For better or for worse, social media has entered into our lives in a major way. The development and capital made from these apps have made them a force to be reckoned as they shift not only the social world around us but the way some of use live our lives.
Some choose to stay away from it completely, but most of us interact with some aspects of it on the regular – even if it is just checking Instagram once a week. However, this shift in media consumption has only grown as time has passed, meaning that brands have latched onto this new form of communication to sell their wares. Within this, museums, galleries, and heritage sites are no different.
Before technology was an everyday part of all of our lives, for brands to engage with their audiences they used traditional means of media such as print and word-of-mouth to communicate who they were and what they had to sell. There were always gimmicks, but the brand was what the brand was, and they tried to sell things to you whether you needed them or not.
With the advent of tv’s, cinema, computers, and smart phones, there became a new avenue to engage with people through these means. To survive, marketing has always evolved with the times it finds itself within and will continue to do so, or brands would find themselves at risk of being left behind. However, research has found that, because younger generations have grown up with technology and therefore have constantly had advertisements for nearly everything you can think of bombarding them from all sources, they are apathetic to traditional means of marketing.
Nonetheless, as stated before, marketing evolves as the society evolves. Brands are no longer presented as just a ‘brand’ trying to sell you something, they are your friend, they are a person, they interact in ‘current’ ways of communication, and they always want the best for you – as long as you buy their product. Due to this shift, social media has become a place where brands can flourish in making close connections with their audiences that feel more tangible, even if they are highly planned and based on data analysis. It is a means for which every brand, professional, and institution must engage with in order to stay relevant.
Many museums, galleries, and heritage sites use social media apps such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, to share information about their institutions, their exhibitions, or general news. It is easy and quick to consume, but hard to master. Many institutions have their own ways of managing the media as it can be dictated by so much, such as the institutions own brand values, what they are exhibiting, and how informal they want to go.
Over the past year, one of the most successful utilisations of social media has been seen by The Black Country Living Museum on TikTok, who have their historical actors use current trends to recreate and tell stories about the site. This has amassed them millions of followers with many other institutions copying their success, however this can’t be done by all sites as some places do not even have historical actors or tell stories in this manner. For instance, if your museum is about historical coins, it’s a more difficult task to achieve. However, it just goes to show how successfully utilising social media can raise the profile of an institution to a whole new audience to engage with.
Whether you feel this is the right way for these institutions and museum professionals to sell themselves is up to the individual. Personally, I can say that advertising can feel overwhelming sometimes and I feel the need to return to word-of-mouth or more organic reach. Nonetheless, it is also important to place these sites in the current context they exist within.
Within the UK, over the last decade museums, galleries, and heritage sites governmental funding has continually been cut leaving them to relay more on outside sources for revenue to stay alive. Not only that, but nowadays a sites success tends not to be based on the connections they make or how insightful their exhibitions were, but instead on the number of people who walked through the door and how much money they spent in the gift shop. Covid has also had a huge effect on the institutions as they try their hardest to stay afloat. Within this climate it makes sense that they would drive into these new ways of advertising that will keep their doors open.
Be what it may: social media has many joys and many curses, however in today’s world it is necessary to survive. One can choose to navigate in their own way, but unless there is a huge shift in the way we consume media, it is here to stay. As a museum studies student who is currently completing a placement at the Attenborough Arts Centre about Marketing and Engagement, it has opened my eyes even more to the importance of reaching the right audiences for the sites. For, if these people are not aware, even if you have the best exhibition ever, no one will see it. It is so important to think about engagement nowadays and to truly play your best hand, that will benefit you and the institutions themselves for the coming years.
Written by Paige Manning
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