what will the museum of the future be like?

Twitter as a business tool

Twitter continues to intrigue me. We did an experiment which I have already blogged about here . Russ just put me on to this post - Twitter To Go: How one local coffee shop used Twitter to double the....

Finally, a concrete example of how Twitter can add real value to your business.

Tags: twitter

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Permalink Reply by Lynda Kelly on May 18, 2009 at 8:32am

Here's a new piece about Twitter and museums on the Western Museums Association blog that's worth a look - Twitter: Would you prefer sweet or dill?

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Permalink Reply by Wayne LaBar on May 22, 2009 at 1:17am

Twitter - old school. Lynda you need to be on Friendfeed

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Permalink Reply by Amelia Bowan on May 22, 2009 at 2:04pm

Looks like social media is following the technological progression of IM clients that consolidate all your IM logins (msn, yahoo, google, AIM, AOL etc) to enable chat with different providers using one piece of software (MIranda and Trillian come to mind)

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Permalink Reply by Lynda Kelly on August 18, 2009 at 6:12am

Just when you thought we were over Twitter here's a great example of four museums combining and using it for programming as reported on Stephanie Weaver's blog Experienceology.

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Permalink Reply by Stephanie Weaver on August 18, 2009 at 11:26am

Thanks for the shoutout, Lynda! I appreciate it. I think these four museums did an amazing job using Twitter. If people are interested, I have 3 affordable Twitter tutorials for museum professionals available on my online learning website. Hope they are helpful getting people started using the power of Twitter. :)

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Permalink Reply by Lynda Kelly on September 29, 2009 at 7:23am

Jim Richardson's Museum Marketing blog lists top museums on Twitter for September 2009. Worth checking out.

According to Jim "As always I should say that I believe that the depth of the engagement that Twitter allows a venue to have with it’s audiences is more important then the number of followers any one museum achieves." Worth keeping in mind...

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Permalink Reply by Amelia Bowan on September 30, 2009 at 10:55pm

Someone should tell Jim about the rest of the world beyond America and Britain... I am pretty sure other countries have museums and the internet

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Permalink Reply by Kate Stone on October 1, 2009 at 9:32am

They just don't have the English speaking population centres that give them the big followerer numbers ...

Here are the Australian institutions on the list:
National Motor Museum
South Australian Maritime Museum
QUT Art Museum
Migration Museum
Henry Kendall Cottage
Australian Museum
The University of Sydney Art Gallery
The South Australian Museum
Plus 5 New Zealand museums make it on the list.

he does offer to add any if you let him know.

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Permalink Reply by Lynda Kelly on October 1, 2009 at 10:06am

Thanks for clearing that up Kate. I like the museums on your list as they are a very eclectic bunch and many I would never have guessed were Twitterers.

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Permalink Reply by Kate Stone on October 1, 2009 at 10:11am

For a small population, there's so much out there.

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Permalink Reply by Amelia Bowan on October 1, 2009 at 11:18am

In my research on museums and social media I have found that almost all institutions do not make their social media profiles and links prominently visible on their web pages. A museum might Twitter or have a blog or a Facebook fan page but you have to search quite avidly to find a link to these on their home page, or hidden away on some sub page.

I have also found the search function in Twitter itself quite limiting and have had difficulty finding institutions which I know have a Twitter profile but do not come up the first or even second time I search for them.

It would be fantastic if someone could devise a list of all museums and related institutions which have a Twitter profile and include their Twitter handle/user name. Making them known would increase their followers and encourage more people to follow museums on Twitter. I know this would be a fairly intensive task and I appreciate Jim's offer to add any that are not on his list. Perhaps there should be a global call-out for institutions to submit their Twitter details?

I can see why Jim would just list the museums with the most followers but I think this is ultimately doing a disservice to smaller institutions, particularly non-English speaking institutions.