An anecdote: In a recent conversation with a marketing manager at a larger cultural institution in the Netherlands I asked after the organisation’s primary target groups. “That’s not the way we think about marketing here,” was his stern reply.

Another meeting, another story: When discussing how to get people to enjoy a new cultural product a cultural communication professional quickly pointed out that the best way was probably carpet bombing the city with posters and flyers. That’s how they always did it, even though they had no clue about the ROI.

Marketing is all about bringing the right product to the right people. It’s about market research, product development, distribution, sales, public relations and yes: also partly about promotion and advertising. There is no marketing without a market, without an understanding of the market and without a specific focus on a market.

Promotion alone won’t help you get your product to the market. Buying ads doesn’t automatically help you reach the right people. Even if all curators start writing Facebook updates, this doesn’t necessarily get more people through the door.

I guess my point is that in the debate about contents versus marketing in culture, if we take a stand for the marketing-driven approach we must make sure we understand what marketing means. It means making sure our great content reaches the right people and preferably as much as possible of them. We don’t get there with posters or ads or even social media campaigns if we don’t focus on the market, our target audiences.

I guess my point is that it’s all about our target audience and our content and the link between them. This link is called marketing, but doing ‘marketing’ like the people in my anecdotes won’t make it happen.

I guess my point is that being marketing driven doesn’t make you market driven per se.

Most of the workshops I run I conclude with a simple and effective game I call Bag It or Bin It*. Simply put I ask participants to summarise the main ideas of the workshop and put them into two categories: the ideas they will follow up (these go in the bag) and the ideas they never want to hear about again (these go in the bin). The result is a nicely coloured co-created do’s and dont’s list for the participants.

Minke Havelaar, with whom I run a series of workshops for Mediamatic’s Kom Je Ook?, has made a summary of a couple of Bag It or Bin It games we played about social media marketing strategy with cultural institutions. The result reads like a trend list for social media development in the cultural and non-profit sector. Especially interesting is what people put in their bags regarding the strategic use of social media.

So, what do our colleagues focus on when it comes to social media? Here’s 100s of ideas summarised in six clear trends:

1. Quantity versus quality of content
   Do’s include writing Tweets and Facebook updates according to best practices (short, images, etc.), the 9-1 rule for writing more about others than about yourself and thinking more strategically about each piece of content.
2. Measuring and analysing
   Participants planned to focus on metrics and tools such as Google Analytics, but also on writing reports about social media successes and outcomes for management and coworkers.
3. Acceptance and organisation
   Social media doesn’t work when you’re an island within the organisation. Coworkers need to be involved. Do’s include setting up guidelines and a social media policy, providing support to peers and professionalising social media activities.
4. Planning and strategy
   Do’s include setting up a content strategy, working towards broadly-supported goals, integrating social media in the communication strategy and working according to a long-term planning.
5. New platforms
   Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn… There’s more than Facebook and Twitter that meets the eye and some (new) platforms might be way more suited to engage and reach out to an audience.
6. Target groups and key influencers
   Maybe the most important point for many: getting a better sense of the target groups that can be reached via social media, and connecting with key influencers to reach out to wider audiences, as well as designing a strategy to create advocates for your organisation.

None of these trends will really surprise a weathered professional, but it’s wonderful to remind ourselves that if we get these basic ideas right, we can do the unthinkable on social media. I’m very curious to hear which trends you see or wish to focus on. From the heated debates I see in my RSS reader and Twitter feed about for instance staffing and education, I gather there are more trends worth discussing.

Also, if you’re curious to learn more about these trends and how to make them work for your organisation, consider joining us in one of our workshops. The Mediamatic ones are in Dutch and in Amsterdam, but with my company Inspired by Coffee we’re running workshops on any of the themes above (besides ‘new platforms’), for instance at MuseumNext where we’ll do a crash course in digital engagement strategy. Hope to see you there!

* The game is certainly not invented or designed by me. However I can’t find the original source. If you know it, please share it in the comments.

Whenever I feel like there is an occasion for a party, I always quickly reject the idea. I’m terrible at throwing parties. It’s not that I’m not a good cook, don’t know about wine or have trouble keeping a conversation going. It’s not even that I know my musical taste is a bit unusual or have too few friends. My problem with throwing parties is that I know I will never quite invite anybody, or ever publicly announce the event.

This, unfortunately, is a problem lots of people are having when it comes to their digital strategy. We’re great (or at least getting better) at designing engaging online content, yet terrible at reaching people with it.

Earlier this year a theatre company in the Netherlands made a production about making news. For months they researched how to manipulate the news and how to get topics trending. The accompanying website was nicely made, with bonus materials and even an interactive YouTube video. The only problem: nobody knew about the production. They had studied making news, but forgotten to be news themselves, as the people involved had to admit reluctantly in an interview.

There’s a subtle but important different between providing good engaging online content and actually reaching people with it. I call this difference the difference between engagement and outreach and it’s a tough difference if I consider many of the projects I’ve been advising about in the past months.

Engagement is about designing projects (expositions, websites, events) that turn occasional passers-by into enthusiasts willing to go that extra mile for you. Crowdfunding and other C-words are all about engagement. Engagement upgrades your existing audience and if you’re very good at it, might even increase your reach via the enthusiasts. Engagement is done, usually, within the safety of your institution’s building, website or social media presence.

Outreach is in many ways the opposite of engagement. Outreach* is about designing strategies that reach people wholly unknown to you and connect them with your institution. Advertising is all about outreach, as is the community manager proactively responding to Google Alerts and mingling in discussions on external blogs. Outreach increases the number of people you can later engage. Outreach is done, usually, outside of the comfort zone of your institution’s building, website or social media presence.

Every successful digital strategy combines engagement and outreach activities. Outreach connects with people and invites them to come by, and engagement turns them into enthusiasts. Both require different methodologies, different tools and especially a different mindset, though.

If you, like me when I’m throwing a party, feel like you’re pretty good at engagement but still don’t reach a whole lot of people, it will pay off to focus more on outreach activities in your digital strategy. Spend more time inviting people, connecting with new target groups, leaving the safety and comfort of your own online environment to build a presence in others. Even on the social web, outreach is just as important as engagement.

* The word “outreach” can have different connotations to different people. I use it simply because it implies “reaches out” to people, not because of any hidden meanings of social inclusion, etc.

This blog was once started to document the (digital) development of a museum of national history in the Netherlands. As most readers will know, that museum never happened. What most readers – acquainted with our very visible projects such as xwashier and the National Vending Machine – might not know is that a large part of the work done by our curators has never been made public. Until now.

Yesterday in a packed Felix Meritis in Amsterdam the publication Blueprint was presented. The book shows in detail our plans for the design and contents of a museum of national history for the Netherlands. It contains sketches of exhibitions, descriptions of displays and interactives and even ideas for the architecture of the physical building. It is the outcome of years of work by some of the most talented people I’ve ever met and beautifully designed by one of my favourite designers in the Netherlands.

While reading the book I hardly needed my usually vivid imagination to feel like I was actually visiting the museum. And it was a great visit. Now I know I’m biased, but while walking through the galleries I bumped into a lot of stuff I would have loved to see in real life. There’s even a karaoke gallery (something I know some of my readers will enjoy)!

Apart from an account of many years of hard work, the book also shines a light on the future of museums all over the world. Together with the earlier book Sketches for a National History Museum it’s almost a DIY manual for new museums.

I definitely recommend reading the book (but then again, I’m not entirely unprejudiced). Although this book is the end of the line for us, its contents sure can be of benefit to others. I’m also very curious to hear your response to its ideas and proposals. What do you think will work? What have you tried in your institution and what were the results?

N.B. When shipping costs are insane for your country, I’m happy to order it for you and take it with me on my way to MuseumNext in May, or any other international event I’ll be attending. Contact me to work this out.

N.B. I should have posted this post when I first wrote it. By now Alain de Botton’s opinion about museums is all over the place, and way better written (that is: by him) so you’d better read his columns on the Huffington Post or the Museums Association website. Sorry!

It’s been a while since we reflected on the way Lady Gaga or Richard Branson would make your museum top the charts. Recently a book came out by the great thinker and museum babes lover Alain de Botton which provides us with another nice angle on the outsider’s view on museums: secularism.

Religion for Atheists by De Botton is a guidebook to religion’s uses in a secular life. For topics such as community, education and forgiveness it looks at the good religions have to offer so we can enrich our secular existence. It’s a beautiful book, one of the most enlightening works I’ve read in a long while. You get a good sense of the book’s contents and energy from De Botton’s powerful TED talk embedded below.

The presentation also gives some insight in this post’s topic: how Alain de Botton would run a museum. “Our museum of art have become our new churches.” he writes. But they aren’t perfect, “While exposing us to objects of genuine importance, they nevertheless seem incapable of adequately linking these to the needs of our souls.”

1. His museum would be a meeting place for strangers, where all sorts of people are encouraged to learn about each other and talk about important topics. Such a museum would battle one of our secular world’s greatest fears: loneliness. Visiting a museum would be like visiting an agape feast.
2. The museum would be focused on increasing wisdom, not knowledge. It doesn’t matter that much when an artist lived or the colours he or she used, or the age of a piece of wood and the conditions during its excavation. What matters is how the art and heritage are relevant to our lives and the greater stories they tell.
3. Works of art would be grouped together according to the concerns of our soul. There’s a renewed interior design for Tate Modern in the book featuring galleries of love, compassion, suffering and other important themes in our lives we struggle and need most guidance with.
4. There’d be a lot of guidance in interpreting difficult works of art. What use is it for an important work of art when it’s meaning is hidden and difficult? Instead, like in Buddhism, visitors would be provided hints as to what to look for in abstract creations.
5. The museum would have stunning architecture, but not in the ego-boosting way of a lot of museums (mostly boosting the ego of the architect). The architecture would make us feel small, physically and psychologically, so we can reflect on the larger things in life.

I think Alain de Botton’s museum is a lot like the magnificent Kolumba museum on Cologne. A museum like a secular church where you can reflect on life and its many beauties, and difficulties. Much more subtle that Lady Gaga’s museum, but also way more ambitious. Considering my love for Kolumba, I’d love to visit some more of De Botton’s museums!

Few presentations have made as much an impact on me as Martin Barden’s presentation about Tate Members at MuseumNext 2011. I retell his story at least once a week, and in my head (and stories) both Martin and Tate Members have taken immense proportions. As if nearly one fifth of a million paying members isn’t impressive enough already… You can imagine I’m happy the people behind Kom Je Ook? have decided listen to my endless begging and bring Martin over to Amsterdam for their conference on March 29th (for which I can’t help but make some promotion…).

What I like about Tate Members is how they have carefully designed the process from occasional passer-by to patron. This process is as much about getting new people to join the membership programme, as it is about retaining existing members and encouraging them to “grow” into more exclusive relationships with the institution.

I guess there’s a lot we can learn from a programme like Tate Members when we’re talking about (online) community building, growing a Facebook page, and all other activities where we want people to get together in an organised way around a cause. Here’s what I take away from repeating the Tate Members story at least 50 times*:

• Have clear benefits. Free entrance to special exhibitions, a cool welcome gift, no queues… Joining should always have explicit benefits, even if it’s just liking a Facebook page. I fear “stay up to date” isn’t always enough. Exclusive contents, early registration and last-minute deals are examples of online benefits.
• Keep repeating why people should join. You cannot interact with Tate without hearing about Tate Members, and that’s the way it should be. I once (when I was like 14) asked the marketing team at Coca Cola why they still promoted the drinks even though everybody must know about them. “Because there are always new people being born that need to know as well,” was their answer.
• Outreach versus engagement. Tate Members is as much about finding new members as keeping the old ones happy. This requires two different approaches which I call outreach and engagement. Outreach is about going out of your comfort zone and targeting new audiences, engagement is about developing the existing ones into advocates for your cause.
• Treat different people differently. Not everybody joins for the same benefits, so figure out why people are part of your group and treat them accordingly. New members need different attention than the ones that have been a member since forever. Simply repeating your marketing message all the time might scare members away that have grown past being a member for the benefits.
• Build a tribe. The best thing about Tate Members is the welcome package, and the best thing from that package the Oyster Card holder with which you can show – every time when you check into the underground, pay for groceries, etc. – that you are part of Tate. These things are gold.
• Be very, very serious about it. The moment people get together magic happens, and the moment they are invited to get together and the host isn’t in it for 120%, the party is ruined (you remember such parties).

I’m pretty sure there are many others who have fallen in love with Tate Members or a similar programme, or have taken ideas away about memberships elsewhere. I’m curious to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thanks already!

* Disclaimer: As I said, the story might have grown beyond reality in my head. To hear the true story check out Martin’s slides from MuseumNext or come to Kom Je Ook? later this month. There are various options to get a discount for Kom Je Ook?, for instance by supporting a voordekunst project, or joining the Erfgoed 2.0 community.

Last week Jim Richardson (Sumo/MuseumNext) and I hosted a 2-day workshop to help the Qatar Museum Authority (QMA) develop their digital engagement strategy. After two intense days of gamestorming, project design and requirement discussions I left Doha with the strong feeling we might have to look east if we want to discover what the museum of the future looks like.

QMA’s vision is to be a global leader in the world of museums, art and heritage. Currently, they operate two museums and many others are planned. Their range spans from the existing mindblowing Museum of Islamic Art till a (planned) collection-less National Museum and an interactive Sports Museum. Their chairperson Sheikha Al Mayassa talks beautifully about the reasons behind such a strong focus on culture in a recent TED talk.

Why could QMA be building the museums of the future? Without going into detail about the findings of our workshop, I noticed at least 5 key characteristics that will certainly help them forward in the 21st century:

1. Ambition. It’s not only their vision to become a global leader, within the team it is practice as well. Many ideas are bold, untried, an potentially very successful in finding new ways to reach and engage people with culture and the arts.
2. Energy and optimism. Most people at QMA seem to work around the clock to excel in their work and make their bold ideas possible. There’s a strong can-do mentality.
3. Cooperation with others. From their involvement in the Damien Hirst exhibition in Tate this summer to the companies they partner with to make their vision reality, QMA isn’t afraid to work together to make stuff happen.
4. More than physical collections. While the Museum of Islamic Art has a beautiful collection, and QMA is building collections for some of their other museums, it goes beyond physical objects. They host concerts, have a park, tell stories…
5. More than beautiful buildings. In reaching as much people as possible, QMA doesn’t limit itself to its (beautiful) buildings, but reaches out to where people are. They for instance have a stand in the Virigin Megastore, where many Qatari youngsters hang out.

Of course there’s a sixth characteristic (money) that will certainly benefit them. However, I strongly feel this is not a key to their future success. Even in the absence of money the 5 characteristics above can create powerful cultural institutions. In fact, they might even be money-makers in the long run, which became apparent in some of the solutions to digital engagement we found in the workshop.

Qatar might be a bit out of reach of your next study trip, but if you’re lucky with your tax returns or the national lottery I recommend you visit the small country and its great museums. Another option is to come to MuseumNext where some of their digital staff will attend (the weather is similarly nice in Barcelona). The last and cheapest option to keep an eye on them and their development is, of course, online. Looking back at the workshop we did, I’m pretty sure you’ll be hearing a lot from them in the digital realm!

Almost overnight my RSS timeline changed from “Facebook blah Facebook blahblah” to “Pinterest blah Pinterest blahblah”. There’s so much buzz around this new social network that I’m not even going to explain what it is and why it is the future. Others have done so and have done so better, especially Neil Patel’s marketing guide to Pinterest. A must read, which lists SFMOMA as a brand doing well on the platform. Chapeau.

Pinterest is the perfect platform for culture, if you ask me. It’s the platform most suited to give meaning to our mission statements and values. Among the many, many things you can do on Pinterest (thanks Jenni), here are five I find especially valuable:

1. Make your blog more compelling, and easier to fill
   Regardless of your topic, an image and strong tagline almost always tell a more convincing story online than an image and a 2,000-word essay. I’m sure a good board can replace many a regular culture blog, reach a wider audience and be more engaging. Plus, it’s easier to get a 5-word quote about a painting from a curator than have her write a 500-word blogpost.
2. Create a mindblowing gallery of influencers and influenced
   So the Guernica inspired hundreds of artists (and rightfully so)? Make a board that shows a “timeline” of all the art influenced by this piece, and where Picasso took his inspiration from. This makes a great exposition, and – thus – a great board on Pinterest. You could also crowdsource such a project by opening up the board to contributions by your followers.
3. Put your audience in the spotlight
   Pinterest is all about showing your taste. It’s not about painting your house, but about exactly which colour scheme you want to put on your wall. Recommending (liking or repinning) tastes that fit your values and collection is a great way to make your audience feel special and putting them in a positive spotlight (and improve their opinion of you).
4. Charge your brand
   What you can do for your audience, you can do for yourself as well. What does your institution find tasteful, beautiful, appropriate, useful, desirable, inspirational…? Pinterest can do for you what a consultancy firm would charge a small fortune for: charge your brand. Especially look for things both you and your ideal target audience like, so you can build relationships between the two of you.
5. Discover trends in your target groups
   If you look at my Pinterest timeline, you’d think all my friends’d be married soon. And some of them are thinking about tattoos. Researching the names of the boards of the people that follow you and the stuff they pin gives an incredible insight in their psyche. Must more than by reading good-weather tweets and by checking Facebook likes, Pinterest can show trends within your target groups.

Most of these things are pretty obvious, and I’m certain that in the months to come we will find new and more successful ways to use Pinterest for culture. If there’s anything you’ve done that worked amazingly well, please share in the comments. Happy pinning!

N.B. Following my own advice, I’ve taken this blog to Pinterest as well. Same content, less words, more imagination.

After an inspirational session with the innovators network heritage (INE) yesterday, in which we discussed past successes and future plans for cultural world domination, I thought it would be nice to forget the debates about open linked data and digital sustainability for a while, and look back at the core of our job: innovation.

Below is a list of some of the core points that are good to be reminded of every now and then related to innovation. What is it, where does it come from and what can it bring us? Some of the points are apparently obvious, others less so and might be project or organisation specific. I’d love to hear your take on innovation in the comments.

1. Innovation is the process from idea to delivery. As a friend once told me, ideas are as abundant as successfully finished projects are rare.
2. Innovation starts with observation. As Geoff Mulgan writes, “Innovators generally have a wide peripheral vision, and they are good at spotting how apparently unrelated methods and ideas can be used togethers.” This means a good innovator is usually a generalist, has an eye for detail and great curiosity about how things work.
3. Innovation is often obvious. Don’t discard ideas because they seem too simple, they might never have been tried before. Or as the late Peter Drucker said, “The greatest praise an innovation can receive is for people to day, ‘This is obvious! Why didn’t I think of it? It’s so simple!’”
4. Innovation can happen anywhere in your organisation. Probably, your biggest win isn’t to be found in the social media department, but it doesn’t hurt to let them look (together with communications, collections, programming, sales, etc.).
5. A business model is part of every innovation. If an innovation isn’t meant to add some real value to the visitor’s experience, collection management, the budget or something else, it’s just a crazy idea getting too much attention.
6. It’s better to disrupt the market, than your audience. As every Facebook lay-out update shows, change always upsets people. Make sure you upset the right people, or as Clayton M. Christensen writes, “[Innovators] should try to disrupt their competitors, never their customers.”
7. Innovation can be high-risk or low-risk, but there’s always a risk. Risk-free innovation is like money-free poker: if you can’t lose you can’t win. No pain, no gain.
8. Returns are relative to the risk taken. High-risk innovation (expensive R&D departments, all-out bets) tends to yield higher potential returns than low-risk innovation (allowing staff to use 4 hours per week to try to do stuff differently).
9. Management and innovation are mutually exclusive. The problem with government innovation schemes, at least in the Netherlands? They usually ask for a planning and tangible outcomes. However, although innovation has tangible outcomes, it can never be sure what they will be at the outset, or innovation would be called project management. Also, you don’t want a manager to be too innovative, and an innovator to spent too much energy managing stuff.
10. Motivation is the key to innovation, for it focuses expertise and creative thinking. As Teresa M. Amabile writes, “People will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, satisfaction and challenge of the work itself-and not by external pressures.”
11. Innovation thrives on differences between people. There’s a compelling TED talk by Geoffrey West on how in bigger cities, there’s a lot more of everything. One of these things is innovation: more different people means more chance encounters, random interactions, inspiration, innovation.

Of course, this is just the 101. All quotes are from the The Innovator’s Cookbook, a series of essays and interviews curated by “good ideas guru” Steven Johnson. It’s a book worth reading, as it goes into things as ‘crazy’ as the set up of a building and its influence on innovation. All this, certainly, will be dealt with in future classes, either here or elsewhere on the Internet. For now, I’m ready to take questions…;-)

Not too long ago, while reading The Ascent of Money, I had to refresh my memory about the events leading to the French revolution. The Wikipedia entry on the subject made me sad. Now I had to read two books. (The article alone is over 3,300 words long.)

I believe that on their way to perfection and completeness, Wikipedia is offering us at least 3 opportunities to shine: brevity, humour and passion.

1. Brevity

Due to its desire to tell the full story, Wikipedia is quickly becoming unusable for anything other than scholarly research. The length, depth and level of detail of many entries greatly surpasses the information needs if you just want to know a bit about the topic. The article on the causes of the French revolution is not at all a very long entry, yet already some thousand words longer than the average TED talk.

There is another way, which offers an opportunity to institutions with knowledge and creativity: videos. Take the Open University’s 60-Second Adventures in Thought about Schrödinger’s cat. In 81 seconds they manage to tell basically the same story as the 2,500-word Wikipedia entry. Plus, it made me laugh.

Most people don’t want to know about Schrödinger’s cat at all. And even if they might, it’s more likely they’ll start with the movie. Can’t get enough? Wikipedia’s there to tell you everything, but by then you’ve already become a scholar of parallel universes and quantum mechanics.

2. Humour (emotion)

Humour might even sell better than sex, and it certainly is a more tool for organisations aiming at families. Wikipedia’s tendency to perfection makes their articles rather dry. It’s facts, no fiction. A nice story, with a little laugh, might be way more engaging and reach a wider audience.

I immediately thought about the viral video of the Scheepvaartsmuseum in Amsterdam, which – although a promotional tool – tells the story of 400 years of Dutch naval history rather convincingly.

It doesn’t have to be video, though. Words can be just as convincing. There’s a reason I (and millions with me) spend good money on books by the likes of Niall Ferguson, Richard Dawkins and Alain de Botton. For the contents I might just as well read an encyclopaedia, but for a unique and upbeat story they’re the ones to go to.

3. Passion

This borders on passion. There’s no denying the Wikipedians are among the world’s most passionate people, even brave enough to take a stand against SOPA. An article on Wikipedia, however, is almost always a compromise between different, equally passionate people (it’s why the “talk” page is always so much more interesting than the article).

Like humour, passion is appealing, especially when your ‘product’ screams it. It’s why we buy Apple stuff and why it’s so nice to listen to Benjamin Zander or watch the promotional video for the Ship Song project. Passion is also in the choice of imagery, the decision to focus on some parts of a story and not on others. Passion is the curatorial hand that makes Wikipedia content irresistible.

The video above triggered me to write this post. It’s a video from an exposition at my previous museum. When I needed some facts about the Dutch Golden Age (its topic), I found it quicker in this video than on Wikipedia. I also noticed that since the exposition stopped, the video has had most of its views, and is embedded on a Dutch educational website for immigrants.

I firmly believe that there are much more people like me, who prefer a short, passionate and humorous video or text to the elaborate and perfect Wikipedia article. And there will be even more in the coming years. This is an opportunity we should not neglect.

Please share your ideas or examples of great video’s and articles by cultural institutions that add something to the Wikipedia entries in the comments.