Smaller museums are looking for ways to optimize their staff time and marketing budgets to ensure they increase their digital visitors and audience revenue by creating a museum digital strategy that will take them from here to there.
Goals and Main Objectives
We’ve noticed an increased interest from art and heritage museums in integrating their digital strategy with a digitization plan. We’ve also been talking to local museums about upgrading their digital capacity and online presence using modern industry tools.
Our firm has been following information concepts and trends identified by the Museum Computer Network, the Ontario Museum Association and the Canadian Heritage Information Network.
We’ve also noticed recent work done by our GLAM colleagues that we would like to highlight.
In 2021, Bruce County Museum & Cultural Centre published a Digital Content Strategy. Importantly, this report outlined the following key performance indicators: social media analytics, web analytics, visitor and customer satisfaction surveys, adoption rates for new programs, revenue generation, % of the museum and archives collection digitized and available online.
In the Woodstock Art Gallery’s 2023 Digital Strategy, they outline four tactic areas:
- Establish and Maintain Core Digital Resources
- Refine the Digital Footprint of the Woodstock Art Gallery
- Develop Digital Content Capabilities
- Develop Digital Decision-Making Skills
In examining Global Trends for Digital Strategy, we have found this 7-Point Plan helpful:
Online Digital Content Development
Through our recent work with municipal museums in Ontario, we’ve developed a Knowledge Model to share with industry leaders.
Online Presence Case Examples
In our conversations with museum clients, we focus on confirming their priorities and goals. Once we’ve had this discovery period, we examine industry best practices through case studies to determine where they would like to put their staff resources and budget dollars over the next few years.
In a recent post, we explored some key points to consider for digital content development for museums.
Online exhibits
In our work with a recent client, they were interested in finding ways to tell their local story by providing context and interpretation for their collection’s artefacts and archives through online exhibits. While I found the BC example below worthy, Rhonda Yearwood found the Toronto example here for other museum professionals to consider.
Heritage Toronto Example
We appreciate the orientation as well as the images, content and navigation used in this example. They’ve used a nice balance of colour photos, different-sized fonts with white space around them to rest the eyes. The navigation gives you the option of picking the geographical area, type of information (article, gallery or map) or the topic you are interested.
In this example, we thought their ability to use the original document information from the fire department and other sources to tell a story about brothels and Chinese people in Early Rossland provided worthwhile examples for other museum professionals to reflect on to discover how they could tell similar stories in their own communities.
Museum professionals at this historic site have used updated mapping information with heritage records to provide a pleasing visual display using the ARCGIS story map platform. Linking colour images with text, as well as indicating a timeline that is based on certain families that have lived at the heritage site provided a very appealing story.
Online Presence – Website plus Social Media
Glanmore National Historic Site TikTok Examples
With 267.9K followers and over 7.3M likes on TikTok, Glanmore National Historic Site, in Belleville, Ontario, is a prime example of successfully capitalizing on TikTok trends and creating content aimed at Gen Z and Millennial audiences. Part 48 of their Presenting Victorian Bad Ideas video series has gained over 600K likes, 34K saves, 13K shares, and 5M views.
YouTube
Royal Ontario Museum YouTube Example
The ROM’s YouTube channel has over 9K subscribers with their most popular video reaching over 800K views. Through their videos, they’ve been able to reach a wider audience beyond those able to commute to Toronto, creating a digital component to their exhibits that combines YouTube content with in-person experiences. In another museum industry insight, we show how Art Museums in Venice maintain their international support by generating stellar YouTube content.
E-Newsletters
Woodstock Art Gallery E-Newsletter archive example
Through short and colourful newsletters, the Woodstock Art Gallery’s What’s Happening @ the WAG manages to find space in cluttered inboxes and capitalize on short attention spans. Focusing on its current newsletter audience, mainly regular patrons and WAG membership holders, the Gallery uses its platform to share exhibit information, promote upcoming events and classes, and direct readers to their social media, encouraging multiple streams of user and customer engagement. Macy LeConte found this archive as an example of what other art galleries and heritage museums can use when they choose MailChimp for their e-newsletters.
Monitor, Evaluate, and Implement Micro-Improvements
We’ve also explored how important it is to have a museum digital strategy at the centre of your plan to increase visitation, suggesting a loyalty loop for culture could be a useful conceptual framework.
When I created this graphic back in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, I was encouraging GLAM colleagues to put their museum digital strategy at the core of their operational planning.
While many concentrate on opening new temporary exhibits or acquiring new collections, how can we refine our loyalty loop for culture so that we are developing stronger ties to our audiences and communities by emphasizing digital tools to keep our visitors returning to enhance learning and community ties?
We look forward to
Museum Digital Strategy Optimization