Mused for iPhone

When people arrive to specific locations, such as your museum, many often pull out their smartphones and use a social check-in application to let their friends know where they are. Before you dismiss this as purely a silly teenage activity, I must insist that it has become quite a sensation for people of all ages. Many of the applications offer people additionally functionality with their checkin, such as sharing photos of their experience, or seeing deals that are nearby.

Some businesses even pay the check-in services to offer a deal or coupon to people when they check in. For example, a restaurant chain named Chili’s gives away free chips and salsa to people who check in on the Foursquare service with their phones when they arrive and show the waiter the check-in screen. The value for Chili’s is that people are essentially announcing their presence at one of their locations to all of their friends… it’s indirect advertising, and it costs nothing to participate.

If you are a popular museum in a relatively popular area, it is very likely that someone has already submitted your museum to these check-in services. If so, you should login and claim the listings and be sure the information in your listing is up to date. Otherwise, you should create accounts on each of the check-in services and submit your museum. It will provide additional exposure and bring new people in.

As with the other services mentioned, you should login at a regular interval (every 3 months?) and ensure that your information is correct. Put it on your reoccurring tasks list. The last thing you want is a potential new visitor going to the wrong location and becoming annoyed and avoiding your museum altogether. Doing this is simply an extended form of good customer service and shows that you care about your online customers.

Social check-in services that you should have a presence on:

1) Foursquare
2) Gowalla
3) Facebook Places
4) Google Places

How to claim and update your listings:

Foursquare: Visit the Claiming your business on Foursquare page.
Gowalla: You can not currently submit or claim your museum. They are working to fix this.
Facebook Places: Go to the Facebook help page on Claiming Places and follow the directions provided.
Google Places: Visit the Add Google Place page.

Remember, these services are not the same as social networks. They are often a subset or related to social networks, and they offer the ability to connect with other people. Just know that they are different than social networks, which were described in a previous article called Create Social Network Accounts. You need to be sure that you’re set up on these check-in services as well as the social networks. Making an account on Facebook does not automatically make a listing in Facebook Places. You are responsible for taking charge of your museum’s accounts and listings.

People like to show off where they are. If you’re not on these social check-in services, you will miss out on the free advertising you would get when people tell their friends “I’m at the ____ museum.” And that is a missed opportunity.

This article is part of a series titled Improving Your Museum’s Marketing Efforts. To learn more about the series and to read the other articles, visit the series introduction article.

Social networking is, generically speaking, a way for people to communicate with others on the Internet. Several large services, namely Facebook and Twitter, allow people to share bits of news and updates to each other in realtime. Social networking has been ‘all the rave’ over the last 5 years or so and many companies have taken advantage of the marketing opportunities these sites provide.

By having a presence on the popular social networking services, you provide an opportunity to have a conversation with your patrons. You can stay in their minds as you provide daily or weekly updates, such as announcing a new exhibit or highlighting a favorite visitor. In return you can begin to generate some buzz about your museumwhen people share (or reshare) information about it. You will also be able to peek into the minds of your customers as they tell their friends (and the world!) how they felt about their experience when they visited your museum.

Just like having a website, having a presence on social networking sites is very necessary. Setting up your presence on these services is much easier than setting up a website of your own (though it should not replace it) and there are many guides on the net that will help you setup accounts.

Social networking services that you should have a presence on:

1) Facebook
2) Twitter
3) Google+

How to Create Your Accounts/Pages

Facebook: Visit the Create a Page website.
Twitter: Visit Twitter’s website and fill out the Sign Up form.
Google+: Visit Google’s Google+ website and create a Google account.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with these services, and struggle to create these accounts and pages, I will have more in-depth information in the future about how to do this step-by-step. In the meantime, please feel free to ask me a question by clicking the Have a Question? link on the right side of this website.

This article is part of a series titled Improving Your Museum’s Marketing Efforts. To learn more about the series and to read the other articles, visit the series introduction article.

As a consumer, you either love Yelp or you hate it. As a business (profit focused or not), you need Yelp. For those of you not yet familiar with it, Yelp is an online website for consumers to write reviews about businesses. It’s not the only game in town for helping consumers share ratings and reviews of businesses on the Internet, but it’s definitely the major player. Businesses or consumers can submit new locations into their database so that others can read reviews about it. There are even people using their mobile app who will review your museum immediately after their visit.

Submitting your museum into their database is free. They do offer premium services that give you more tools, such as the ability to reply back to people who submit reviews for your museum, as well as the ability to list your museum on competitor’s Yelp pages. Depending on your budget this might be something valuable to you. Some businesses find that Yelp forces them to subscribe and makes them feel like they need to undercut their competition, and thus is a bit forceful. I’m not here to promote Yelp’s premium services or not, so you make that decision.

But at a minimum, you need to be sure your museum is listed for free on Yelp, and if it is, you should make sure the information they have is up to date. If your listing is not up to date or it is missing information, you need to claim your listing and then submit the correct information. Check your listing on a regular basis (perhaps every 3 months).

The real value here is that you can make it fun for users to discover your museum by reading the ratings and reviews from other people who have visited. While negative reviews are obviously a possibility, you can use these as an opportunity to improve your offering even further. If visitors are complaining about poor customer service or lack of new exhibits, at least you will be able to consider addressing it. Don’t be shy. Negative reviews will occur on anyone’s Yelp business listing. Just focus on making positive experiences for your visitors and you’ll begin to see shining 4 and 5 star reviews on Yelp.

If you decide not to spend a few minutes to list your museum on Yelp you will certainly miss out on some new foot traffic. If you think by not creating a listing you are avoiding negative reviews, think again. A consumer can submit your museum to Yelp at any time, and it’s possible they were going to leave a negative review. It might be a good idea to get listed first, so that you can encourage your visitors to leave a positive review. This will give you a nice head start.

Create or Update Your Yelp Listing Now

This will take you less than 5 minutes to complete. So why don’t you jump on it now?

To get started, go to Yelp’s Add Your Business website. You will be walked through 3 steps to either create a new business listing, or claim an existing one (in case someone already added you in).

This article is part of a series titled Improving Your Museum’s Marketing Efforts. To learn more about the series and to read the other articles, visit the series introduction article.

It may seem obvious to many of you, but after reviewing thousands of museums there are still a considerable number of museums that have very few ways to contact them. I have been so shocked that so many museums do not have basic ways to get ahold of them that I felt it was necessary to make this brief article.

Consumers want choice. Give them many ways to contact you. It will require some effort, but it is a worthwhile effort. Nothing upsets a person more than not being able to reach another human being when they have questions or concerns. Being contactable is an important piece of having good customer service. Do not overlook this!

At a minimum, your museum needs to have:

» a phone number
» an email address
» a physical mailing address 

Chances are high that you already have those things. But really, that’s not enough. You should also be contactable via some additional ways:

» a website contact form
» a fax number
» an account on Twitter
» a page or account on Facebook

I know the facsimile has been a dying technology in the USA and UK for a long time now, but it’s still used in so many parts of the world. And really, there’s no excuse not to have one. If you don’t want a dedicated fax device and phone line you can pick up an Internet based fax service that emails you any faxes you receive as image attachments, such as eFax, MyFax, or my favorite, HelloFax. Some of these services even let you receive faxes for free, not requiring a paid subscription.

Setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts are generally pretty straightforward, although I’m sure it can be challenging for people who are unfamiliar with these services. Create an account and then spend some time reading their introductory material. Both of these social networks are free and will not cost you anything but your time.

Getting setup is the easy part. The challenge then becomes how you manage your contact points. This may be obvious to many of you (and I’m sorry for sounding redundant), but you will want to:

» answer the phone when people call
» write back to people who fax or email
» visit Facebook and Twitter on a regular (daily/weekly) basis to answer any customer questions
» write back to people who send you inquiries in the mail

Museums that really care about customer service and treating their visitors with respect are already doing these things. There are thousands of examples of museums doing all of these things. Just look at their websites. If you’re not doing each one of these things yet, that’s OK, I’m not here to shame you. But get on the bandwagon and do it now.

This article is part of a series titled Improving Your Museum’s Marketing Efforts. To learn more about the series and to read the other articles, visit the series introduction article.

A tremendous number of people have become reliant upon searching the Internet for finding out information about things. Not having a website for your museum is absolutely costing you money. If you don’t currently have a website for the museum it may be because you don’t have anyone employed who knows anything about technology. Perhaps you feel that having a website is unnecessary for your museum because it is so small or hobby oriented, or because you just can’t imagine people wanting to visit a website instead of coming to your location.

I can’t stress enough how important it really is to have a website. Even if it’s a very simple one, you need to set up a website and maintain it over time. We live in a digital age now, and many of the newer generations of people have become dependent on it. Even if your museum is in a remote location, I would be willing to bet that you have received phone calls, visitors, or emails asking if you have a website.

A few reasons that people want to visit your museum’s website:

1. Consumers want to quickly look up where you are located, what your hours are, and how much it costs to visit
2. Consumers want to learn about what your museum is and what kind of exhibits you have
3. Consumers want to see pictures of your exhibits
4. Consumers want to read about upcoming events or other important museum news

It is understandable that you may not have a budget to build a website, and you may be intimidated by the process after speaking to a website consultant. If you have no website at all you might consider learning how to build one. A poorly designed but functional website is better than not having one at all.

There are many tools and services available to make websites. While learning how to build a website is outside the scope of this article, you can use tools like Microsoft Word and Apple Pages to construct a website even if you have no technology skills at all. These word processing applications will not create a correct or even very well designed website, but it will at least let you put up the basic information necessary to appease your potential visitors.

You may think that websites are only needed for larger museums, or museums that center around technology, but that is not true. All museums need a website.

This article is part of a series titled Improving Your Museum’s Marketing Efforts. To learn more about the series and to read the other articles, visit the series introduction article.

Whenever you talk about your museum, whether it’s on your website, blog or description on a social site, you should be pitching about why people should visit your museum. The history of your museum may be meaningful to you, but people who are unfamiliar with your museum will first want to know what makes your museum special and thus should be the first thing people see. There are a variety of other museums and activities for them to go to if you do not successfully convince them to learn more about your museum. Tell them what the museum is about and what makes it stand out from the others.

Start by writing 3 paragraphs about what the museum is and what it offers. Narrow that down to 1 or 2 paragraphs that are concise and to the point. Most people have short attention spans and are use to scanning with their eyes when reading on a computer screen. While it may go against your common sense to “dumb things down,” it happens to be the right thing to do. Simple is better.

Additionally, attempt to connect with the reader by reducing the amount of strict and formal tones. You don’t have to be too loose or chatty (such as the style I’ve chosen to write in), but you want to be as inviting as possible. Remember who your audience is, so try not to alienate anyone by sounding too intellectual.

Once you’ve got your pitch, you should use it everywhere that you discuss your museum… on your website, on social networks, as descriptions wherever you list your website on the web, in your email newsletter, and in print. The quicker you can get to the point about what is so special about your museum, the higher the possibility that you will convince the potential new visitor to come in.

This article is part of a series titled Improving Your Museum’s Marketing Efforts. To learn more about the series and to read the other articles, visit the series introduction article. 

Bringing new people to your museum is a worthwhile challenge. It keeps your funding alive, encourages patron interaction, and helps to keep your exhibit list fresh.

This challenge exists for all museums, regardless of the size of the museum. Large museums funded by government organizations require a high patron count in order to justify the continued funding allocation for the museum. Small or kitschy museums require a high patron count in order to keep the doors open and pay the bills in order to continue offering the owner’s passion to the world. Engaging new potential visits is most difficult for the small museums without funding, and I’m constantly surprises at how many of these small museums do not implement even a fraction of the things they could do to improve it.

Here are some steps you can execute to improve your marketing efforts and I will be presenting a new article every few days focusing on each of the presented steps. If your museum is not currently doing several of these things, I certainly recommend that you put a little thought into making them happen. You don’t need to spend a lot of time on them to get set up, but maintaining them over time may require some experience and a little commitment. Regardless of the size or budget of your museum, you need to step into action and do these things.

Steps to Tell the World About Your Museum

1. Write a summary or pitch of why people should visit your museum
2. Create and maintain a museum website
3. Have as many ways to contact you as possible
4. List your museum on Yelp
5. Create social networking accounts 
6. Create social checkin accounts 
7. Create a blog and post regularly
8. List your museum on Mused
9. Invite bloggers and journalists to visit your museum
10. Donate entry tickets to raffles, charity events, or local travel orgs/hotels
11. Offer 1 Free Entry day per month

Although this does not contain a complete list, I will update this introductory article with links to each step as the new articles in the series appear. Additionally, as new steps are added to the list I will update it to reflect the complete table of contents. At some point I will likely put together an attractive and printable PDF (depending on demand for it).

I encourage you to check back in and look for updates on a regular basis. If your museum has implemented any of these steps, I encourage you to leave a comment about your experiences on the articles in the series as it will help to enhance the series moving forward and show others what your perspectives are. Your feedback is welcome!