Social Media for Museums: 8 Great Tips

Did you know that only 26% of businesses use social media to reach new leads? If you aren’t using social media for museums, you’re missing an excellent opportunity to connect with leads and reach people interested in visiting your museum.

On this page, we’ll provide you with eight tips for creating a successful social media strategy to reach new leads. If you need help creating a social media campaign that works for your business, call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist.

1. Decide which social media platforms are best for your museum

Before you dive into posting on social media, decide where you’re going to post your content. It’s crucial that you choose the right platform to help you reach people interested in your museum.

There are numerous popular platforms you can use to connect with your audience, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. You can use any number of these platforms to communicate with your audience.

To figure out which platforms are right for your business, you need to know your target audience. Who are you trying to target to get into your museum?

You want to cover demographic information, like gender, age, and occupation, but you also want to focus on aspects like buying habits, hobbies, interests, and browsing behavior. You should know your audience well to know which platforms they frequent the most.

You can figure out which platforms they frequent the most by looking at the demographics for each platform. If you know who you’re looking for, you can figure out where you’re most likely to find them.

By deciding on your social platforms, you can start posting your museum social media ideas to help you engage your audience.

2. Post a variety of content to keep it interesting for your audience

Once you have your platform established, you will start posting content. It’s essential that you post a variety of content to keep it fresh and exciting for your audience.

If you post the same type of content regularly, your social media strategy will be one note. You want to post a variety of different content pieces to make your social media strategy sound like a symphony. It keeps your content exciting and keeps your audience coming back to your content.

Imagine if your favorite food place posted a picture of pizza every day and said, “Come visit us today!” You may like the post at first, but after seeing that same type of post every day, you would lose interest.

It wouldn’t make you want to visit that food place because they aren’t posting anything new or exciting that gets you in the door.

Now, imagine applying that to your museum’s social content strategy. If you posted a picture of your exhibit and said, “Come visit us today!” you’re not utilizing social media’s full potential. You would experience the same issues as your favorite food place where your content becomes monotonous and ineffective.

The best way to combat this issue is to post a variety of content on your social media platforms. Your level of variation will depend upon the platform. Some platforms have more options, like Facebook and Twitter, while others are hyper-focused, like Instagram and Pinterest.

On Facebook and Twitter, you can create original posts, share photos and videos, link to content, and create polls. With Instagram and Pinterest, your focus is more on photos and videos, but you can make each one unique and exciting for your audience.

If you want to see success with your social strategy, post a variety of content to keep it fresh and exciting for your audience.

3. Post content frequently to get your brand in front of more museum-lovers

Along with posting a variety of content, post content often. Your audience connects with a variety of people on social media, including family, friends, celebrities, brands, businesses, and more. With so many connections filling their timeline, it’s easy to forget your museum.

The best way to combat this is to post content frequently. When you publish content regularly, you keep your brand at the forefront of your followers’ mind. You increase your chances of your audience seeing your content.

It’s important to note, however, that each social media platform has an acceptable frequency amount. You don’t want to spam your audience with too many posts, but you also don’t want to post so infrequently that your strategy is ineffective.

According to Volusion, these are the right amount of posts per day for each popular platform:

1. Facebook: 1-2 times per day
2. Twitter: 5-10 times per day
3. Instagram: 1-2 times per day
4. Pinterest: 5-30 pins per day
5. LinkedIn: 20 times per month (about one time each business day)

These numbers are a great guideline to help you get a sense of how frequently to post on social media. When you’re setting up your museum social media campaigns, you are bound to these post frequency numbers.

It’s a great starting point to help you with your content, but you may find that posting more or less on specific platforms is more effective. Follow the posting frequency that works best for your audience because they are the ones viewing and digesting your content.

If you want to create an active social media marketing strategy for museums, post content frequently on your social media platforms. It’s the best way to help you drive results with your social media campaign.

4. Create engagement-based social media content to encourage interaction with your museum

When you create content for your audience, you want them to engage with it. The more they engage with your brand, the more they get to know your museum. It also increases the chances that they will show your content to other people, which helps you earn new social followers.

To increase opportunities for engagement, you can create engagement-based content. This type of content focuses explicitly on including elements that are more likely to entice your audience to engage.

A great example of this is running a poll. Polls are great engagement content because they are easy to use. They stand out in a content feed and are easy to interact with for your audience.

If you were a dinosaur museum, you could create a poll like, “What is your favorite dinosaur?” and give people options to choose. It’s a great engagement piece that gets your audience to interact with your content.

You can also focus on “tag-a-friend” type content. With this content, you entice your audience to tag a friend that fits with your content. It gets new people to your page and gets your audience to engage with your content.

Again, if you were a dinosaur museum, you could post a photo of a product you have in your gift shop, like a dinosaur mask, and say, “Tag a friend who would rock this mask” or something similar. It’s a great way to get your audience to tag a friend and interact with your content.

By creating more engagement-based content, you’ll drive better results with social media marketing for museums. You will increase engagement, which will help you earn more new leads and encourage them to visit your museum.

5. Use paid social ads to reach people who haven’t found your museum yet

Social media offers you options to post organic content, but you can also use paid ads to reach new leads. Social media ads allow you to expand beyond your organic posts and reach people that haven’t found your museum’s page yet. It’s an excellent opportunity to help your social media page grow.

Each social platform offers its type of advertising program that you can use to reach more people. You’ll need to investigate your platform to get familiar with how to advertise on your social site.

When you set up your social ad, you can target specific groups of people to reach those who are most likely to be interested in your museum. You can target by demographics, but you can also target by browsing behavior and buying habits. It’s a great way to help your museum reach the right people.

By running social ads, you’ll attract more people to your business. It’s a great way to help you reach people looking for your museum.

6. Use user-generated content to get your audience involved

User-generated content is a valuable social media marketing tool for museums. People are going to discuss your museum and talk about their experience there. User-generated content is an excellent opportunity for you to take that content and post it on your page.

When you utilize user-generated content, you bring an authentic experience to your museum. People love seeing how others experience your museum. By posting this type of material, they can get insight into your exhibits and the experience you offer your visitors.

It’s a cost-effective way to produce content, too. You can easily pull content from users and repost it onto your social timeline. Whether it’s regramming, sharing, or retweeting, you have an excellent opportunity to post more authentic content on your page.

7. Create a social media calendar to organize your museum’s social media campaigns

When you’re running your social media campaigns, it’s crucial that you stay organized. If you’re posting at least one piece of content a day on multiple platforms, it can become chaotic. Add in social media platforms like Twitter, where you can post multiple times a day, and it becomes even more muddled.

A social media calendar will help you stay organized with your campaign. You can strategically plan when you’re going to post content and where it’s getting published. Social media calendars help you gain a broader perspective of your campaign and see where it’s heading.

You want to have a cohesive social media campaign. Many businesses make the mistake of posting content to post content. You don’t want to do that because your campaign will seem disjointed and random.

A social media calendar will help you stay organized and build an active museum social media campaign that drives more leads to your museum.

8. Use social media tools to streamline your campaigns

Social media tools are a great way to help you produce a better campaign for your museum. When you’re creating dozens of posts on different social media sites, it can be challenging to keep up with all of it. Social media tools allow you to manage your campaigns better.

There are many social media tools you can use to better your campaign. These tools include Hootsuite and Buffer, which both help you schedule, manage, and monitor your social posts.

With social media tools, you can schedule your content ahead of time. The ability to post content ahead of time is a great way to save your museum time, so you don’t need to take time each day to publish a piece of content. You can schedule it all three weeks in advance and knock it all out at once.

When the content is published, you can monitor it to see how it’s performing. The ability to watch content helps you know what content performs well and how your audience interacts with your content.

If you’re looking for museum social media ideas, start by using social media tools to help you manage your campaign. It’s the most effective way to help you produce a better campaign for your museum.

Launch your museum’s custom social media strategy today!

Social media marketing is a valuable method for helping your museum engage with your audience and reach new visitors. When used correctly, social media marketing will help you build brand awareness and get more visitors to your museum.

At WebFX, we have a team of over 500+ experts who will bring their knowledge and expertise to your campaign. We’ll help you create a diverse social media marketing campaign that grows your reach and enables you to obtain new visitors to your museum.

If you’re ready to increase traffic for your museum both online and offline, contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist.