October’s Dickens Book Club has already kicked off in my household, descending as I have into Dickens’ murky world of the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy five in A Tale of Two Cities.

Despite having studied English Literature at university my Dickens readometer is a little stunted (blame the tutors). Great Expectations (favourite all-time novel) and Oliver Twist (precious few show tunes) are the only two books I have made it to the end of. Even my dad’s fervent enthusiasm couldn’t see me to the end of The Pickwick Papers while the sheer length of Bleak House seemed overwhelming to the point of being unreadable.

But I’m ready to start anew. I’m already excited about peering through the thick mist that envelops so many of Dickens’ novels to unearth the maze of characters beneath; to find new favourite phrases from Dickens’ witticisms (the indignant ‘I’ll eat my head!’ a particular favourite from Great Expectations); and to discover the moments that will stay with me long after the book is done, just like those between Pip and Joe – what larks!

At forty six chapters long I am being pragmatic about the challenge that lays before us. My plan is to read two chapters per day for the first fifteen days of October, then one chapter per day until the end of the month. If my maths is correct this should see us glide neatly towards the final chapters in time for Halloween and November’s book, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

So I’ll be captaining our speedy ship through the 400 plus pages of Dickens’ fourteenth novel via updates on Facebook and Twitter – please do share your thoughts, comments, favourite quotes and anything else you’d like to discuss on those pages.

Finally, don’t forget you can buy your copy of A Tale of Two Cities from Foyles Bookshop and receive a discount when using the code ‘MOLBC’.

Here at the Museum of London we have decided to honour Dickens’ work with a major exhibition Dickens and London which opens on 9 December 2011 in advance of the 200th anniversary of his birth, in 2012.

We have plans for a number of social media initiatives that we hope will enhance both the exhibition and your visit, the first of which launches this Monday 12 September – a virtual Dickens Book Club’s on both Twitter and Facebook.

Although an open forum to discuss all aspects of Dickens’s work, we will be suggesting a book a month to read and posting our thoughts (and hopefully chatting to you about your thoughts) across both Twitter and Facebook starting with September’s chosen novel: Great Expectations.

Other confirmed titles so far include: A Christmas Carol (naturally for December!), Barnaby Rudge in January 2012 (we will let you into a secret, this is such a large novel someone in the office is already reading it!) and Oliver Twist in April 2012.

So why not join us as we explore some of Dickens’ greatest works alongside some of his lesser known titles.

We are also looking for you to suggest titles to include so if you have a favourite please do let us know either via Twitter or Facebook and we will try to feature them before the exhibition closes on 10 June 2012.

Our Twitter and Facebook accounts will also be home to sneak previews of what to expect when you visit the exhibition and insights from our exhibition curators via our blog pages again in advance and during the course of the exhibition, so be sure to follow us or check our website regularly.

Look out too for an exciting short story initiative launching in November based on some of Dickens’ ideas for stories and characters which did not find their way into print.

It looks set to be a very exciting exhibition on a topic that is interesting for many people. Public and media interest is growing exponentially at the moment for the Olympics. Look at this post taken by the Viewtube during high Summer last year and compare it with the pictures taken earlier this month below at the same site.

Not only are large numbers of schools attending the site but also various senior citizens and tourist groups.

Even the media itself are regularly checking up on progress and reporting it nationwide.

If you would like to learn more about the Olympic site than I recommend that you come along to one of the our Olympic tours called ‘Walk the Olympic Way’ that we will be offering on Sunday 12th June 2011 from 2.30pm -4pm and Wednesday July 27th from 2.30pm – 4pm.

Come again next week and we will look at the progress taking place at the Crossrail site that is right in front of the Olympic Stadium.

Peter

In the meantime to whet your appetite here is a picture of one of the canal boats that have been doing such a great job in clearing up the canals in preparation for the Olympics next year.

In case you are wondering just what they have to clear away check out the photo below.

If you would like to learn more about the Olympics site than I recommend that you come along to one of our Olympic tours  called ‘Walk the Olympic Way’ that we will be doing on Sunday 12th June 2011 from 2.30pm -4pm and Wednesday July 27th from 2.30pm – 4pm.

Don’t forget to check this blog next week when I will be talking about the increasing media interest in the constructions sites in and around the Olympic Park.

Peter

And now, as the weather (we hope) turns milder, we are able to add a specially grown cutting to our Central Courtyard.

Planting our buddleia

Here you can see our Visitor Services Manager, Gerald, with Louise Nichols whose parents run a plant nursery and garden design business and who kindly donated the cutting to the Museum.

The reason the buddleia proved to be the most popular seems to be its hardiness and its ability to adapt to what London throws at it (a striking metaphor?) as is highlighted by this related tweet: “…found growing wild all over London in scrubland, cracks in walls, tops of buildings – attracts butterflies too”.

It was also one of the first plants to grow in bombsites during The Blitz and continues too hold a special significance for many Londoners.

Our buddleia will complement the existing planting in the courtyard and whilst “butterfly friendly” will also be popular with bees from our hive.

The planting location is important as this pot is easily seen from within the Museum.

The next step is to work with our Design Team and Curators to add a message to the pot that highlights the plants significance and that it was chosen by social media followers of the Museum.

Bringing a little of the outside into our galleries.

With thanks to Linda and Ralph Nichols and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

The exhibition was opened by Wolf Suschitzky, whose stirring tribute to the power and fascination of photography was a real call to arms for anyone with a camera. It rather harked back to my earlier words about nostalgia. Wolf made the point that times have changed and people’s perceptions of photography and its role in society are creating problems for dedicated exponents of the art of street photography. It must have been wonderful to have been able to wander the streets without people questioning ones intentions. Is that why the images of yesteryear are so captivating, because everyone looks so at ease with the camera?

One of the interesting things about photography is its ability to misrepresent its subject matter. In the early days of photography, the relative insensitivity of photographic emulsions to light meant that most photographs were taken in good weather. This perhaps creates the illusion that in the old days the weather was always nice. Wolf Suschitzky’s stunning image “A milkman- Charing Cross Road” shatters this illusion and is unusual in its depiction of the London of old . The wet road reflects light back and creates a frame around the milk cart. Wolf’s closing comment last night was to encourage everyone to continue taking photos, in good weather and bad. 

The last of Oscar’s diary extracts is timed for 29 June, and over the last six months the team in Communications has got to know Oscar very well.

Oscar had a very sweet tooth and included in his diary lists of the treats he had bought that day not only for himself but for members of his family such as his sister Marjorie:

Saturday 22 February 1919 “It is my half day today and I went to Aldgate with Antram and bought a smoked sausage & ¼ of chocolate, a plateful of cockles, two buns, two bars of chocolate”

A veracious reader, Oscar provided an insight into the magazines and books of interest to youngsters at the time, indeed, at times you forgot that Oscar was still only 15 years old as he detailed his working day of early rises and mail deliveries around the docks of the East End, only for his diary to remind you as he writes how at lunchtime he would “stop for a play in the sack shed”.

Between January and June 1919 Oscar welcomed a new baby to the family, and introduced us to his friends and family from ‘Appa and Nana through to the brothers Antram.

As Oscar spent most of his working day outside, he kept meticulous note of the weather, and one of the highlights during this project was welcoming the BBC Weather Show to Museum of London Docklands to film a piece on the diary and indeed the links to all the content from that edition of the show from the Museum – all thanks to Oscar.

Extracts from Oscar’s diary have also been “tweeted” via Oscar’s twitter page @OscarKirk1919 and it is hoped that the success of this serialisation online can be repeated with other diaries from our collection.

The web pages dedicated to Oscar will remain as a resource under “Collections” on the Museum of London Docklands website www.museumoflondon.org.uk/oscarkirk

Fittingly, the last diary entry the Museum holds sees Oscar relate how the signing of the peace treaty that ended WWI was celebrated:

Sunday 29 June 1919 “Yesterday there were Maroons, Thunder Flashes and many other fireworks being let off after 3 o’clock and before 3 o’clock. Today a lot of people were drunk, as a result of the peace.”

Painting: Firework Display in Hyde Park. Oil on Canvas.Charles William Wyllie. The National Peace Celebrations were held in London on 19 July 1919 to mark the end of the First World War © Museum of London.

Social media

I have taken a few actions following on from my last blog entry about what we’re doing on social media. The first action was to get support from my colleagues in Press & Marketing to help me manage the some of our social media activities, and over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that the numbers of tweets by us have increased. This is due to one of my colleagues, Tim, taking over much of the activities on this platform. Though I occasionally still go and respond to tweets and retweets, both directed at @museumoflondon as well as when ‘Museum of London’ is mentioned, Tim has been doing a wonderful (and much more interesting – thank you Tim!) job on it. Please continue to show your support and follow us on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/museumoflondon

Tim has also been introduced to our Facebook account and he has started to update our statuses. I am still responding to all the comments and enquiries and adding the occasional status updates but I am hoping Tim will take over managing this soon as well. Yes I know I’m giving away the management of the juiciest aspects of web publishing (!!!) but this is very much due to the restriction in resources I am currently facing and the projects I am working on at present.

Information Architecture & web redesign

One of the things that have been keeping both Jeremy and I very busy is looking at restructuring our website information architecture and redesigning the site, in particular, addressing the site navigations. Between Jeremy, Rhiannon and I with support and input from many other people from across the organisation, we have come up with a number of new information architectures. We have now come to a compromise on one particular architecture and are in the process of testing it with users. We have also looked at a few design proposals and are currently deciding on which designer we will go with.

The hardest part of the activities so far has been getting the top level navigations right so that the three arms of Museum of London are all represented and clearly branded, without taking away from the fact that we are all one organisation. I can go on for days about the difficulties we have encountered so far, but for now, I won’t bore you further with it.

Just remember to look out for a whole new website at the end of May!

You are here

Something else my colleagues and I are working on and you should watch out for is our ‘You are here’ campaign at www.youarehere.org.uk. I won’t say any more about this, but check out this link in the coming months!

This month the Museum of London Docklands launches a web-based initiative bringing to life London’s Docklands in the early twentieth century through the diary extracts of a young messenger boy employed by the Port of London Authority at the time. Recently donated to our collection, the diary details Oscar’s daily activities both at work and home, personal interests (Oscar loved to read) and details of the things he enjoyed when not working ranging from comics and sweets he bought, to visits to the music hall. 

The Museum plans to feature the corresponding daily diary entries on the homepage of the Museum of London Docklands website and on other social media sites starting from January 1^st 2010.

A planned online archive of all diary entries and further supporting details relating to the subjects that Oscar covers in his diary will also be updated regularly. 

Oscar was 15 when he started to work in the East India Docks in 1918 ferrying messages and mail between different docks and Port of London Authority offices. Oscar would have been provided with a uniform and would be expected to look smart at all times (Oscar notes making a “boot pad” on Sunday January 5^th 1919, possibly to keep his boots clean). 

Although work days for Oscar could be arduous he still found time for fun as the start of his diary entry for Wednesday 22^nd January 1919 highlights: “got chapped hands today. Played between 12.30 and 1.30 in the sack shed”.  Oscar was also saving to buy a bicycle of his own, by giving his father a few pence at a time towards the cost. By the time the entries in the diary finish in July 1919 he had given his father 1/6d (7.5p) towards the cost.

Oscar’s diary is currently on display in the Sainsbury’s Study Centre at Museum of London Docklands.  Find out more about Oscar’s thoughts and duties daily on our website from January 1^st 2010 and follow Oscar on Twitter at:  http://twitter.com/OscarKirk1919

• 100% of members want MOL to continue on Facebook,
• Most members would recommend MOL and MOL on Facebook to other people,
• Very few visitors were engaging with MOL through Facebook and the blog sites,
• More effort needs to be put into improving the communication on Facebook and blog to make it effective,
• MOL was not utilising Facebook or the blogs enough at the time of research and used it for information purposes only,
• It appeared that people wanted to receive information but not necessarily engage with MOL in any way other than to read emails, update alerts, and the blog entries, and
• People want to be prompted and guided to available content in the most convenient way.

So what are we doing now to ensure we utilise these available resources in the best way possible?

I have taken the feedbacks and lessons learned from my research to ensure that more use is made of all of our social software sites and activities. Although there are resource constraints, I have been attempting to:

• Add regular Facebook status updates on the MOL Facebook fan page,
• Twitter regularly on the MOL Twitter account,
• Blog more frequently on this blog site, and
• I have been vigilantly ensuring that all comments on MOL Facebook, YouTube, blogs, and Flickr, and all tweets and Twitter messages at Museum of London is responded to.

In addition to this, I am working on a new ‘Online’ section on the Museum of London website to bring together all these activities into a central location. I am also emphasising the use of social software to my colleagues and attempting to pass on responsibilities to various departments to manage some of these tools.

We are a long way from accomplishing all that which can be accomplished with all the available social software, but slowly and surely, we are heading towards that line were our visitors are able to engage with us in their preferred platforms and we are able to say ‘yes, we are listening and we care’.

On another note, I have finally visited our Modern London Galleries currently under development, due to open in spring 2010 and I have taken many, many pictures, so watch out for my next post to find out about all the exciting developments!

Does the Museum of London lose visitors through having content sitting on separate social software sites?

It became obvious from my research that the Museum of London (MOL) was not losing visitors by having content sitting on other sites but was in fact, gaining more visits to MOL websites as a by product of its existence on Facebook and the existence of MOL’s blog (MyMOL). In addition, as a result of its presence on Facebook, Facebook members were making some actual visits to the Museums that they previously may not have made.

However, the advantages of having a blog and a presence on Facebook was clearly not being utilised to its full potential. I discovered that if more blog entries were made on MyMOL, with links to the MOL websites and incentives to visit events and exhibitions at MOL, more visitors would visit the MOL websites and possibly end up visiting the two MOL Museums.

Also, from the comments I received in the Facebook survey I carried out, it was apparent that MOL could promote more events and engage better with the audience by actively prompting members to not only visit the Facebook pages, but also MOL websites and any other social software sites where MOL activities were taking place.

Are visitors engaging with Museum of London through social software sites?

Within the limit of my study on the MOL website and MyMOL, the measure I used for testing whether visitors were engaging with the sites proved that in actual fact, very few visitors were engaging with the Museum or the Museum blog through active comments, enquiries and feedback. This, I realise, may be incorrect to conclude as visitors could have been engaged in many ways such as using information for research and planning visits and visiting the actual Museums, but the method I used showed very little engagement on the social software sites.

On Facebook, however, the engagement level was greater in one sense, but minimal in another. It was greater in that with the response to the survey alone, it proved that a high percentage of the members were willing to engage with the MOL, however, very few members were carrying out discussion or collaborating.

So to answer this question, very few visitors were engaging with MOL through its social software sites at the time of research.

Do visitors find information on Museum of London social software sites of value?

I concluded that visitors of MyMOL must find information of value as a high percentage of visitors made repeat visits. Though there was a drop in repeat visitors at the end of the reporting period for MyMOL, if the pattern of repeat visitors on MOL website was used, it was possible to see that the repeat visits would start to steadily grow, suggesting that visitors see it as a valuable source to come back to.

In addition to this, members on Facebook had generally thought the MOL’s presence on Facebook was useful, and every single member agreed that MOL should remain on Facebook, confirming that they do value it for the individual purpose for which they signed up to them, whether it was simply to keep up to date with events, or to find out about new developments at the Museums. Also, the comments were mostly positive and many members were recommending MOL and its presence on Facebook to friends and family, which was a very important factor in determining that members do find information on MOL websites and those on associated social software sites of value.

Should museums spend time pursuing the use of social software to attract new audience?

The number of visits to MyMOL in comparison to MOL website was very small, however, given that MyMOL was so new and did not have any publicity, it was still evident that the number of visits to MyMOL was increasing steadily, and the trend in visits mirrored that of the MOL website. For this reason, cultivating MyMOL would ensure that more visitors would be attracted and end up visiting MOL and MOL websites, and with promotion of MyMOL, it would be worth spending the time to attracting these new visitors.

Similarly, the number of MOL Facebook members were very small in comparison to the number of visitors to the MOL website received. However, as more effort is put into improving the communication on Facebook, more members are likely to join, and therefore, increase the traffic to MOL and its website. For this reason and for the fact that those existing members who responded to the survey valued the MOL Facebook presence and found it useful, I concluded that it would be worth spending time on attempting to engage these members and attract new audiences.

Should website visit statistics of content sitting on social software sites be included in the official statistics reports?

Having compared the web statistics for the MOL website with MyMOL, although the number of visits is small in comparison, they are still visits to a Museum site that holds information that belongs to the Museum and therefore, should be included in the official reporting. I could find no evidence other than the fact that for social networking sites such as Facebook, it may not be as easy to capture the visits and visitor statistics*, however, where statistics could be and are being collected, these should be reported in the same way as for all the other MOL websites.

To conclude

Museums can use social software to communicate with its audience outside of its own website, and can react quickly, efficiently and appropriately if the Museum is being discussed (Newson 2008).

The findings of my study at the time of research concludes that visitors use MyMOL and the Facebook pages for information purposes only, and MOL use social software to simply publish content. From this study, it appeared that people wanted to receive information but did not necessarily engage with the Museum in any way other than to read emails, update alerts and blog entries, and did not want to carry out conversations. They wanted to be prompted and guided to available content in the most convenient way possible without having to visit the MOL website unless necessary.

Given this conclusion, it could be said that MOL has much to gain from having a presence on Facebook and working with social software such as blogs, to attract new audiences and new visitors to the Museums and the Museum websites. It provides MOL with different ways to disseminate information that visitors’ value and can engage with, and MOL should spend time on ensuring that the right social software is being used appropriately.

However, as Newson argued, museums can only see benefits of using social software if they change their perception of social software to properly manage and take advantage of current knowledge and trends. “In other words, the value these tools offer depends on regular contributions, networked thinking and good levels of participation” rather than the actual social software themselves, therefore social software will only be effective if MOL takes a lead on it and uses it appropriately.

Though it can be argued that my research on the effectiveness of MyMOL on MOL and MOL websites was “not a good measure”, and in fact a better method of research would have been to check for “citations/linkbacks and user comments” (Chan), the results found still proved that although MyMOL was not highly increasing traffic to MOL website at the time of this study, and possibly no traffic to the actual Museum, it still raised the profile of MOL with the thousands of visitors who regularly visited the site and encouraged visitors to recognise MOL as a brand.

The use of social software by MOL was effective to a certain extent, but could be improved. I concluded that MOL should communicate more with its audience and engage with them effectively by clearly guiding visitors to the relevant events, exhibitions and collections, ensuring that the message is openly received.

Finally, though each museum has its own niche in visitor attraction, through the findings of this research on the effectiveness of social software on MOL, and using Hubbard’s justification that “sampling is observing just some of the things in a population to learn about all of the things in a population”, as the “law applies to everything” and not just for the “examples observed” (Hubbard 2007), it can be concluded that the findings for this report could apply to other museums and their use of social software too.

* Additional notes

The inability to capture website statistics for social software sites such as Facebook is very important to note as many social software tools are hosted on external servers that do not belong to the museums and often, cannot be accessed by the museums other than through the front end as a user. This raises a number of issues that museums should address.

Firstly, the question of who does the content belongs to?  In February 2009, there were rumours that Facebook was announcing that they owned all users content, and users no longer have copyright to it. However, although Facebook has stated that all content on Facebook put up by users, still belongs to the users (Lacy), it is important to consider this.

Secondly, there are the security issue and problems of backing up data that can potentially be lost forever should anything happen to those sites or servers. Currently, the only way to back up any information on such sites is to manually copy the data and store it in an internal server.

Finally, there are the issues of not being able to measure the level of usage of the site and how much traffic it gains as museums will not have access to the web logs that contain the data used for web analytics. Without this data, museums will not be able to track the number of visits that are made to the Facebook pages and evaluate the effectiveness of the use of the site on the museum and its websites, nor can it report the visitor numbers to stakeholders.

References

Chan, S. “Better museum blog metrics – is your blog really working for you and your organisation.” Weblog post. Fresh + New(er). Powerhouse Museum, 19 November 2007. Web. Accessed 6 August 2009. <http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2007/11/19/better-museum-blog-metrics-is-your-blog-really-working-for-you-and-your-organisation/>

Hubbard, D. How to measure anything: finding the value of ?intangibles? in business. John Wiley & Sons, 2007. Print

Lacy, S. “Facebook: You Own All Your Data. Period. (But See You at the Next Privacy Uproar.).” Weblog post. TechCrunch. 21 February 2009. Web. Accessed 28 August 2009. <http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/21/facebook-you-own-all-your-data-period-but-see-you-at-the-next-privacy-uproar/>

Newson, A., D. Houghton, and J. Patten. Blogging and other social media: exploiting the technology and protecting the enterprise. Gower, Ltd., 2008. Print

On Facebook, MOL could send emails to all the members of MOL Facebook groups and send update alerts to all MOL Facebook fans.

I created a survey that was posted as an email to the members of the MOL Facebook groups, and it was also added as an update alert on the MOL Facebook fan page. (Information about my research methodology and the full survey can be seen in my last post). The survey was available for three weeks and in that time, 46 people completed the survey, of which, 45 were genuine responses.

MOL had been on Facebook for a year and at the time of the survey, had 369 people joined to its Facebook group ‘late at Museum of London’ and 155 people on its ‘late at Museum of London Docklands’ group. It also had 721 people joined as ‘fans’ of MOL.

Though the total number of members across all groups and fan page was 1245, many of the same people were joined to more than one of the above, and some were joined to all three.

So with the total number of members at 1245, and 45 respondents, in effect 3.6% of all members responded, not taking into account that many of the members may be joined to more than one group and/or the fan page, which would have meant that a higher percentage of members had responded.

How members were distributed over MOL on Facebook

It can be seen from the below graph (figure 1) that of the people who responded, the percentage of those signed up to the three different Facebook pages roughly mirrored that of the actual figures (721 fans, 369 members on late at MOL and 155 members on Late at MOL Docklands).

Figure 1: Members signed up to each MOL page on Facebook

Keeping in touch through Facebook

I wanted to know whether people actually visited the Facebook pages, and posed a question on this. The response to was that only 37% of the members visited fairly regularly (monthly, weekly, or daily), but of the remaining 63% of members, 47% visited the pages less than once a month, whilst 16% did not visit the pages at all.

These figures, however, were not quite accurate. First because the scope provided in my survey, between ‘less than once a month’ and ‘not since first joined’ is so large, but also because I did not factor in the question for whether members visited the pages if prompted with an email or alert. This is more evident through the fact that when asked when Facebook emails or alerts were sent out, were they read (figure 2), 67% of members said they read the emails and 53% said they checked the alerts, whilst a further 29% said they sometimes read the emails and 33% said they sometimes checked the alerts. Therefore, the percentage of people who did not actually read the emails or check the alerts was minimal.

Figure 2: Members who read the Facebook emails and alerts

In addition, I had to bear in mind the comment made by one responded that may have been true of other members on Facebook:

“This questionnaire asks ‘How often do you check your Museum of London Facebook pages?’ I selected ‘Have not visited since joining groups or becoming a fan’ because I don’t proactively visit pages. I only go in response to emails or other notifications from the page owner.”

Many other respondents made similar claims, where they said they “don’t think to go there unless prompted”, and because “I haven’t looked at the page on my own initiative but I like getting messages about events because I don’t have much time to look myself”.

Does Facebook encourage visit to MOL or MOL websites?

Of those people who responded, the number of visits made to MOL website was very high. 86% of all members visited MOL website as a direct result of MOL’s presence on Facebook (figure 3). Given that there are 1245 members on MOL Facebook pages, it could be said that it is equivalent to 1071 new visitors visiting MOL website as a result.

The visits to MOL and MOL Docklands are on a lesser scale, though it still shows 46% of members having visited the museums. If we carry that across all MOL Facebook members as above, 46% who may visit MOL or MOL Docklands will equates to 458 new visitors walking through the doors.

Figure 3: Members who visited MOL website, or MOL or MOL Docklands because of MOL presence on Facebook

If we look at the specific visits for actual late events advertised in the Facebook groups, it shows that 18% of members attended an event due to the fact that MOL had a presence on Facebook (figure 4).

Figure 4: Members who attended the late events because of MOL presence on Facebook

From the comments I received from the survey, it becomes apparent that some members think it is “useful to find out about lates” and that updates keep them “in the know about happenings at the Museum”. One respondent said “I find it useful to know what’s going on – even if at the moment I keep failing to get there!”

It was interesting to find that many members do not live in London but enjoy hearing about what the Museum is up to and what they can do if they decide to visit London. From this I concluded that though a presence on Facebook will result in some specific visits to MOL events, the members on Facebook do not see it as an invitation to attend but rather as a place to get information about recent changes and updates to keep them informed about MOL.

How visitors learned about MOL and MOL on Facebook

To find out whether Facebook increased awareness of MOL, especially if they have never heard of MOL before, and therefore, can be classed as new audience, I asked how people learned about MOL as well as how they found out about MOL on Facebook.

The below graph (figure 5) shows that in fact, 22 people (43%) who had signed up to one or more of the MOL Facebook pages, were already aware of MOL because they had visited it in the past. A further 20% found out about MOL from friends, and 12% of the respondents actually worked for MOL. In reality, only 4% of respondents learned about MOL through Facebook – so Facebook did not reach out significantly to a whole new audience in the traditional sense – that of acquiring new audience in a new way that have never heard of MOL before.

On the other hand, 40% of respondents learned about MOL on Facebook through Facebook. This did not come as a surprise to me as I was aware that at the time of research, MOL Facebook pages were not advertised and only appeared in a single page on the MOL website, buried within the site, and therefore, the possibility of members signing up via MOL website was small.

Figure 5: How visitors learned about MOL and MOL on Facebook

Looking at the graph, there appears to be similar reasons behind how people learned about MOL Facebook pages as they did with MOL itself, and those reasons appear to be through friends and for having visited MOL in the past.

How useful Facebook visitors found the MOL presence on Facebook

As I wanted to find out whether the MOL presence on Facebook was thought of as ‘useful’ by members who have signed up, I requested that respondents rate how useful they thought MOL on Facebook was. The result (figure 6) was that the majority (38%) of the answers given fell in the ‘neutral’ zone (3/5) although no one rated it as least useful (1/5).

Figure 6: How useful members found the MOL presence on Facebook

This didn’t actually tell me much about ‘what’ they found useful or not useful and it was entirely due to the fact that I had not defined ‘useful’. However, there were some very interesting comments that accompanied this rating. See some comments below:

“It seems that people dealing with it, are just bored and do it because they have to do it”.

“Because I live in the north and it is easy to keep up to date with goings on Facebook because I am always on here!”

“I think their website is the best resource but I’m glad to see them on Facebook as well.”

“Notification of events at MOL is brilliant”

“It’s easier to engage with as opposed to visiting a website”

“I’d not know about the events otherwise”

One respondent noted that other museums provided more updates, by which, it was implied that MOL was not providing enough updates and perhaps should do more to make it useful. On the other hand, another respondent said that “you do it well and you don’t spam”, which implied that MOL got the right balance in frequency of alerts and emails.

This was an interesting point as social software tools can be used either as a social networking tool, or as a publishing tool by organisations to communicate information to users and members of Facebook can fall into either category.

To make sure people in both categories received the right level of information and interaction is difficult to get right. If regular updates are made and alerts and emails are sent, there is the possibility of irritating some users who may decide to remove themselves from the MOL Facebook pages. On the other hand, if enough updates are not sent, encouraging users to engage with MOL, the members who wish for more interaction will be bored and detached from MOL activities and may also choose to leave.

The challenge is to make sure that members in both categories were not alienated, and that everyone gets something out of the MOL presence on Facebook. The solution may simply be to ask visitors how frequently members wish to learn about particular events, exhibitions or museum news, and categorise them and only send regular updates to these people, for the specific type of update they signed up for.

In total, the number of positive comments outweighed the number of negative comments by 1 to 5, and thus it could be said that on the whole, Facebook members found the MOL presence on Facebook useful, but MOL could do more to improve its communications. Conversely, it could be said that as the respondents choose to answer the survey, they may have already felt positive towards MOL and thus skew the results. In fact, the results could be biased simply because those who did not respond may have felt negatively about MOL and its presence on Facebook but decided not to contribute towards any MOL activities.

Nonetheless, given that not all responses proved to be positive, it could be said that the set sample of responses is still representative of the population and the result can still be assumed to represent all members.

To conclude

Despite the rating of the usefulness of MOL Facebook pages by the respondents being mostly ‘neutral’, there was a unanimous agreement from the respondents that MOL should continue to use Facebook.

A comment that followed the question of whether respondents thought MOL should continue to use Facebook was “why not?”  If MOL were looking for an argument for not using Facebook as a means to communicate to a wider audience, then the above unanimous response defeats this. As one respondent commented, “it’s a very economical means of mass communication and reaches a “young” sector of the potential audience.” And as many respondents pointed out in various ways, “a LOT of people use Facebook!”

Perhaps the success behind having a presence on Facebook relies on the fact that “most people don’t have time to check multiple websites” and “it’s good to offer multiple ways for people to get information about your museum and events”.

(My last post on the study of social software and its effectiveness on Museum of London looked at the results of the Museum of London’s blog site and the post before that looked at the methodology I used to research the effectiveness of the Museum’s blog.)

Primary research method for analysing effectiveness of MOL on Facebook

Method: use of survey

The primary way in which I researched the effectiveness of MOL on Facebook was through a questionnaire posted to all MOL Facebook fans and members of all MOL Facebook groups.

This provided qualitative answers such as whether members found MOL on Facebook useful and whether they visited MOL and the MOL website.

See the full survey I posted on Facebook (Word 78kb, opens in a new window)

Secondary research method for analysing the effectiveness of social software on MOL

In addition to this, contacted members of the Museums Computer Group and the London Web Managers’ Forum for information about use of social software in their organisations and the possible research they have done or come across on these. Unfortunately this method did not yield many useful answers in regards to evaluations done on the effective use of blogs and Facebook on museums. However, I did receive some useful information about the various social software being used by other museums.

I also reviewed the literature on blogs, Facebook, web analytics, surveys, research methods and museums and social media.

Lessons learned

Surveys have both benefits and limitations (see below), however, I learned that I missed a brilliant opportunity to ask more about the use of other social media that MOL fans and group members used to communicate and engage with the Museum and its various websites.

I realised that I could have asked whether Facebook fans and group members read our blog site and made a connection between this part of the research with the blog part of the research. I could have asked about our Flickr images and our YouTube videos and our Twitter sites… Quite simply, I could have better designed the questionnaire and asked more questions specific to social media.

However, the results I received were still very interesting and changed the outcome of what we do on Facebook. I will blog the results next week, so do check back.

Recognised benefits and limitations of online surveys

Surveys are efficient ways of collecting information from across a large number of people, and online surveys have the advantage of being able to reach people across the world without geographical barriers and can be created and distributed cheaply, and the data gathered can be analysed quickly and accurately.

However, online surveys depend on individuals to be self-motivating in responding on their own initiative with honesty, and therefore the response rate may be low. In addition, individuals may simply ignore the request to complete it, or respondents may abandon the survey mid-way if there is no incentive to complete it.

Although surveys can have lots of questions, it can be time consuming to create, distribute, and analyse on return and while it allows individuals to read the questions first before completing it and prevents interviewer bias, individuals may not complete the survey if they read all the questions, and surveys can still be biased if the questions are asked in the wrong way. It also means that respondents cannot ask for any clarification in the same way that there can be no intervention from interviewers to prompt for clarity on answers or probe for further information.

Finally, those who do respond to the survey may have very different opinions from those who do not respond, and therefore the result may end up being biased and skewed as the sample results are less representative of the whole population.

Given the limitations on surveys, the fact remains that it is still a very useful way to gather qualitative information from individuals, and not just the quantitative. As long as I was able to keep the limitations in mind and account for this in my research, the result proved to be worthy.

You can listen to Boris Johnson’s lecture on the Museum of London website.

• Unique visits – “typically consists of one or more page views”
• Unique page views – “the number of times a page was viewed”
• Unique visitors – people “with activity consisting of one or more visits to a site”
• Repeat visitors – “unique visitors with activity consisting of two or more visits”
• New visitors – “unique visitors with activity including a first-ever visit to a site”
• Average duration of visits – “length of time in a session”
• Referrals – “the source of traffic to a page or visit”.

(All definitions from Web Analytics Association)

The results

I found from my results that during the period of analysis, the total number of unique visits and unique visitors to MyMOL was equivalent to 1% of those on MOL, and the total number of unique page views to MyMOL was equivalent to 0.5% of those on MOL.

This was despite the fact that MyMOL never received any publicity and was still very new in comparison to MOL.

The trend in visits, visitor numbers and page views for MOL and MyMOL showed that though the pattern for MOL and MyMOL started of differently in the first three months, by the fourth month the pattern on both sites were very similar.

Figure 1: Trend comparison for MOL and MyMOL visits, page views and visitor numbers

I also discovered that the trend for repeat visitors to MyMOL started of much higher than MOL, but by the end of the year of analysis, the repeat visitors to MOL was in significantly in the lead.

Figure 2: Repeat visitors trend for MOL and MyMOL

To try to answer the reason behind why that may have been, I looked at some possibilities:

• MOL has rich and engaging content
• MOL is a larger, well established & well publicised in comparison to MyMOL
• MyMOL was unavailable between December 2008 and January 2009 when there were technical problems that resulted in content migration
• The number of posts published on MyMOL during and post content migration was much less than before and since the analysis period
• Visitors may have made visits from more than one computer, or have different IP addresses, or have simply deleted their cookies.

One of the problems with looking at repeat visitors as a form of analysis on the level of engagement with a site is that if someone is repeatedly coming back to a site, it does not necessarily mean they enjoyed their visit. It could simply be that they did not find the information they were looking for the first time. Therefore, even though both sites received a large number of repeat visitors, it did not conclude that all repeat visitors returned to the websites for more information because they were interested in the content.

However, for this particular study, I concluded that MOL looked to be more engaging and able to retain its visitors more than MyMOL.

The new visitors to MyMOL, on the other hand, were exceeding the trend of MOL by the end of the year of analysis.

Figure 3: New visitors’ trend for MOL and MyMOL

This is important on one level as “the number of new visitors you are able to attract to your web site is a direct measure of the efficacy of your reach” (Peterson 2004).

Average time on site

Analysing the average time visitors spend on websites can be interesting. However, the conclusions drawn can be both positive and negative, for if visitors spend much time on a particular site, it can be encouraging as it can show that visitors are engaging with the content and are interested and consuming information. On the other hand, it could be negative and show that visitors cannot find what they are looking for, and so are spending the time trying to find information.

Looking at the trend for the duration of visits, the average time on MOL appears to be much steadier than that on MyMOL.

Figure 4: Average time on site trend for MOL and MyMOL

There appears to be some similarity in the pattern for the seven months in the middle of the year of analysis, however, the actual rise and fall in the average time spent on MyMOL is significantly uneven. There appears to be huge drops that follow large rises, with no apparent reason that can be seen from the web statistics alone.

There is the strong possibility that a single page was viewed on MyMOL during a visit with a timestamp for the start of the visit (which as a blog site, I thought it may have been the case), but as there were no more visits to other pages, the time spent on that single page may have been zero.

New audience for MOL

A new audience for MOL website would determine the success of MyMOL because it would prove that there are values in having social software sites such as blogs that can be quantified. This can be tested by looking at the number of new visitors that are gained through referrals from MyMOL.

I saw from the new visitors and unique visitors trend that MyMOL is attracting at least 1% of new audience for MOL that may or may not have visited the MOL website before.

Figure 5: Actual number of referrals from MOL to MyMOL and MyMOL to MOL

Looking at the actual number of referrals from MyMOL to MOL website and vice versa, it is very clear that firstly, there are not many referrals being made between the sites, and secondly, the referrals that are made, are of similar pattern on both sites.

Only 0.065% of all visitors from MOL went on to visit MyMOL in the year of analysis, whilst 4.85% MyMOL visitors ended up on MOL. So if visitors to MyMOL were to increase, the possibility is greater that more new visitors will end up on MOL.

However, increasing visits to MyMOL alone is not enough to retain visitors or to refer visitors onto MOL. It is about writing good content on MyMOL that provides relevant links to MOL website and encourages visitors to go there.

I actually took this to be the most significant of findings in my results as it made me ensure that more blog posts were written regularly and that every single post had at least one link back to the Museum of London website.

Enquiries and comments

To look at the level of engagement on each site, I had also looked at the number of email enquiries to info@museumoflondon.org.uk that came via MOL as a proportion to the number of visits on the website. The average enquiry per visit for the year turned out to be 0.0027 enquiries for each visit on MOL.

On MyMOL I looked at the number of comments over the year as a proportion of the number of visits and it turned out to be that there were 0.0041 comments for each visit. Both of the averages are very small. Nevertheless, the average level of engagement on MyMOL is double that of MOL.

To conclude

Well written content and regularity of posts is vital for the success of a blog site and to increase visits to the Museum website, well placed links back to the site must be in each post.

References

Black, G. The engaging museum: developing museums for visitor involvement. Routledge, 2005. Print.

Peterson, E. T. Web Analytics Demystified: a Marketer’s Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business. Celilo Group Media, 2004. Print. p.110

Web Analytics Association. (b) “Web Analytics Definitions.” Web Analytics Association. 22 September. 2008. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/attachments/committees/5/WAA_Web_Analytics_Definitions_20080922_For_Public_Comment.pdf>

These were notes jotted down very quickly that I have since then tried to make sense of, so please forgive me if it is a bit disjointed, and please do ask if you want me to expand on any areas I have learned about that I remember. I will try and put up the presentation slides if/when they are sent to me.

The workshop agenda for “Strategic social media for the cultural sector” can be found at http://culture24socialmedia.eventbrite.com.

Audience

Seb began by talking about the Powerhouse Museum website and explained that the content across the sites are segmented by audience. So for example, the children’s website does not hold as much information about the Powerhouse as the main site, but has lots of activities for children to download. These activities can be printed and completed offline and Powerhouse see this as successful marketing of the Museum in addition to being an engaging activity for children.

Connection between Museum and Museum websites

Seb stressed that the Museum and connection to the Museum website should be emphasised in the Museums (galleries in particular). So for example, if an object in the Museum gallery has an equivalent on the website, there should be a note saying something along the lines of ‘Download this on the Museum’s website’ or ‘Find out more about this object on the Museum’s website’.

Seb questioned why are videos in galleries not available online? He has observed that in galleries people don’t have time to watch full videos, but actually look for it online, which I found interesting as recently I received an email from a visitor who also wanted to know if a particular video in one of our galleries was online for them to watch. Unfortunately, my answer was no, but I have since then started to investigate a way of getting hold of that video to add to our YouTube account.

Seb pointed out that yes some videos may be old and Museums may not have permission for reuse, but any new videos commissioned should go through all the paperwork that make it possible to have it online.

Seb also said that the social media for children is offline, in people’s homes, where children print off an activity and take it along to do with friends. The Museum is being promoted and marketed in a successful way and the giving of stuff away, whether it is souvenirs at workshops or fairs, or stuff online, ensures freebies come back to the Museum (I guessed this to be visits to the Museum and Museum website and the free publicity).

On the other hand, adult social media is more online and this is evidenced from the Sydney Observatory website where 60% of visits are to the blog section.

Web at heart of Powerhouse Museum

I found of particular interest that the Powerhouse Museum have built in to the job descriptions of its curators that as part of their jobs, they have to blog weekly. Each curator is also trained to write user-friendly content into the collections database which is made available online.

Seb disclosed that all the Powerhouse job descriptions mention in it that applicants must have web publishing experience*. And in the Powerhouse web team there is a web producer who is dedicated to social media and monitoring social media activities. This person works with the marketing team to publish content on social media sites such as Facebook.

In addition, Seb conveyed that the Powerhouse Museum website activities are at the heart of the Museum and its strategies and policies and has buy-in from top down.

*CORRECTION (12 November 2009): Apologies, Seb actually meant that Powerhouse are heading towards adding in all their job descriptions that applicants must have web publishing experience, not that they actually have it already!

Flickr

In discussions about Flickr and photographs, I raised the question about conflicting copyright of objects and the photograph and possibly the photographer. Seb believed that we should push the responsibility back to the user if we cannot take charge of our photography policy, and so we should have terms and condition clearly outlined on our account that we are not responsible for what other people submit to the pool or put on Flickr and the user must obey the Flickr terms and conditions.

Collection online

We should offer the collection content under creative commons to users (the photographs will have different copyright – so that is separate to the content you offer for use). However, be aware that the enquiries about the collections as well as the request for private viewings will rise – so make sure you have a good policy for dealing with these.

Employees and use of digital media

Having seen the BBC’s guidelines and Seb’s blog post on this, I enquired about how Powerhouse deals with the use of social media by its employyes as I thought other people in the room may not have seen these. Seb said that it’s important to have clear guidance like the BBC that ensures if employees identify themselves as belonging to a particular organisation in their private social media activities, then they are bound by the same rules as if they were communicating on behalf of the Museum.

(You may also find the the blog entry ‘Employee Policies For Social Media Participation‘ of interest.)

Using social media

Your website is not necessarily your social place, so don’t get obsessed with why certain activities are not happening on your own site. It may be happening elsewhere, such as on Facebook or on Flickr.

Social media is about the 1% of visitors who are engaged with the Museum and are in the cycle of making repeat visits. These are your most important visitors, and these are the visitors that you will target your social media content at.

React quickly to any comments or feedback. Seb gave an example of a recent event that took place at the Powerhouse Museum which resulted in bad feedback from visitors on Twitter. When this was spotted by Seb & co, an official apology personally from the Chief Executive at Powerhouse Museum was put on the Powerhouse websites as well as social media sites such as Facebook. Lesson to be learned form this is that if you are going to use social media that is rapidly changing and requires quick responses, you need to act quickly and appropriately.

Seb mentioned the five rules of Museum content:

1. Discoverable – it is where I am and where I look for it
2. Meaningful – I can understand it
3. Responsive – to my interests, moods, location
4. Useable/Shareable – I can pass it on and share
5. Available in all three locations – online, onsite and offsite.

The full detailed rules are on his blog site at: www.powerhousemuseum.com/dmsblog/index.php/2009/10/29/five-rules-for-museum-content-via-amsterdam

It is important to make your content relevant as you will be competing for people’s attention, so you should ask six important questions before using any social media and running any projects that have a web element:

1. What do you want to achieve?
2. Who are you trying to engage?
3. Where do they spend time online?
4. What do you have for them? Can you open it up to enhance what they do?
5. What are the best methods to use?
6. How will you measure and evaluate it?

Key message I surmised from the workshop

The web is about communications, not information; hence the abstraction on the web and it is our role as web managers/producers/editors/developers to ensure that the communication takes place as seamlessly as possible and the abstraction is reduced if not eliminated.

If you fail at a particular project, don’t just abandon it. Evaluate the reasons behind the failure and how it could have been avoided and learn from it (and share it with others so they learn via you!). Also, don’t think all failures are failures. Each failure results in some form of success, e.g. a pilot scheme in galleries for web content to be available on mobile phones may not be used significantly by visitors to the Museum, however, it may result in a better, user-friendly website created for phones that’s accessible by people who may not be visiting the Museum but visiting the Museum website via their phones remotely.

In today’s post, I will explain some of the methodology I used to answer the set of questions I identified at the start of my research to help me measure the effectiveness of the Museum of London blog (this site referred to as MyMOL) on the Museum of London website. These questions can be seen in my first blog post on this subject.

Primary research method for analysing effectiveness of Museum blog (MyMOL)

First method: use of web analytics

I used the website logs to analyse and compare the patterns in visit and visitor numbers of the Museum of London website with that of MyMOL. The web statistics gathered, analysed and compared were for the duration of one year (1 April 2008 to 31 March 2009). This period of time allowed for patterns to emerge, and correlations between the sites to be discerned, if any.

The web statistics gathered for each site were the:

• number of unique visits,
• number of unique page views,
• number of unique visitors,
• number of repeat visitors,
• number of new visitors,
• average duration of visits, and
• number of referrals made between sites

(Terminologies above will be described in greater details in the research findings.)

To ensure website statistics gathered were comparative for the Museum of London website and MyMOL, I used statistics from Google Analytics for both.

The percentage of new and repeat visitors and the duration of visits were used to demonstrate how engaged visitors were with each site and its content, which also provided an insight into how valuable visitors found the information (though these values have limitations – see ‘Recognised benefits and limitations of web analytics’ below for more on this).

To help answer the question of whether MyMOL was attracting new audience and encouraging more visits and engagement with the Museum of London website, or whether it was only taking visitors away from it, I looked at any referrals that resulted in visits made from the Museum of London website to MyMOL, and from MyMOL to the Museum of London website, for the same period of time.

Second method: Museum of London website emails and MyMOL blog comments

The second research method I used for finding out how engaged visitors were with the Museum of London website and MyMOL, was to compare the number of enquiries that come through the Museum of London website with the number of comments made on MyMOL blog entries for the duration of the year.

As it was difficult to track every single enquiry that came via the website due to the fact that email addresses are explicitly published on all Museum of London websites and offline publications, I only counted enquiries submitted to the info@museumoflondon.org.uk email, which is the generic email address for all web enquiries, including emails via the contact forms on Museum of London website.

I calculated the number of enquiries received with number of visits made to Museum of London website to arrive at an average number of enquiries per visit, per month.

To compare this with MyMOL, I looked at the number of comments made to blog entries and calculated the average number of comments per visit, per month.

This indicated how engaged visitors were with the sites, both individually, as well as in comparison with each other.

Recognised benefits and limitations of web analytics

Web Analytics is the statistical measure of a visitor’s journey through websites and is described as “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for the purposes of understanding and optimizing Web usage” (Web Analytics Association 2009).

Canadian Heritage Information Network claims that success of a website is “determined by its usage”. Web analytics helps measure this usage by enabling site managers to gather information about where visitors come from, what pages they view and how long they stay on the site. Web analytics also enable site managers to find out how many visitors are visiting the site over a period of time and if those visitors make repeat visits.

However, whilst this is true, there are problems with how the information is gathered in the logs for analysis. For example, visits and visitor numbers are not accurate. “Lots of tools use IP address to assign visitor status, but when a customer is using an ISP such as AOL they are on a dynamic IP. This means that if they come to your site today on IP ‘A’, tomorrow they might come on IP ‘B’. This would be tracked as 2 visitors each with 1 visit, even though it was really 1 visitor with 2 visits” (Kyrnin 2009). On the other hand, “some visitors may use more than one computer on a given day” and “more than one visitor may use the same computer” but it all appears “as one unique visitor” (Dash 2006). In addition, if cookies are used to track visits and visitors, the result is compromised as many people delete cookies or refuse to accept them (Kyrnin 2009).

Page views can also be misleading as people may see information on other sites instead of the original website, and so pages will not be counted. Also, the duration of visits could show up as longer then is true if visitors look at one site but keep open the browser for another site, to which they come back to after a length of time. On the other hand, if visitors view only one page, duration of time will not be logged at all.

There is also an assumption that processes for measurements “relate to an action by a human visitor”(Web Analytics Association’s Web Analytics Definitions). However, sometimes website crawlers visit websites to index pages for search engines. Some web analytic software includes these visits, whereas Google Analytics excludes them, which gives a more accurate result. However, if JavaScript is turned off on a person’s browser, Google Analytics will not be able to gather any data for any visits from that browser, thus decreasing the visitor and visit numbers, although switching off JavaScript is not a common occurrence.

Even with the recognised limitations of web analytics, other then carrying out intensive web surveys (which has limitations of its own), using the only means currently available to measure the success of a site, is still very strong. As the limitations apply to both the Museum of London website and MyMOL web statistics, and as both analysis are done using Google Analytics, I thought the results will balance against each other and as long as I am flexible and take into account these limitations, the information will still prove to be valuable.

References

Canadian Heritage Information Network. “Web Analytics ? Measuring for Success.” Canadian Heritage Information Network. 15 January 2009. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.chin.gc.ca/English/Digital_Content/Web_Analytics/index.html>

Dash, R.K. “What Is Web Analytics? Web Metrics?” Weblog post. Chameleon TechnoBabble. 26 April 2006. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.chameleonintegration.com/2006/04/26/what-is-web-analytics-web-metrics/>

Kyrnin, J. “What Web Analytics Can be Tracked: An Overview of Metrics That Can Be Tracked.” About.com. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://webdesign.about.com/od/analytics/a/what_can_track.htm>

Web Analytics Association. (a) “About Web Analytics Association.” Web Analytics Association. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/aboutus/>

Web Analytics Association. (b) “Web Analytics Definitions.” Web Analytics Association. 22 September. 2008. Web. Accessed 21 August 2009. <http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/attachments/committees/5/WAA_Web_Analytics_Definitions_20080922_For_Public_Comment.pdf> p.7

As part of my research, I had emailed the top ten London museums (according to UKguide.org, see below for list) and received a response for my questions. According to the responses I got back and the research I carried out on the web, out of the ten museums (of which, Museum of London is one), four museums had a blog site or were about to launch a blog site, while the remaining six were exploring the possibility of creating one. In addition, out of the ten museums, nine already had a presence on Facebook.

I also came across the results of a questionnaire of 270 managers in cultural institutions from across the world carried out by Communicating the Museum at a conference in June 2009. It showed that 61% of these managers had a high knowledge of social networking despite 32% having no affiliation with any social networks themselves. It was also discovered that more institutions intended to move into social media, though a majority of cultural institutions were still using their websites for most communications and were not using social software tools at all. Remarkably, however, where cultural organisations did use any social software, the most popular tool used was Facebook to promote events and organisation brands.

These are just a few general findings that the student part of me (I was studying for my Masters at UCL and this research was for a dissertation – see my last post for more information) tried to be impartial about but the employee part of me found exceedingly interesting. The employee in me was also happy with the conclusion reached by Freshminds who carried out research on behalf of the DCMS, that using existing social networks can “open doors for cultural organisations trying to attract new, more diverse audiences”, and felt spurred on to do further research.

My next post will outline the methodology I used to research the impact of the Museum of London blog site on the main Museum of London website, so do check back.

Top ten London Museums

“London Museum Guide” on Ukguide.org Says that the top ten museums in London are:

• British Museum,
• Science Museum,
• Tate Gallery,
• Victoria & Albert Museum,
• National Gallery,
• Imperial War Museum,
• Natural History Museum,
• National Maritime Museum,
• London Transport Museum,
• Museum of London.

Updated 9 November 2009:

Communicating the Museum, Results of the Questionnaire: Digital Mix PDF of presentation slides can be found at www.agendacom.com/Resultats-Questionnaire-Digital-Mix.html

Doing this of course takes a lot of time and effort, and this year I decided that I wanted to find out how effective some of this social software is for the Museum in reaching out to, and attracting, new users who end up visiting the Museum’s website, and even better, if users actually end up visiting one or both of our Museums.

As I was also studying part-time for my Masters in Electronic Communication and Publishing at University College London, I decided to base my dissertation on this topic and started my research. I very soon realised how little I knew about web stats and surveys and the sheer number of blogs talking about blogs! By the end of my research, my head was reeling with all the information I acquired and my feelings were yo-yoing from happiness at the results, to being overwhelmed. I wondered ‘how on Earth was I going to write up so many findings, but even more daunting, how was I going to use it?!?’

Social software, what is it?

Now before I carry on, if you have stumbled across this entry and are new to the whole ‘social software’ terminology, then a very brief explanation would be that it is a general term that encompasses a number of tools that enable visitors to interact and exchange information, mainly through the web. These can include Flickr, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and many more such sites.

What did I research?

I decided that I didn’t have the time to look at all our use of social software, so I concentrated instead on our blog site (this one), and our presence on Facebook. During the research, I tried to answer the following questions:

• Does the Museum of London lose visitors through having content sitting on separate social software sites?
• Do visits to content on social software sites result in visits to the Museum of London and its website?
• Are visitors engaging with Museum of London through social software sites?
• Do visitors find information on Museum of London social software sites of value?
• And, should website visit statistics of content sitting on social software sites be included in the official statistics reports?

In the coming weeks, I will be blogging about my research process and what I found, so do check back.

For the final day of the project everyone was hard at work editing their interviews. The group did brilliantly editing 15 minute interviews into 5 minutes or less in just a few hours. At the end of a long afternoon we listened back to some of them. They were fantastic and really opened up some of the personal stories behind these Riots.

What next?

The interviews are currently being transcribed and the many photographs sorted. We’ll then be uploading the audio, transcriptions and photographs to our main Museum website, so watch this space!

See more of the photos from the project here.

Day 4

It’s the day of the interviews and we’re all prepared.  Some of us are up and out interviewing on the streets of Brixton on the front line reliving the experience of the 1981 riots.

A few of us admitted to feeling nervous, but speaking to the interviewees prior to the interviews really helped to calm the nerves and provided valuable information for the main interviews.

Our official photographer Frewine Solomon was joined by another photographer from Time Out magazine who took pictures of us in action, and some of us were interviewed – it’ll be interesting what they say about us!

After doing our interviews we sat quietly and did our logging – hopefully this will help us with the editing process.

See photos from the project here.

Day 3

A journalist from The Guardian came down to the workshop to find out more about the project and interviewed us about what we were doing. She seemed interested in the project and wanted to find out more about us.

The last day to prepare for our interviews, we have been given a list of interviewees.  We discussed what questions to ask, how we wanted to present our interviews and were given the interviewees contact details to introduce ourselves.

We learnt how to edit using Audacity a free programme we downloaded off the internet. It was a good eye opener into world of editing. Our telephone conversation with the interviewees was really useful for gaining background information for the interviews. We ended the day presenting our interview plan to the group.

See photographs from the project here.

Day 2

We learned about the social media tools we could use to broadcast our own stories and opinions on certain matters using the internet, using websites called Flickr, Youtube and Wordpress.  Then we had to create our strategies on how to present our interviews: thinking about what questions to ask, and whether to add pictures or sound effects.  After we had done that we interviewed two Museum of London staff members: Paul Clifford and Martin Kaufman, who were living in and around Brixton at the time of the riots, about what they remembered from the time.  We learnt that interviewing isn’t just reading questions from a piece of paper, but rather listening to the answers given by the interviewee and building further questions from that.  It was harder than we thought.

Day 1

This is a project run by the Museum of London,  to bring the story of the Brixton riots in 1981 to life.  We will be interviewing people from the Brixton area of that time.   We are a group of Londoners,  given the chance to learn reporting and interviewing skills,  with the help of sounddelivery.  We weren’t around at the time of the riots, but we want to learn more.  We started the day with a bit of history from a community historian Angelina Osborne  dating back to the 16th century up to the date of the riots in  April 1981. We learned the key factors that lead to the riot like racism, anger, housing, unemployment and the introduction of the sus laws which gave the police power to target the people of the Brixton area . We ended the afternoon with sounddelivery training us on the equipment and showing  the different techniques of reporting and interviewing.

We recorded our thoughts of Brixton on our first day, as part of the training.

My Brixton – First ever interviews by the participants of the project

Click here to see photographs from the first day of the project!