strategies for engagement on a budget

STRATEGIES FOR ENGAGEMENT ON A BUDGETMid-Atlantic Association of Museums 10/11/2011

Presenter

Dana Allen-GreilChief of Digital Outreach and EngagementNational Museum of American HistoryTwitter: @danamuses

Doing more with less

Less of what? Money Staff Time

Pick two!

GOOD

FastCheap

Key to tech tools

Most of these tools are free. A green iconthis indicates a cost and/or freemium.

The orange icon suggests tech skill requiredon a scale of 1-10, 1 being least skill.

NOTE: These tools are simply those that I have direct experience with. This presentation is NOT an advertisement for any of these products. It is recommend that you review and evaluate tools based on your own organization’s needs and budget.

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Viral marketing

Race to the museum

The Challenge Increase visitation

during typically slow period (January and February)

Budget: $0 Creativity: 100%

An experiment

First time curators have given up any control over the display of its objects over to the Museum's audiences

True collaboration across all departments

Inaugural attempt at pitching enthusiast bloggers via Twitter

Online experience built entirely with free Web tools we had never used for such a purpose

“In the National Museum of American History, there is a cabinet full of keys—keys that fit the 73 cars in the automobile collection. Most are sitting under car covers...but now the covers are coming off!”

Blog posts were written about each auto “contestant.”

The contest got top billing in our January enews.

A dozen Facebook posts piqued interest prior to the vote, announced the voting period, and then announced the winners.

We used HootSuite to monitor the use of our hashtag #Race2Museum and other mentions of the initiative on Twitter

HootSuite

http://hootsuite.com HootSuite is a Social Media Dashboard for

managing Twitter, Facebook, etc. Useful for scheduling posts, tracking trends

and keywords, analytics on clicks, etc.

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Google Alerts

http://www.google.com/alerts

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A. B.

C. D.

E. F.

G. H.

SurveyGizmo

Online surveys, polls, quizes, formshttp://www.surveygizmo.com

Cost: Free version limits number of responses; $19/month for up to 1,000 responses; 50% nonprofit discount on all plans

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And the winner is…

In addition to traditional television news, we used the museum’s blog and YouTube account to tell the story of “moving day.”

Results

3 Weeks the voting period was open

24,000 Public votes received

6.5% Increase in visitation in January and February

53,000+ Pageviews to related blog posts

20,300 Pageviews to vote opening post; most popular blog post of all time

Lessons Learned

Customize content to multiple platforms and types of media to maximize reach

Tap into existing enthusiast communities via social media

Design experiences that can be engaging for off-site and on-site visitors

Don’t be surprised if a shy curator becomes your next media superstar

O Say Can You Sing? contest

Results

Over 800 eligible entries were submitted Thousands of people rated and commented on

their favorite singers

Grand Prize Winner

Jordan Shelton of Arvada, Colorado

Performed the national anthem at the museum and at the Baltimore Orioles versus Atlanta Braves game in Baltimore on Flag Day, June 14, 2009

Julia Child Recipe of the Week

Blog series

Weekly post by a staff member Followed Julia’s detailed instructions (included

links to recipes) Featured specific tools and gadgets in Julia's home

kitchen Invited readers to join in the celebration of Julia

Child's life, work, and contributions to American culinary history.

Juliachildrecipes.tumblr.com

Tumblr

Microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio.

http://tumblr.com Cost: Free; Can purchase

premium themes

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User-submitted photos

TalkBack Tuesdays

User-generated photos

MailChimp

Design and send email newsletters, manage subscriber lists, view reports

http://mailchimp.com Cost: Free for up to 2,000 subscribers

and up to 12,000 emails per month.

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Geotagging photo apps 2

WordPress

Blog tool and publishing platform

Free hosting with WordPress.com (ads, limited themes)

Or download and manage your own implementation with WordPress.org

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WordPress.org

Recommended hosting provider: Bluehosthttp://www.bluehost.com/

Hosting cost: $7/month

Purchase themeshttp://themeforest.net/category/wordpress

Theme cost: $12-60

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Omeka

Open-source Web publishing platform for collections, exhibits, user-contributed content

Download and use on your server (http://www.omeka.org) or use a hosted version (http://www.omeka.net/)

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Sandbox: http://omeka.org/codex/Try_Omeka_Before_Installing