Inside the Museum of London

When we asked this question “nominate the plant or flower you think best symbolises London and we’ll aim to include in our new Central Courtyard” on our social media pages we noticed immediately that the Buddleia was the most popular response.

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.

London Street Photography launched last night and I was there as one of the participating photographers. Its one thing looking at images and trying to understand their significance , but quite another to actually see the creators of these windows on society in the flesh. There was a definite electricity pulsing through the gallery last night and the thought that so many of the people in the room had actually contributed directly to what was on the wall, a fascinating and varied take on life in the city, was exciting. Photographers are often criticised for being an egotistical bunch, but many of the people I spoke to last night were modest about their achievements. I loved the contrast between Matt Stuarts often comic look at London and for example Sean McDonnells dramatic and slightly edgy work.

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. 

Today we added the last of Oscar Kirk, our 15 year old Messenger Boy from 1919, diary entries to our website, timed to be go “live” on the corresponding day his diary relates to this year.

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.

After writing so much about social media and the things we are currently doing, I am aware that I haven’t blogged in some time about what we’re doing right now and appear to have disappeared from the horizon. However, I assure you that I have been very busy and here’s an update of some of the things I am involved in:

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

Last week I wrote up my conclusions from the research I carried out on Museum of London (MOL) and its use of Facebook and blogs. To summarise:

• 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!

At the beginning of these blog posts, I raised a number of questions about the effectiveness of social software on the Museum of London. The conclusions derived from my research are as follows:

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

At the time of my research Museum of London (MOL) had a Facebook fan page that users of Facebook who were interested in MOL could join as a ‘fan’. MOL also had two ‘groups’ for users interested in the MOL late events that run on the first Thursdays of every month in both MOL locations (London Wall and Docklands).

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”.

This blog post looks at the methodology I used to evaluate how effective the Museum of London’s (MOL) presence was on Facebook at the time of my research.

(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.

Last week, Boris Johnson gave a very entertaining and insightful lecture on Samuel Johnson at the Museum of London’s annual dinner. The Mayor’s famously dishevelled locks also found their historical antecedent in the shape of an Edwardian coachman’s wig which bears an uncanny resemblance to Johnson’s own coiffure.

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