A Twitter Reflection

I have now been in the ranks of the twittering masses for just over two months. These are my observations of successful (and not so successful) twitter usage by museums (and related people and organizations) thus far. I will provide the names of those museums I feel are doing well, but at this time it is not my place to call out museums I feel are not doing the greatest job. (What can I say, I'm non-confrontational and am not in the position to ruffle feathers.) Anyhow, on to the post.

One of the things I love is the museum that provides interesting tidbits about goings on in the museum. The Shelburne Musuem in Shelburne, VT is one of my favorite twittering musuems (@ShelburneMusuem). Why? Because I want to know more about the museum than just what events are happening and. Yes some advertising of events is acceptable, since spreading the word is always good and twitter is certainly an outlet for it, but I want to know more than just that. I loved being told by @ShelburneMuseum that "The turtles have emerged! Collections Asst. Nick rescued one that was trying to cross the road in front of the Covered Bridge." I followed the painstaking process of restoring a Tiffany settee, and the pouring of the lighthouse foundation. Things like this made me like the museum that much more.

So rule No. 1 in twittering about museums is to provide something extra about the museum that one would not be able to find out otherwise. It is easy enough to look at a museum's event calendar to figure out what is going on (although friendly reminders don't hurt as long as it doesn't dominate the twitter stream). I look forward to tweets from @ShelburneMuseum because of this something extra, and the next time I'm up in Vermont when it's open (season starts May 17th) I know where I want to go.

Rule No. 2 in twittering is to not do the opposite of what @ShelburneMuseum is doing. Please do not tweet solely about upcoming events. I can find out about them elsewhere.

Rule No. 3 is to not heavily rely upon bots. What are bots? Autobots (no not the kind from The Transformers) as they are also referred to as are programs that search for tags on news stories, or anything really, and if the particular tag matches what is being searched the bot (hooked up to the twitter account) will tweet the link to the story. This often ends up in a tweet looking like *tag being searched* "partial article title..." link to story. What gets really annoying is when these searches occur all at the same time so in a span of a few minutes 5, 10 or more tweets come from one account, blocking up the stream. I like the idea of there being a real human behind the tweeting. This in no way is me saying I don't want to get links to something newsworthy online. I do, I just don't want them automatically given to me. I much rather prefer someone writing Found this museum news article interesting: link to story.

No. 4 Respond to those who reply to you through @ tweeting (where the @ symbol is placed in front of the twitter name, for example @museummusings). These messages show up in the sidebar under the aptly named @youraccountname, making replying to others easy. Now I know this rule is not always followed and I certainly understand why for some institutions it is not feasible. Sometimes the personpower isn't there and sometimes there are just too many questions/comments/suggestions to reply to them all. I do suggest replying to some when one can. I also suggest the Direct Message feature and have gotten numerous direct messages from museums just thanking me for following them. Things like this create a good relationship between follower and tweeter and I feel retains followers. I certainly appreciate them. The museum groups that sent me Direct Messages just for following them are @ShelburneMuseum, @heardmuseum, @metmuseum, @EngineMuseum, and @fordstheatre.

I also recommend using the established protocol of the hashtag #followfriday in which a tweet consists of other twitter accounts that you recommend following. The trend is to provide 5 of them. So even though today is Monday, I recommend following (in addition to myself and the accounts above): @TheWomensMuseum, @MuseumMaknMusic, @tenementmuseum, @fieldmuseum, and @GettyMuseum. There are many more museum related twitterers out there. Just search for Museum on twitter and go from there.

There has been much discussion in the museum world about this too. Multiple people have discussed twitter and its benefits on Museum-L and numerous tips on how to utilize it properly have been included. Apparently there are also podcasts on iTunes that deliver tips on how to effectively use twitter, although I have not used them. Connecting with others who share common interests and is a good thing in the museum world: person to person, museum to museum, museum to person. I maintain my stance blogged previously that twitter has the unique potential to reach the masses thereby expanding a museums presence in the virtual world.

Hello to all and today especially to those who found me via twitter.

The Twitter Potential

I have officially joined the ranks of twitter as of yesterday afternoon. Up until a few days before that, I didn't realize that it had a web presence, I honestly thought it was just a cell phone thing. Anyhow, one of the things online that I follow faithfully is the Museum listserv and a topic started on Thursday involved John McCain's twittering about pork in the Omnibus bill (I will have a totally different post about this perhaps tomorrow evening). I actually spent time in researching if it was really John McCain tweeting or a fake one, after all there was an article a few weeks ago discussing celebrity posers, so I was skeptical. There was also the thought running in the back of my mind that during the campaign he didn't know how to use email, so how could he possibly use twitter? My research came up with the following conclusion: John McCain twitters with help. I'll accept that, but if he was using twitter, why wasn't I?

So I joined twitter as a way to expand my online presence and awareness, to be primarily used in conjunction with this blog. So there will be tweets alerting to new blog posts and some that sum up blog posts in 140 characters or less, but in a short amount of time, I realized how twitter will allow me to do much more than that.

I began following numerous museums that are using twitter to update their followers on new exhibits, different events and museum specific news. Many of these museums follow each other too. I have been introduced to museums that I didn't know of and thus I have been spending a good portion of my Saturday looking at these museums' homepages. I would love to go on a huge road trip to visit many of them.

Not only am I following museums, I am following museum professionals, museum studies students and all around museum enthusiasts, including other museum bloggers. It is a great way to meet new people, forge contacts and just stay connected to others with like interests. I find people so interesting and I like to network and learn from those who know more than I do. Above and beyond following someone's tweets, I've seen twitter used to find roommates for museum conferences, plan gatherings, and have short and succinct conversations. I am also pleased to see that there are many my age who are interested in entering the museum world for their careers.

The first step is for museums to get out there and tweet, then following like institutions. Soon others will begin to follow the newly twittering museum. I think a crucial step lies in making the statement that the museum is now on twitter, whether that announcement comes on the museum website, via an email newsletter, or even posted (albeit with small signs) around admission desks or at the museum store. I don't know if I'd think to search twitter for a single institution if I didn't know that there would be a positive result, searching for the keyword museum and rolling from there has proved successful enough. The point is though, that tweets can only reach those that are following them and these numbers are far lower than some attendance numbers, so why not reach as many people as possible?

In conclusion I love the connectedness that I get off of twitter, because it is so much easier I feel to find other people with similar interests. It is also something that is easy to do, which means that museums and other cultural institutions can cheaply utilize it, and if utilized properly I think that this is a great virtual expansion of a museum's reach. It's already starting to happen, and I only see this going further as more museums catch on and decide to tweet along with the rest of us.

Hello to anyone who found me through twitter and thanks for visiting!

Just a Few Changes

I have once again been playing around with the formatting of this blog, but as I am still happy with its colors they have remained the same.

Things I have changed:

The artist of the week- it is now at the top of the blog above the entries. Before it was at the side of the entries below the "This is Me" section and it annoyed me that the artwork was usually cut off rather than shrunk to the appropriate size.

This Day in History- a fitting addition taking the space where the the art used to go.

Blogs I Read- these are 5 of the museum/preservation/history related blogs that I read. I have enjoyed them and since it is a feed, they will automatically update if a new blog is posted. This section is also on the side of the entries located above my favorite websites (which will expand soon) and my blog archive. I think that I will start to have a Blog of Interest post maybe once a week to draw attention to other blogs that I like. This of course is added to the other things I have promised to post, such as what I would have in my own museum. I will get there, I'm still trying to figure out a happy medium in time between postings.

I have also added a blog description and expanded the "This is Me" snippet.

That's it for now!

Updates

I have been playing with the templates and colors on this blog, and finally found a combination that I like. It is much lighter than what I had had and more viewer friendly. I have also added a few "gadgets" as they are called. The first is a list of links that I enjoy. The second is one that will display a new Picasso artwork each day. I'm thinking about changing this gadget each week to feature a different artist and maybe set up a rotation from there. All in all I am happy with the way it currently looks and do not expect to change it for a while.

Later today I will post about why I do not have a favorite museum, I promise.