what will the museum of the future be like?

Using Social Media to Learn About Visitors

I wonder if anyone has any experience using social media to reach out to museum audiences and invite their participation in front-end evaluation. I’d like to explore
the possibility of using a client’s Facebook page to either contact fans and
ask them to complete a brief on-line survey or to post a link to the
survey. Have any of you ever done
anything like this or do you know of anyone who has? Many thanks for your experience and ideas—pro and con.

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Collins on November 8, 2011 at 6:23pm

Hi Daryl, I just found your post and I'm wondering whether you went ahead with any front-end evaluation using social media? At the Museum of Chinese Australian History we are planning to use social media to invite participants to complete a survey (using Survey Monkey) which will inform the planning of a new exhibition.

Would love to hear about your experiences.

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Permalink Reply by Daryl Fischer on November 10, 2011 at 12:40am

Hi, Lisa. Funny but I posted that a year ago tomorrow, while I was helping to write a grant application to IMLS for the American Museum of Magic. They did, in fact, receive funding for a two-year project with a significant amount of audience evaluation. We just finished some cued exit interviews and within the next couple months we'll be launching an online survey (also using Survey Monkey), which will be sent to members of the museum's Facebook community. Let's stay in touch about what we both learn!

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Permalink Reply by Lisa Collins on November 14, 2011 at 10:51am

Hi Daryl. Sounds like good timing. The American Museum of Magic's Facebook page looks great! Looking forward to hearing about your online survey.

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Permalink Reply by Lynda Kelly on November 20, 2011 at 8:19pm

Funny to see this topic come up again and reflect on a year later! The Fall 2009 issue of Exhibitionist (while ancient in web terms!) still gives the best overveiw of some projects, including the front-end evaluation we did for an exhibition using Blogger and Facebook.