[Épinglé] May 2023 Anglophone Topic of the Month: Museums and Social Media

HOW museums can use social media to grow and develop is important as it will influence its attendance and engagement levels. It is thus essential for museums to develop and gain more reach and brand awareness, by properly applying social media digital platforms.

Social media usage continues to be an excellent opportunity to connect with leads and reach people interested in visiting museums. Various platforms can be decided to use in connecting with customers and these include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. It is important for museums to understand their audience well, which platforms they frequently use to engage with. Museums will then have to post a variety of content in order to keep it fresh and exciting for their audience. Keeping a strong interaction with customers may also mean using the desired social media digital platform to create original posts, share photos and videos, link to content and create polls. 

Use of social media can also boost circulation and awareness of digital content at minimal costs. Links to newest collections can be created to keep the museum audience updated of the collections. This shows that social media platforms are a great way for museums to connect with their audiences and promote their exhibitions and events. Social media can also be used to give feedback from visitors as they engage in conversations about their museum experiences with the collections.

For Museums to properly market and promote themselves through social media they need to put in place structures that allow for a youth-oriented model which in turn enables them (museums) to be more visible and accessible digitally.

African museums, or rather museums in Africa have for the longest time remained ingrained in post-colonial models that see museum spaces as static places that people are only supposed to go to rather than mobile knowledge structures that should also move to where the audience is. This static model is not attractive to and for the youth of today who are constantly on the move as global cultural trends influence their interpretation of heritage.

These young people on the move need something that can be as mobile. Something they can access on-the-go. By taping into this demographic and building a conversational bridge, museums will allow themselves to constantly reimagine themselves from the POV of the youth. How? As spaces that also preserve contemporary artistic expressions and not just historical artefacts.

Once museums in Africa are able to do this, they will have opened a world of digital possibilities as the youth will be more keen in making these visible on social media.

Thank you all for this discussion and your constructive thoughts. I think our museums still have a big chance to advertise themselves and provide their services more easily through social networks and reach more people. But the main thing is that to achieve this, we need to know what audience and content we will present to them.

African museums need to have a marketing department that understands what people want and how they will be able to achieve their wishes, especially young people who are currently very close to the whole issue of social networks. But also, our museums should not end only in promoting themselves through social media, and I think there is still an excellent opportunity to inform the world about our museums. For example, posting advertisements at transportation centres such as airports and bus stations, shopping malls, hotels, extensive markets, etc. I'm saying this because we are also trying this in Tanzania to market our museums, and I've seen it work to a large extent.