Museums and Social Media

GMOA recently participated in a survey on social media and museums conducted by Adrienne Fletcher, a graduate student at the University of Florida in the department of journalism and communications, and here are the results she sent along:

Results for the Social Media Museum Research Survey
March 2010

Conducted by: Adrienne Fletcher
Graduate Student from the University of Florida


The purpose of this exploratory study was to advance understanding of how American museums are currently using social media. More specifically the study used an online survey to question museum practitioners on current social media practices by looking at tools used, purposes, perceived importance, effectiveness, measurement, satisfaction and success. The following is a bullet point summary of the findings.

General
· A total 315 fully completed surveys were collected.
· Of those who completed the survey, 90% currently use social media at their museum.
· Results indicate that the use of social media does vary by museum size.
· Roughly 10% of respondents represented small museums, 64% represented medium size museums, and 24% represented large museums.[1]
· 34% of respondents indicated that they had discussed legal implications prior to implementing social media implementation.
· The majority of respondents report that they are currently using 1-2 staff members to work on their social media efforts for an average of 45 minutes a day.
· Those who describe their social media efforts as “successful” or “very successful,” are more likely to spend over 30 minutes a day on social media.
· Most respondents are targeting both new and current visitors equally but concentrating on young professionals and families more specifically.
· Time, staff and an understanding of key publics online are seen as most needed to work towards social media effectiveness among respondents.
· 29% of respondents are “somewhat satisfied” with their current use of social media, while 42% are “somewhat dissatisfied” to “very dissatisfied” with current efforts.

Uses
· In general American museums using social media believe that it is important to do so and that using social media is improving the speed of communication with museum publics.
· Respondents report as using social media most often for event listings or posting reminder notices (66.4%), to reach larger or new audiences (50 %), and to post onlinepromotions or announcements (47.3).
· Practitioners also believe that ease of user navigation and branding are important elements of the medium.
· Facebook is seen as being most effective regardless of museum size among respondents.
· Twitter is seen as second most effective.
· MySpace was rated as the most ineffective social media site, regardless of museums size.
· Scribed, Second Life, Digg, Picasa, and Delicious are being used the least.

Perceived success and tactics
· 50% of respondents answered that they believed their current efforts were “somewhat successful.” 29% responded that their current social media efforts are “successful” or “very successful.”
· Those who describe their social media efforts as successful or very successful, tend to use social media for more dialogic efforts than respondents with less social media success.
· A majority of those describing their current efforts and successful or higher rated number of comments and tone as either important or extremely important.
· Tactics more influential in encouraging dialogic engagement online are believed to be quality of content and type of social media site used.
· Those that use social media more frequently for dialogic engagement tend to rate direct calls for fan participation as more motivational than those who use social media in that capacity less frequently.
· Practitioners believe that social media only somewhat influences visitor behaviors. However, the greater the perceived success of current social media efforts, the more museum practitioners believe the use of social media influences visitor behaviors.

Measurement
· Google Analytics, Google Alerts, and Facebook Stats are the three social media measuring tools used most often by respondents.
· Only 35% of respondents reported having set social media goals but of those who do, 89% measure or evaluate those goals or objectives.
· There is no correlation between whether or not a museum set goals or is using a measurement tool and how successful they perceive their social media efforts to be.
· Of those who take measurements, 40% of respondents answered as taking measurements monthly and 25% answered as taking measurements quarterly.

Results indicate that American museums believe that becoming involved with social media is important but are not currently using it for high levels of dialogic engagement. For the moment, museums are mostly involved with one-way communication strategies using mostly Facebook and Twitter to focus on event listing, reminders, reaching larger or newer audiences, and promotional messaging. However there does seem to be some evidence to suggest that museums are trying to increase their use of social media for more two-way and multi-way communication strategies. There are also some major limitations to the study. The sample may not be representative all American museums using social media as there is currently no formal list of all such institutions. Also, questions from the current study focused often on practitioners’ attitudes and perceptions. Many answers are a matter of personal opinion and thus inherently subjective. Finally, this study did not allow for the examination of the effects over time of use.

[1]For the purposes of this study, respondents were grouped into three size categories: small, medium and large museums. Small museums are regarded as those with budgets of under $350,000, medium museums as those with budgets between $350,000 and $5M, and large museums as those with budgets over $5M.

GMOA is a "medium" museum.