Ylva French is a communications consultant with experience in culture, tourism, the arts and museums. Read her guest blog for M&H Online . . .

Culture24 held its first major conference in Bristol this week with the focus on online metrics!  No don’t turn off!  It gets exciting, I promise, and it’s a very important subject as we move further into the online world.

In museums and the attractions world generally, we know all about counting visitors as they come through the door.  We might not do it very accurately, at least not where admission is free, but over time we get a good idea of trends and visitor patterns and which marketing activities really work.

So online metrics is just that – measuring virtual visits to your website, apps or social media pages.  It’s also about getting an idea of how visitors use your  website, where they come from to your site or page, and whether they go on to find out more, and visit your museum or gallery.

Some of that you can find out from regular visitor research but an amazing amount of data about your online visitors is available and some of that is free – through Google analytics.

For a year Culture24’s project team which included IT and communications people from  museums and other attractions from around the country, considered what they were doing now in terms of measuring, what they should be doing in the future and what to recommend to others.

Just counting “hits” and “page-views” is not enough when making strategic decisions on future development and budgets, particularly in the fast-changing area of social media.

Read all about it in the report: Let’s get real, available on Culture24’s new sector-facing website.

Failing forward ...

“It seemed like a good idea at the time….”. This was the introduction by five speakers brave enough to talk about their failed social media and website initiatives in a conference session called Failing Forward.  They included a photographic competition on Flickr and top tips on Four Square neither of which made any kind of impact on potential visitors.

This session was about lessons learned for the future and the common factor appeared to be the lack of strategy at the start of each project ie setting clear objectives (or building a model… see next section) ... But it was also about expecting too much from social media.

Research for the Let’s get real project showed that Twitter and Facebook users were unlikely to click through to the main websites of museums and attractions.  Social media is about socialising with your friends and colleagues as Nancy Proctor said in your blogger’s book – details below:

What I object to is using Social Media “simply” as a marketing tool – as another set of platforms from which to broadcast traditional marketing campaigns – as digital billboards. SM is fundamentally about having a conversation with the museum’s audiences; to misunderstand that is not only to miss an incredible opportunity to connect with audiences in new and powerful ways, but also potentially to damage the museum’s brand by coming across as a social media spammer.

Nancy Proctor, PhD, Head of Mobile Strategy & Initiatives, Smithsonian Institution,WashingtonDC.

Looking to the future ...

Two blue sky thinkers Tom Uglow of Google and Matt Locke of Storythings  challenged some of our ideas about the future.  “Nothing is going to be simple again” said Matt. The longed-for convergence of multimedia platforms and communications tools and channels is still some time off. Global technology and communications giants are locked in fierce competition and development of new products and platforms continues apace.

As an example of multi-tasking, Matt mentioned that an estimated 60-70 per cent of under-25s watched television with their laptop or iPhone, participating in programmes such as the Million Pound drop (Channel 4), checking texts and emails, tweeting and updating their Facebook page.

So how do marketer or IT communicators keep a clear head and keep up to date? Tom and Matt had a few tips:

1. Be prepared to meet the expectations of your audience – an increasing proportion spends most of their time in the digital world.
2. Convert and persuade your board of trustees, curators etc to “ get real” and embrace digital, if they haven’t already
3. This is what you need your metrics for….
4. Make sure your website is mobile.
5. But you can only measure if you know who you are targeting and what you want to achieve
6. In a world of constantly emerging strategies, make a model of your idea but think big…
7. Put the user first in all that you do. The technology should be invisible.
8. Get the ratio right between your spend online and your budget for getting people through the door.
9. Create platforms and packages with others and for people
10. Protect your copyright online and don’t ignore the lawyers

Read more here at Culture24 – www.weareculture24.org.uk

And for a strategic approach to marketing and PR incorporating social media, check out “Marketing and PR for Museums, Galleries, Heritage and Cultural Attractions” by Ylva French and Sue Runyard, published June 2011, Routledge.