How Does Brooklyn Museum of Art Use Social Media To Engage & Attract Audiences?
I just read a great post by Chris Cameron over at Read Write Web, about how digital media helps arts organizations to attract new audiences. I highly recommend reading that post, as it provides helpful ideas on how how YouTube, iTunes, and crowdsourcing are being used by arts organizations to educate audiences and increase audience engagement.
One of the key insights from Chris’ post is a finding by the National Endowment for the Arts that ”people who engage with the arts through various digital media are three times more likely (59% over 21%) to attend live arts performances, and do so twice as often (6 events per year over 3) as non-media participants.”
In today’s “always on”, connected, and networked world, it’s no surprise that digital media influences audience behavior. With NEA’s report in mind, I searched the web to find out how arts organizations worldwide are using social media and digital media, and how these digital initiatives support common communications goals.
My first stop was one of my favorite organizations, Brooklyn Museum of Art. For additional examples, be sure to check out Part II and Part III in this series on how arts organizations are using digital media to attract audiences.
Brooklyn Museum of Art
With a presence on Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, Flickr, and more, the Brooklyn Museum of Art provides a lot of great examples for how arts organizations can take advantage of digital media to educate audiences, create community among art enthusiasts, raise awareness of the museum, and attract new audiences.
Brooklyn Museum of Art Blog: One of the great things about Brooklyn Museum of Art’s blog is that it provides a fantastic behind-the-scenes view of happenings taking place at the Museum, in addition to providing a platform for discussion between Museum staff and visitors. The blog features interesting info about art conservation, interviews with staff, updates on events, posts on how the Museum uses digital media, and more. Over 50 staff members and guest bloggers contribute to the blog, which enables visitors to also get to know the people who bring the Museum collections and programs to life.
Since the blog has RSS and email subscription functionality, visitors can easily give the Museum their email address in order to stay in the loop about future events and happenings. In addition, the blog has the all-important “share this” functionality which allows visitors to share posts they like with friends on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.
YouTube Video Contest: To celebrate the launch of the Museum’s new season of “Target First Saturdays”, a once-a-month event featuring a free program of arts and entertainment, the Museum organized a video contest. On their blog, the Museum invited visitors to create a one-minute film that showed how visitors see the Museum through their own eyes. Contest rules required contestants to join the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s group on YouTube and upload their video.
Contests are a great way to engage passionate users and can be a great source of user-generated content that you can use to promote your organization. In the case of the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s video contest, winners were selected by a panel appointed by the Museum. To increase word-of-mouth marketing, it could also be helpful to consider a combination of crowd-sourced voting together with a pre-selected voting panel. Check out this cool video, the winner of the video contest!
Foursquare: The Brooklyn Museum of Art has taken advantage of location-based social networking via Foursquare. To reward visitors who visit the museum the most and achieve Brooklyn Museum of Art “Mayor” status on Foursquare, the Museum will give a free one-year membership to its 1stFans group. 1stFans members socialize at exclusive meetups during the Museum’s monthly Target First Saturdays.
For arts organizations seeking ways to attract younger audiences, Foursquare could be a good option. According to recent Quantcast data, 48% of Foursquare users in the U.S. are between the ages of 13-34 years-old.
Visitor-Curated Nominations: This is a really cool new initiative that was announced last week on the Museum’s blog – an opportunity for visitors to help Museum staff curate the art and entertainment program for the Museum’s upcoming Target First Saturdays event. Using WordPress, Embed.ly, and Janrain, a web presence was created to enable the Museum to accept nominations and make discussion possible. A number of great nominations have already been submitted, check it out!
These are just a few ways that Brooklyn Museum of Art uses social media to engage and attract audiences. For additional examples showing how other arts organizations are using digital media, be sure to check out my next post on National Symphony Orchestra.
