Wow, great discussion!

I have to second (third?) Michelle's comments about keeping Twitter (and
blogging) informal and not all marketing-ese. Some early studies about
blogging showed that formal, marketing-driven museum blogs were the
least successful. They weren't particularly interesting to the casual
reader, especially if the readership is diversified geographically and
all of the posts have to do with public events.

The Magnes has been tweeting for a few months and only recently started
a blog. When training staff on how to use both of these platforms, I
caution them against being too formal, and to let their personalities
shine through. We consider the staff an asset, and I think it helps to
let the public know that there are real people, with their own voices,
running this place. As for the actual content, we're shifting to become
less of a museum and more of a research institute. Collection access and
public interpretation is a major priority for us, so I try to make sure
there is a lot of content related to that. I post a lot of pictures of
our collection items to http://twitpic.com and I've gotten some great
feedback (like when we had incorrectly identified a Shriner's fez as a
Masonic fez - yes! Public curation of items we're not experts on!).

I think we're just now hitting our stride with both Twitter and the
blog, but so far, they've proven to be extremely effective marketing
tools... without the content having anything to do with marketing.

http://twitter.com/magnes
http://twitter.com/faelanae <- my less-used personal account.

Perian Sully
Collections Information Manager
Web Programs Strategist
The Magnes
Berkeley, CA


-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Michelle Moon
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 6:58 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MUSEUM-L] Twitter

Just wanted to add two cents to Lidja's two (Lidja, who I have become
acquainted with on Twitter, I might add!)

The tendency to rely on "push" marketing is indeed causing a lot of
museums to miss opportunities on Twitter. I'm following around 100
museums, many of whose feeds I discovered via the research of Amy Fox at
MuseumTweets. Going through her follows yields an array of museums using
Twitter, some successfully, some not so much, and Amy blogs about and
links to what makes Twitter efficacious for museums. 

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