseeLouvre on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Instagram account on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

 "Sharing of contents is subdivided into two lines: one following materials posted on line by the press offices of the museums themselves, and the other one joining contributions (spontaneous or motivated) from users and visitors. An example of the first type of content is represented by @MuseeLouvre which on March 27, 2015 counts 5399 twits...and a remarkable klout score of 81, gained with particular hashtags, targeted communication..." 

                (Source: French Museums & social media, May 2015)

NOW LET'S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS

Well, everything is clear about the best-known museums of the world. What if we take a smaller scale and look at, for instance, the Worcester Art Museum presence on social media (I've found its Twitter and Facebook accounts). Let's start with the Twitter account.

Despite the fact that it has just 1,923 tweets and 6,721 followers since April 2009, looking at this picture we can notice that the page is alive and, furthermore, is of interest to users.

@WorcesterArt on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

As practice shows, many creative, travelling and enthusiastic people are the Instagram users. And the Worcester Art Museum loses the potential audience being out of the Instagram account. 

If you are still in doubt whether the museum needs any social media, I propose to draw attention to the study of Natalia Dudareva (Denmark) Museums in Social Media. The result of this study is "formulation of five types of relationships: Enthusiast, Connected, Contributor, Interested and Informational. The types demonstrate different levels of involvement with museums and motivations for following them on Facebook". Also, this research proves that there are a lot more people in this world who love museums than we used to think. For example, the type "Enthusiast" shows the strongest involvement (sometimes even zealous) and can you imagine that these people is the largest group among the other relationship types.

I can conclude that museums need social media. Not fully explored, but at the same time a promising tool to reach success. So, the Worcester Art Museum stands a good chance to collect representatives of all these types, to increase the number of loyal visitors, to kindle tourists' interest.

* that's a given

So, there's no limit to perfection! Stop sitting at home. Let's go to museums! (By the way, if you are a child, or a student, or a pensioner, you'll have 2 in 1: discount price and good time)

AND ONE MORE THING