Millions and millions of things…

Grumpy

Credit: Tina Phillips / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The world is our oyster(s)

Credit: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Set clear objectives

Use different platforms in different ways

Extend the reach of our existingcommunications

Uncorporate: informal, conversational voice to promote engagement

Build a local, national and international group of followers

Promote events and exhibitions

Publicise our news and press items

Drive traffic to the National Museums Scotland website

Drive traffic to other Museum web portfolio sites

Where are we at?Launched our presence in June 2010, managed between Digital Media and Marketing & Communication teams

Just over 1,050 followers

Sending 2 to 3 outbound tweets a day

Averaging 4 to 5 conversations per day – ‘listening’ for mentions of our museums and events

Tracking via Google Analytics, bit.ly, Twitter Search and other tools

Over 160,000 ‘opportunities to see’ significant news stories

Traffic from twitter to our website has increased by over 3,500% and has contributed to 25% increase in overall web traffic year on year

What else have we learned?50%+ of our followers come from the arts and culture sector:Business-to-business rather than business-to-consumer?

Popular subject areas include: our exhibitions, economicimpact report, a recent award win, launching our blog, events atthe National Museum of Scotland – wide and varied pick-up

Our request for Flickr volunteers was retweeted more times thanany other post – social media bias?

“I was never interested in Facebook or MySpace because they feel like (shopping) malls to me. Twitter actually feels like the street. You can bump into anyone on Twitter.” William Gibson

Involve our audience: share their photos of our museum collections

Content outpost for our own fantastic photography

Engage with an enthusiastic international community

Encourage participation around large scale events

Where are we at?Launched our presence in October 2009, managed between Digital Media and Learning & Programmes teams

Individual profiles for all five different museums

Nearly 40,000 image views to date

Photosets from all our current exhibitions as well as elements of our permanent collections

Piloted ‘digital only’ initiatives: SnapScot, What’s In Your Bag? andWorld Cup Collection

Where else have we learned?Not all ideas succeed – it’s vital to test and learn from different approaches

It takes time – it’s only in recent months that we’ve started to see significant increases in traffic

It takes resource – we’re now working with volunteers to help moderate our groups

Cute and quirky works…