Social Media Scat -- Why Museums Are Jazz Musicians Like Us

Friends,


Lots of great activities this week coinciding with some insanely great weather.  I'm typing away at my favorite Caribou coffee (shout out to them for free wifi) and I'm inspired to write.  And away we go!


I posted my first vlog on Sunday covering a very interesting social media panel discussion organized by Chicago Gallery News and Alicia Eler at Art Chicago.  There were representatives from the Art Institute, Bad at Sports, Hyde Park Art Center and Museum of Contemporary Art.  The conversation generally was about how these arts organizations use social media and if they've gotten to the point of "best practice" for their organization and for their audience(s).


I'll stop here and tell you that I fully expected the museums had super cool ways to keep their audiences excited, engaged, rabid, etc.  I don't know why except maybe the logic was that artists are more creative than us business types.  I'm not defending the logic -- just sharing it -- so please be gentle with the scorn!


What I really enjoyed about this panel was the range and reach of institutions like the Art Institute and Hyde Park Art Center.  Both play really important roles in the city's "cultural fabric" if you will but they occupy extremes in terms of staffing and funding.  The Art Institute has an entire marketing staff covering traditional and social media and Hyde Park Art Center has Crystal Pernell, its only marketing manager, who bears that load.


Like companies, brands or products, these public non profit institutions are still figuring out some heady, social media existential things: for instance, do you have one "persona" or do you allow creative expression and diverse personality to show through as your staff tweets or posts on Facebook under one institutional name.  How that existential question gets answered methodically rests on money.  If you have the deep pockets and a large captive audience of a large museum (test, measure, test, measure, etc.).  If you don't, it is answered on the fly and on a more grassroots level (let's throw something and see what sticks).  Side note: shout out to Crystal Pernell's Tweet Up that she talked about...  it sounded like fun and I'm sorry to have missed it!


Regardless of the disciplined versus improvisational approaches, all of the groups said they were still struggling with the recipes to initiate and maintain consistent dialogue.  They understood that they needed to provide interesting or stimulating (and humorous) content to drive traffic or at least create a lasting impression, of course, using Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc.  But, like us for profit types and our social media experiments, there was difficulty in getting people to revisit and engage directly with them.


They are jazz musicians like us.  That can be an incredibly awesome thing.  But, when we get caught up in the art of our own social media improvisation, we forget to invite our audience in to jam with us or to jam for us.  


And that's what I didn't hear at the panel.  I didn't hear how these institutions were fully owning the need to cultivate and encourage two way conversation similar to how Best Buy does it with their user forum and Idea Exchange, how Starbucks does it with My Starbucks Idea and how e.l.f. cosmetics engages as well.  I also didn't hear how they were cultivating and identifying their advocates/evangelists/influencers be they people who appreciate art or the artists themselves.  


We get caught up in our much needed "elevator speech" when we network or introduce ourselves to others similar to how musicians get caught up in their music when they're jamming.  We forget to use the tone and dialect of everyday conversation when we're only talking to an audience.  The beauty of advocates or evangelists are that they are your consumers just like us.  They can tell us, from a position of knowledge, why something is cool in the tones that everyday consumers use and understand yet still be true to your underlying brand essence.  In this arts example, we can appreciate the dialogue from the perspective of the artists but also people who think that certain forms of expression are things we should know about.


How to engage the advocates (artists or lovers of art)?  Well, many have blogs or other forms of expressing themselves in the social space.  Why not feature them in a short video along with their blog excerpt on the museum's FB page (and/or blog) with a tweeted link?  Why not ask them to guest blog about a favorite piece of theirs and why it impacts them so?  To borrow from Crystal's Tweet Up, maybe these advocates can be encouraged to host their own Tweet Up or maybe Tweat Up if there's food involved.  Maybe someone can host a blogtalkradio program.  Maybe there can be a cool Foursquare message checking in with tips to check out a particular artist's favorite piece, etc.


Friends, these are admittedly very simplistic ideas and clearly not exhaustive.  It's just to underscore my basic point that we can and should be doing more to excite and engage those who might be our most fierce and loyal advocates.  Letting go of the conversation and letting people "talk amongst themselves" does not mean you are giving up the brand.  If you've got your brand story firm and tight, it just means that you're socializing it more -- which is the inherent point of these online platforms.


What's your view on this?  I'd love to hear from you!


Best,


Parissa Behnia
Idea Chef


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