As museums and cultural organizations continue to adapt to the challenges brought on by the coronavirus, many have revamped and expanded their digital presence and offerings. In the process, many have realized that traditional strategies, messaging, and social media channels aren’t enough, and have started to get more creative with how they reach audiences in their homes.
Last week over 3,000 people joined Brendan Ciecko (CEO & Founder @ Cuseum), Sloan MacRae (Marketing Director @ Carnegie Museum of Natural History), & Caitlin Kearney (Digital Content & Engagement Manager @ The Field Museum) as they discussed what sorts of digital strategies, workflows, and channels are allowing them to effectively target and attract audiences beyond the walls of their museums.
View the full transcript below
Brendan Ciecko:
Hello everyone. My name is Brendan Ciecko. I am the founder of Cuseum. First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who is joining us today. I hope that each and every one of you is staying safe, keeping healthy and optimistic during these very challenging times that we're facing. I also want to give a big huge dinosaur size thank you to our panelists. I'm really excited to have both of you on today. If you're joining for the first time, welcome and those of you who have attended any of our past webinars, it's great to see you again and welcome back.
We hope that today's conversation is helpful, informative, and provides a little splash of inspiration for you today. This is the fifth in a series of conversations we've hosted on the important topics of how to engage audiences during coronavirus. Over the past month or so, over 15,000 museum professionals have joined us from all over the world, and right now there are about 3000 people here with us today. Thank you for, for joining.
The other day, I heard something that really moved me. It was a quote from Oscar Wilde who once said, "we're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars," and for me it mirrored everything that surrounds us today and probably what most of us are feeling right now. It's been difficult these past few weeks, but we must remain positive, creative, and focused and no question about it. There are new challenges, but in the face of these challenges, there are also new opportunities to connect and to reach and to serve our audiences and our communities and to serve each other.
We must keep looking up at the stars. Necessity is the mother of all invention and great ideas come from many different places and perspectives. It's been truly incredible to watch the museum and cultural community from all around the world come together and share ideas and support each other.
The theme for today's conversation is thinking outside the box to reach audiences inside their homes, and now I'd love to introduce our special guests. In the left corner we have Sloan MacRae. Sloan is the marketing director of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History and cohost of the museum's podcast, A is for Anthropocene: Living in the Age of Humanity, a professionally produced playwright and children's author. He oversees the museums, marketing public relations and digital engagement strategies.
Sloan's previous posts include director of visitor and museum services for Carnegie Museum of Art and Natural History, managing director of Shenandoah Conservatory and director of marketing communication at Pittsburgh City Theater. He was named a 2019 Pittsburgh marketing leader of the year by American Marketing Association and Sloane quarantines in Oakmont, Pennsylvania with his wife who teaches middle school English, two adorable neuro diverse children and a rescue mutt. Thanks so much for joining us, Sloan.
Sloan MacRae:
Thanks.
Brendan Ciecko:
I love that you updated your bio to say that you don't live in Oakmont, but you quarantine in Oakmont. This is a very socially responsible thing to do. I appreciate it. And then in our right corner we have Caitlin Kearney. Caitlin is the Digital Strategy and Engagement Manager at the Field Museum where she's worked for the past four years. She writes and edits content for the Fields website, including managing the blog in addition to planning an editorial calendar across departments and maintaining the museum's internal style guide. She's presented at MCN, Museum Computer Network and Museums and the Web on topics including a dinosaur chat bot and how many publishers your website should really have. Before coming to the field, she was a new media assistant at the National Museum of American History and completed her museum studies degree at the George Washington University. Originally from Maryland and now living in Chicago she enjoys tending to her community, a garden plot, a historical walking tours and bad reality TV. Thanks so much for joining us, Caitlin.
Caitlin Kearney:
Yeah, thanks.
Brendan Ciecko:
What's your favorite bad reality TV before we jump into the serious stuff?
Caitlin Kearney:
Well, there are some Bachelor fans out there, but I also have to advocate for 90 Day Fiancé.
Brendan Ciecko:
Very cool. Awesome. And lastly, I'm Brendan Ciecko. I'm the founder of Cuseum and I'll be your host and moderator for today's discussion. Sloan, let's start for a question for you.
In a recent blog published by AAM, you discussed how the Carnegie Museum of Natural History has started to use TikTok and has been doing so with huge success. Tim Pierce, your museums snail guy has become a popular personality, entertaining audiences with the snail jokes, his songs, and other lighthearted content. Can you talk a little bit about what prompted you to start using this new channel? What is unique about TikTok versus other social media channels and how has it allowed you to amplify your reach and impact?
Sloan MacRae:
The first part I want to answer is what makes TikTok unique and it's virtually troll free so far, which is such a welcome respite on social media. It seems that what drives engagement on TikTok and what incentivizes it is not the same algorithms on Facebook and Twitter, which can be outraged factories and it's just very wholesome and devoid of trolls so far. .About a year ago, we filmed a year's worth of snail jokes, or I guess there's some slug jokes in there too. So malice jokes with Tim Pierce who has always had a cult following in Pittsburgh, and if you've seen the TikToks, you'll know why that he's amazing and you have to use what you have. And one of the reasons we filmed all these jokes with him, and Caitlin, you might have found this as well, is that people often don't know what a Natural History Museum is.
The word history in there really throws people for a loop. And they often think the science isn't current. And so we have 22 million objects, all of which are part of rich collections that are receiving contemporary research and contemporary discoveries. And that has been, for me as a lifelong Pittsburgher for the most of my life, it's been one of the untold stories of the museum until I got there as an employee, just the breadth of the research that was happening.
So I wanted to share that with everyone in our region. And Tim Pierce is a great gateway drug for all of that. We filmed these years worth of jokes with him and they took off on the other channels but not with the engagement and, and the reach that we were hoping for. And that cult following maintained. And then Aaron Sutherland on my team who writes most of our social media content, pitched me back in I think early 2020 about let's try TikTok again 'cause we had tried some cute animal videos that didn't quite take off and we put a Tim Pierce TikTok out there and it was well-timed because it happened to be Michelle Obama's birthday when this particular one landed and that she was the punchline.
It was a snail joke about Barack and Michelle Obama and it went crazy and it got a million views in a really quick amount of time. And ever since then there's just been great demand. If you read the comments, you'll see what I mean by it being virtually devoid of trolls. People are saying, we have to protect Tim and this guy is too wholesome for me. I will take a bullet for you. Twitch Tim replies, no, take a slug. It's been great. And, and while that's been very lighthearted and also very light, frankly, it's also given us an opportunity to introduce some other content which isn't as popular on TikTok, but still it's engagement beyond what we have seen before and so we're able to, I think I, I said Tim was gateway drug. We're able to use him as that and then feed people some science when they're not looking and that's been successful.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's really interesting because we've often heard from the museum community that, if you have cute, cuddly animals, that's a sheer win, but it's interesting to hear you share that that wasn't really landing with your audience. It was all of the cult following and eccentric educational aspects and personnel that were working really well and Caitlin to take this and run with it a little a few weeks ago, we were all super excited to see the fields dinosaur mascot, SUE running around the museum and manning the information booth and up to all kinds of shenanigans and this was shortly after your Chicago neighbor, the Shedd Aquarium’s, penguins went viral and many museums were stumped at how to attract attention without the benefit of living cute, cuddly animals living collections.
Can you talk through the idea a little bit and how it all materialized with SUE running around the museum and taking over your social media channels?
Caitlin Kearney:
Yeah, definitely. We are next door neighbors with Shedd and we are often very jealous of their cute living collections. I have to give credit to Katherine Uhrich who is our social media manager for coming up with this idea and making it happen. We already had the inflatable TREX suit in our possession from previous video activities. I think even though we don't have living animals who has a personality that has grown over times, who has a Twitter account, people know and follow Sue either in conjunction with the Field Museum or even just a totally devoted SUE fan or super fan as we say.I think there are a lot of ways to show personality without a living collection. I love what the Getty has been doing with the Getty Museum Challenge and a lot of other museums have been participating and that's a way that they're essentially bringing their collections to life in partnership with their community members, which is really cool to see. And I think also part of it might be shifting the goal from how do we attract attention and more to how do we engage with our community and offer them something of value and something of value can be something that's useful or it can be even just something that's enjoyable, which is where Sue roaming around the museum landed. That's how that came about. A mix of creativity and spontaneity, but also being able to play off of what the shed had already put into motion.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. And to open this up to both of you as it relates to TikTok spontaneity and creative content. TikTok is an emerging and relatively untapped channel for many museums. And that said the TikTok has over 800 million active users worldwide, higher than average engagement rates compared to Instagram and Twitter and has been one of the most popular downloaded apps of the last couple of years.Other organizations might just be starting to use platforms like Instagram or Snapchat or Twitter or experimenting with new ways to leverage these channels. You've been using Instagram stories. What do people need to know about TikTok and do you have any advice about starting to build a following on a relatively new channel, leveraging and effectively showing the spontaneous side of your organization? I'd love to hear about that from both of you.
Sloan MacRae:
TikTok for us, we found it works best when there's a punchline and if you've seen our, our videos, they don't. The punchline is this really had to be good 'cause some of Tim's jokes are quite bad, but that's part of the rhythm and it's, I think it's nice to have, they're so short, but it's nice to have that narrative beginning, middle and an end. It's very satisfying. So if there's something to land, I think that it helps.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's interesting. It sounds like, is it a little bit more of a forgiving platform and that your jokes or punchlines don't even need to be that good or funny for things to go viral or to be effective in reaching visitors and audience.
Sloan MacRae:
In this case but I think for us it's the fact that they're not funny. This is what's funny and I think that like all social media authenticity is pretty key and with TikTok it seems to really be part of the equation, so the more authentic I think you are, the more forgiving your fans will be and as I said so far it's very good natured. Hopefully I just didn't jinx the entire platform.
Brendan Ciecko:
No, that's all good and Sloan can you give a quick little explanation about what TikTok is? I'm realizing that a lot of people in the audience right now maybe are not familiar with the platform. It's completely new to them. I do want to mention, we will post a link to a recent article about how museums are using TikTok a little bit about what it is for those that would like to read it after, but Sloan, could you share a little bit about what TikTok is?
Sloan MacRae:
Yeah, I want to say it's the fastest growing digital platform in terms of downloads and subscribers from late 2019 to 2020. I could be wrong about that, but it was rivaling Spotify and Netflix - things that aren't just strictly social media, but it is a social media platform for short musical videos. Most of our stuff is not musical, but most of the, the TikTok fare is musical and it drives engagement like no other social media channel because if you just browse it and you'll see what I'm saying, but the, the amount of say likes per amount of views a video gets, are higher virtually on any posts versus the other social media channels.The same thing if you look at the comments. We are logging sometimes thousands of comments in a single post which for us is quite new. And it also invites imitation. It has a lot of internal dialogue. This is funny because I'm a Gen X so I'm probably sounding quite old to a lot of the audience who can describe TikTok better than I can, but the dialogue between users in a single post is quite nice and encouraging because sometimes it'd be crazy imitation. We have people who imitate our Tim Pierce and lip sync to his jokes and do their own versions either with split screen or just total recreations and that imitation and response dialogue is not unique to us. There's a lot of people who are really good at cultivating that.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great. Caitlin, can you talk a little bit about what your journey has been on the side of online content and social media from a creative and spontaneous standpoint over the last couple of weeks, last couple of months, on definitely in the more immediate coronavirus period that the museum has been closed?
Caitlin Kearney:
Yeah, that's a good question. We are not on TikTok yet. It's definitely something we have thought about, especially after the Sue videos and feeling that those really seem to match well in terms of tone to a lot of other things that are happening on TikTok. In terms of creativity and spontaneity, this is probably a really hard time to be doing that. I think if you find opportunities, it's great to take them, but at the same time I'm sure all of us are dealing with the essential urgent information that we need to convey to people and working with the content that we can access from home. We don't necessarily have access to all of the material that we would like to have and again - engaging with other museums is always a great approach and probably now more than ever.
Brendan Ciecko:
For sure. And talking about a couple other ways that the Field Museum has approached audience engagement from a remote capacity that you have experienced bringing a dinosaur chatbot to life, also known as Maximo, the titanosaur. In recent years we've seen institutions throw their hat in the ring around things like chatbots. I know the Carnegie Museums as well has launched the Andy Carnegie bot back in 2018 as a summer guide to the museum. And in moments like now when communications and social media professionals are working over time, they're inundated with questions and needs and comments. Could chatbots be a helpful way to communicate with audiences and help offer some answers to the communities at home? Are you or any of your colleagues or any other organizations using chatbots or similar technologies right now?
Caitlin Kearney:
Yeah, that's a great question. Our chat bot is called Message Máximo and as you mentioned, it's our titanosaur, which we moved into our main hall in 2018. There was a way to introduce people to him, build a personality for him, but I think it depends really heavily on what type of information you're hoping the chat bot will take on for you. Building and maintaining a chat bot itself is quite a bit of work. Especially so if your goal is to make sure that the information is up-to-date on a daily basis, which is how a lot of institutions have been operating lately. Right now we're continuing to promote Message Máximo as a great at home entertainment or a potential education resource or not directing people to it as a source of the latest information. I think there are some simple solutions like an FAQ, an early visible place on your website and pinned posts on social letting people know that you have a longer response time now. Those sorts of things could be easier.
Brendan Ciecko:
I liked something you said about giving a personality to Máximo. Personifying this inanimate object or this historic thing. It makes me think for a lot of the folks that are tuning into this webinar that they might be at a historic house, they might be at a park, a botanical garden, a museum focused on art or other inanimate objects. Do you think that there is something to be said about giving personality to things that historically maybe haven't had contemporary personalities? I feel in a lot of ways that's what both of you are doing.
Sloan, you're lucky that your snail guy already has a little bit of this personality, but he's probably providing personality to Mollusks. And Caitlin, you guys are providing a personality to things like dinosaurs. What would your advice be to an organization that doesn't know where to start about giving a personality or a flavor or color to the things that they already have? Is it a big challenge or are there some small steps that you can take?
Caitlin Kearney:
Yeah, I think for us we were in a very rare situation that I hope no one else ever finds themselves in, which is we already had a popular dinosaur with a personality and then we brought in another dinosaur and we were like, "Gosh, how do we make this one just as popular as the last one?" Which I don't know that we will ever do given Sue's longer history. We had that weird context there, but I think you're totally right. That personality can come through in a lot of different ways, like finding the person that you hadn't considered before to be a spokesperson for you. And of course, you have to depend on what your brand and your voice already are. You don't want to try and deviate from that and create something that's not authentic to what you already sound like.
Brendan Ciecko:
Speaking a little bit more about creative personality, Sloan, you've published children's books, and have experienced crafting content specifically aimed at younger audiences. Do you have any special messaging for your children and young adults or do you use any specific channels to reach them? And do you find that you bring your experience as an author to your role at the museum?
Sloan MacRae:
For direct channels we're actually trying to talk to the parents, right. Because they have the credit card, they have the wallet and they ultimately make the decision for as far as direct communication. I do want to address something I saw in the comments, a lot of people are talking about how TikTok users are young and by and large they are gen z-ers, but it is getting a lot of parents of gen z-ers these days, especially as they're stuck at home with their gen z-ers. But I think there's a lesson and I'm going back to the, how do you convey information for children and keep them engaged?
There's a lesson from Pixar that probably anybody can take is that it might be designed for children, but it really appeals to adults and especially with museums of all sorts, there's no age exploration on wonder, right? You can create, say, dinosaur content aimed at kids that will still capture parents and I think there's a balance of not, I really don't like the phrase dumbing it down for children, because it's really making it accessible for them to receive. Again, that picks our model, I think it is the way to go. Because if you can keep it appealing to their grownups that's perfect.
Brendan Ciecko:
Right. And I want to pull in a question from the audience. Shawna Butts over at the Niagara Historical Society and Museum in Ontario, Canada wants to know, what is the best way to reach out to students and teachers who are now doing e-learning and teaching at home? How can we collaborate and support these audiences without inundating them? And Sloan I think you, you talked about the parents and the role of the parent and if you're able to reach them, then that's a huge success when it comes to the teaching at home. Can you speak a little bit about what you're seeing and maybe what your museum is doing right now?
Sloan MacRae:
Yeah. With the caveat that we're still figuring it out. Because we had to think everyone listening knows that these best practices are emerging right now, because we're going from come here physically and experience it to how can we share our expertise with you and also as a parent, I'm experiencing this now firsthand because we're still enrolling our kids in their music lessons and even their TaeKwonDo lessons and things like that and it's no longer passive for the parents, right? It's parents now involved in, if not at least getting the kid on Zoom and ready to go sometimes actively facilitating. Sometimes there's a, right now we're going to give you an assignment. Everyone check back in on Zoom in 45 minutes. So there is a real opportunity for all of us to figure out not only how to engage those parents but how to facilitate dialogue with parents and children after the session's over, right after that experience is over, how do you keep it going and I think that's really fertile and unexplored ground for a lot of us as marketers right now. Surely our education colleagues have been - are experts at this.
Brendan Ciecko:
No, that was helpful. And Caitlin, what are some of the things that the Field is doing to reach students and teachers and parents ultimately to get some of this educational content in front of them in their own homes?
Caitlin Kearney:
We are definitely also still figuring it out. We just last year as part of a continual update to our website, we added a bunch of learning resources to the site and since the closure we've been working really closely with staff in our learning center and what they've been doing is super helpful and going through our preexisting learning resources and identifying ways that they might be tailored or adjusted slightly so that as they stand now they're meant for teachers to use in a classroom setting but adapting them so that they could be used by parents in a home setting too.That's just the start of where we are. And then I think back to the question of younger audiences and multi-generational learning. I think that's totally spot on and a lot of that is probably happening at home now too. Thinking about how non-traditional learning resources can provide a source of learning opportunity in a less formal way.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great, and I have another question from the audience. This comes from Kaitlin Andres at the Natural History Museum of LA County in California. She wants to know, I'd love to hear some discussion around engaging volunteers and docents in this capacity, not just the general museum audiences. Volunteers are an important subset of our larger museum community and benefit both from general offerings and offerings that are tailored to them as a group. This is a question that I have received a lot of emails about, but we haven't had the opportunity to discuss on this webinar. I would love to hear how both of your institutions are thinking about that specific segment or group of loyal audience docents and volunteers.
Caitlin Kearney:
Yeah, I don't know too much about it. It's possible that more is going on in our HR department, which manages that community. We have what we call museum wide emails that go out to staff and volunteers are all included on those. Since the closure, we've had really robust communication from our CEO personally. He doesn't normally write those types of messages directly to staff, but we've been positioning him as the person who represents any updates and those are going out to all staff and volunteers.
Brendan Ciecko:
Sloan, do you have anything to add about that? Because we've talked a lot about segments and how different content is tailored to these different segments. Are you guys doing anything differently about volunteers and docents right now?
Sloan MacRae:
Again, we have the appropriate work-related channels and supervisor channels to speak directly to volunteers and docents. We do notice a lot of volunteering, docent engagement on social media. And this isn't quantified, this is anecdotal. This is just people whose names I recognize. I do notice a pretty engaged base on all of our channels and that's a nice thing about social media. We're talking about TikTok being young and there's so many jokes about Facebook being skewing a little older.
It's a microcosm anyway, which means that if our volunteers want to engage, they can use social media and find us there. I should also say that Tim Pierce, our Mollus guy, has about half a dozen volunteers who work directly for him and they're very proud of him. They share his social media celebrity. That's a model that works throughout our collection departments. There's a lot of volunteers who aren't just visitor-facing who are also pretty engaged on all levels in the museum and respond if not on social media, they follow the newsletters. There is an opportunity, especially if you're shut down, to think strategically how to keep those folks engaged because you're going to need them when you reopen. They are perhaps our best ambassadors. This might be a good time to generate the word of mouth that can help us generate while we're closed.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. I want to pull in a comment. I'm monitoring the chat right now, Brianna Sadler said that we're having weekly Zoom meetings with all of our volunteers going through presentations. Having general conversations and asking them to lead the Zoom meetings. I find that to be a really fascinating way of engaging the volunteer community and also I'm seeing from another person on the webinar right now that they're doing a volunteer appreciation month blog post by volunteers and a surprise video for them.
It seems like this community is full of a lot of different ideas about engaging the audience and each organization's going to have a slightly different flavor, but we all acknowledge that it's an important thing to take into account. We've been talking a lot about new channels including TikTok and chatbots as a means to reach audiences. However, these can pose some challenges or at least perceived challenges in regards to reach and accessibility towards people that have less access to the internet or aren't as tech savvy.
What do you think about revamping use of old school channels to reach your audiences during this time or do you think that it's a non issue based on some of the research you're seeing or some of the engagement stats that you have access to?
Sloan MacRae:
I don't want to underplay the seriousness of people who right now are very vulnerable in our society because they don't have access. And because we are now a remote society that digital access isn't a necessity. And I don't mean to downplay that, but social media, phones, and internet are far and away the most accessible way to reach people. This isn't quite apples to apples and we joked about this during our talk before in preparation for this webinar, but it is time for the Colleen Dilenschneider - name dropped.
Last year she released a study that looked at how people make their decisions, their pre-visit decision, how they reached their decision, like what platform they use. And it's broken down by income, demographics. And far and away web, social media and mobile web are by far the most accessible for every income demographic. And then when you look at more traditional channels, that's when it, it skews a little actually wealthier if anything. You have fewer people who are in those lower tiers able to access it. Social media is not 100% accessible. I don't know that anything ever will be, but it's pretty good.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great, thank you. I want to take a quick moment to mention that we've recently started a Weekly Digital Happy Hour called, MUSE, ZOOS & CLUES where we recap some of our favorite campaigns and posts from the week. We do a little bit of trivia and have some lighthearted fun. To mix things up we'll be inviting a few attendees onto the digital stage to participate. So register early and email hello@cuseum.com if you want to be a guest. And it also gives us an opportunity to address some of these questions that we don't have the opportunity to do right now.
Back to the serious natured content. Last week, one of our special guests, Ryan Dodge, gave a shout out to the Canadian Broadcast Corporation. Specifically citing the work of one individual there whose job it was to work with Snapchat, one of their channels to repurpose some of their content directly for Snapchat and this proved to be normally successful for engaging the 18 to 24 demographic and he noted this is a reminder that you don't need to dumb down content for younger audiences. You don't need to write in a certain way so that younger demographics will engage with the content that you produce as long as it's packaged for the platform in a way that's engaging.
From what I'm hearing from both of you throughout, it seems like you would tend to agree that's the case, but do you have any advice on how to go about the repackaging process to take existing content to suit these different channels? Especially taking into consideration that not every museum's going to have the resources or the staff to focus on those things right now. What would your advice be to a museum that's in that position?
Caitlin Kearney:
I think Sloan hit the nail on the head earlier about not dumbing down content and repackaging content for different platforms is also a great way to fill that gap when you are in that panic mode of “I need new content and I don't have access to it.” I would say that tone is probably one of the biggest things that you should be thinking about when you're adapting for different channels and also motivation if you're able to get information like that.
We have an audience insights team that helped us run a couple of rapid surveys, which gave us more information about who is visiting our website and our social channels. What are their motivations for doing so? What are their roles even - are they a parent or an educator? Do they have children in the household and things like that. But I think as always, just knowing who your audience is and what they're looking for.
Brendan Ciecko:
Let's talk a little bit more about the audience side. We have a question from Zélie Lewis at the Brooklyn Historical Society in Brooklyn, New York. How are you going about collecting this feedback about what your audiences need? How do we avoid making assumptions about our audiences and use their responses and audience-driven input around this content?
Caitlin Kearney:
I think in addition to a more formal survey, something we've been doing recently is just asking people what it is that they want and you can even do that in a way that is a form of engagement in and of itself. For example, on Twitter we've been running a museum request hotline, which is where we just put out the call. What do you want to see from the Field Museum? What's something you had planned to see and what's a favorite specimen or display from the last time you were here? And that immediately is just giving us the topics and the subject matter that people are interested in hearing about.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great. Sloan, do you have anything to add?
Sloan MacRae:
Social media gives us such an opportunity for dialogue. So exactly what Caitlin was saying. Not only does that dialogue inform you, but it also broadens your reach. Because everybody in those networks sees their contacts with you. It's a good time to exploit all those channels for what they're worth. We have identified our audience as four culture's segments and that was looking at how they like to receive information and what they like their experience to be. And it's not necessarily museum goers versus non museum goers. It assumes they're all part of our fans anyway. It's just how they like to receive content from us. And what we've observed is some people prefer Facebook, some people are repulsive and want a testimonial, so they wait until someone on Facebook in their network comments or shares and then they chime in.
Some people think Facebook is yesterday and so they're more likely to be on Twitter or Instagram. There's definitely a different entryway for each of those people and it takes a lot of work, but you have to customize the offering for each one of those segments. I think that right now, they're dying for content on their screens and they're dying to engage with us. It's a really fertile time to send out surveys and engage - like the Q&A that Caitlin mentioned. I think that's a great idea. The time is now for that. I think it'll tell us a lot.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. I have a question for both of you. More recently we've been discussing the topic of hybrid membership and visitor engagement models. It's being discussed amongst those, especially working in museum membership and development departments. This idea that museums will need to consider benefits to their members, not only involving the in-person real world benefits events and interactions, but also the digital ones. Do you think we'll start seeing more emphasis on these ideas, the distributed, omnipresent physical onsite museum as well as the digital at home museum experience for visitors, members and donors? There's a lot of questions in the chat even about monetizing that content now and into the future. Do either of you have any thoughts about that? Are you starting to take part in discussions internally about this hybrid model?
Caitlin Kearney:
It's definitely something we're thinking about and have not figured out yet or not quite at the monetization conversation, but certainly the, how do we provide special interests or smaller audiences with unique experiences, especially ones that used to be physical events in the building. And so for members, one that has risen to the top is this conversation with a scientist model, which was a real event. And then at the same time we were hearing from our learning center - we want to do our meta scientist program virtually, also pretty much the same exact format, different audiences, maybe a different setup in terms of is it live? Is it pre recorded? Is it educator? But I think making those connections and seeing what has risen to the top has allowed us to prioritize that model so that we can make sure it works. We can get it out on a regular schedule, we can understand which audience it's for and when. That's just where we're starting out on that front.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great. So you're at the first few steps of a very long, exciting journey in that regard.
Caitlin Kearney:
Yes.
Brendan Ciecko:
Sloan, how about you guys over at Carnegie?
Sloan MacRae:
It's a very similar situation and in fact, immediately before this, I was on two Zoom meetings with different departments about this various subject. I think that now's a good time to try this out because people I think are going to be by and large forgiving. That they're going to allow us to pilot different things. Also, the fact that right now most of us, we're probably offering them for free because we haven't figured out the monetization model yet. But it's a good time to gather that intelligence and to fail with very little risks compared to when our reputations are perhaps more on the line. But you also have to think that some kind of hybrid is inevitable. If you look at Colleen Dilenschneider , I'm dropping her name again. She's been doing really great work on when people are going to feel comfortable returning to museums and cultural experiences. She has different samples per region and it's really insightful. And the bad news is that most people seem to say when there's a vaccine, which isn't going to be for a long time, who knows what the new normal will look like, but it probably will require a hybrid of actual and virtual experiences. And right now we're also creating the expectation during these next couple of months on the horizon that we can offer those. So we're actively training people to expect those experiences in the meantime. I think it's inevitable.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. Yeah, we've been talking a lot about this, the reality, the new normal of what happens when people start to slowly make their way back to museums and cultural attractions and cultural venues, knowing that it's going to be imperative that there are these assurances made about just about everything, the safety, the social distancing that your touch screens have been cleaned or maybe they don't even exist. Maybe the digital kiosks don't exist as an added comfort, that there are more touchless, frictionless realities and ways for people to engage with your content.
And more importantly, the vocalization or the communication of that reality to people so that you are reducing any possibility of risk. You're giving them comfort that when they return they know it's a safe place for them and that you've taken all necessary precautions. We've been mostly talking about the remote digital experience today, but I think that it's more important to start sooner on this path knowing that yeah, people are going to physically return, there's going to be a hybrid and a lot of consideration needs to go into that.
It's a brave new world. It's a really interesting time to reimagine what we've all been hoping for at some organizations for what these experiences look like. I want to bring in a question from outside of the museum and cultural community that I was looped into a couple of days ago with Scott Kerzner who's a journalist at the Boston Globe who is pinging Sebastian Smee, who is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Washington Post. I got looped into all of this and he wanted to know, and keep in mind, he's not a museum professional and he's not watching the museum news the way a lot of us are. Are museums doing any special live tours with Facebook live or Zoom while they're closed? Curator led conversations with a scientist? I know Caitlin you mentioned with the ability for audiences to ask questions on the fly, but moreover where participants could either donate or buy tickets to the virtual event and then there's all kinds of virtual and remote content that are available for people.
A lot of it isn't real time based on the reality that the venues are physically closed. But hearing this from someone outside of the field that as a person who wants to support the institution, wants to engage with the content, also wants to know how they can give you money or pay what they want or make a donation. I thought it was really fascinating to think about. And again, a lot of people have been asking this. I'm curious if either of you have been seeing any live tours that have caught your attention recently? Or ones where they're asking for some financial consideration?
Caitlin Kearney:
Yeah, I think I saw someone mentioned in the comments that a couple of zoos have been doing a great job with this and I think that's a hundred percent true. I think for us, we have had a hard time walking the line of giving people access to the physical building while it's closed and being clear about who our essential workers are, because we don't have people who care for live animals, so I think that understanding is much more implicit if you do have live animals. We haven't gotten to the point of being in the building, seeing the spaces, but I think it's possible as time goes on and I think we'll be at a point where our exhibition staff will need to be back in the building working to actually build exhibitions. That's definitely something we're considering down the line, but probably not immediately.
Brendan Ciecko:
Great. Sloan do you have any thoughts on that?
Sloan MacRae:
Yeah. Again, similarly, we are very strict on who we are deeming essential personnel right now. Unfortunately for this offering, that's not anybody who has the skill to take a camera through the museum and offer a virtual tour. Going forward we will have to figure that out. And again, I think that a lot of museums when we return to, when we emerge into whatever the new normal is, I think it'll probably be standard operating procedure to create more virtual tours because they're certainly in demand right now.
Brendan Ciecko:
Absolutely. One thing that I caught wind of a couple of days ago and then I saw the New York Times did an article about this morning was that there are even museums right now that are introducing telepresence robots to give people remote access to their museums. The Hastings Contemporary in England was one that's doing this and we were joking about this before the webinar, get a Roomba “your little robotic vacuum cleaner” attach a little broom stick to it and put an iPad on it. And there you go. You've got your makeshift telepresence museum tour guide.
But all kidding aside, we're hearing a lot of the same things right now about this being a consideration, a very serious consideration today, but also something that will be phased in more permanently as part of the hybrid model, but it is exciting to see that there is a huge interest from the public for this content during times like these because it is in times like these that museums and their culture and their educational content can provide you with those comforts in this really challenging time.
Sloan MacRae:
That just occurred to me. It might someday prove to be a boon for accessibility, right? People with compromised immune systems with sensory sensitivities. This could be a great accommodation that begins to be part of the standard offering.
Brendan Ciecko:
Absolutely. I'm really happy you made that point Sloan. We only have about eight minutes and I want to do a little bit of rapid fire Q&A before going to our big beefy closing questions and closing notes. I grabbed a couple questions from the audience specific to TikTok that I think would be really easy to answer in less than a couple of words or feel free to elaborate if necessary. Josh Heuman, at the The Power Plant Contemporary Art Museum in Toronto, Ontario wants to know how costly it is to create a video for TikTok or any platform for that matter. I'd love to hear how much it is costing your organization Sloan to create TikTok content and Caitlin, how costly is it to create the content that you're doing for Sue?
Sloan MacRae:
Right now it's fairly minimal because it's staff time and it's an iPhone, right? So, it's pretty minimal.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's great. Caitlin, how about you guys?
Caitlin Kearney:
Yeah, same for us. We have basically one and a half people, me being the half dedicated to producing social content. So it really comes down to staff time.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. And it seems like there's not a huge difference between the amount of time to create a TikTok video versus an Instagram video or anything. I think it just comes down to staff time. Not a lot of additional expenses related to it, so that's all great news to hear.
Caitlin Kearney:
Which I would add briefly, just that staff time is also really important as a consideration in terms of all your other priorities and things like that.
Brendan Ciecko:
Let's even riff on that for a quick second. How much time is it taking to produce one of these 30 seconds, one-minute, 90 second videos. Is it taking a week? Is it taking a day? Is it taking an hour?
Caitlin Kearney:
That's a great question. I don't know exactly. It's probably about an afternoon physically filming on an iPhone. We also have a stabilizer, which is really helpful, and then probably another three or so hours to edit a couple of videos that come out of that footage.That would be my estimate.
Brendan Ciecko:
That sounds like a couple of hours per video produced. Does that sound about right?
Caitlin Kearney:
Yeah.
Brendan Ciecko:
That's not bad at all. Alex Miller wants to know how can we utilize formats like TikTok while maintaining our academic voice?
Sloan MacRae:
TikTok might not be the right medium for that. As I said earlier it might just be a gateway drug that attracts a lot of people to your brand and gives them the bare minimum of the academic voice and those people who are ready to receive deeper content can engage with you elsewhere. But certainly we have our Curator of Mollusks who is a brilliant man who has conducted research that shows climate change impact on snail populations and we haven't figured a way to convey that accomplishment on TikTok yet, but there are other channels for that.
Brendan Ciecko:
For sure. Thank you for answering those so succinctly and I think that hopefully people will have some idea in mind when they go and approach some of these short form emerging platforms with their content. I want to note after this webinar we're going to compile everyone's questions, ideas, and solutions into one living and breathing document. We're going to share it publicly with the community, so feel free to share your thoughts here in the webinar chat or email them over or tweet them or send Sloan a TikTok video or something of the sort, preferably including Mollusks.
And more than anything, I'm confident that any questions you might have can be answered by someone in this community. The fact that you're here shows that you're taking proactive steps in preparing your institution and we're all in this together. We're all going to get through this together. It's a really difficult time, but here are the people that will support you through this really challenging and uncertain time. Before we tune out, I want to ask one big question from both of our incredible guests and panelists that joined us today. Caitlin, can you leave us with one big idea that we can bring back to our organizations during this time?
Caitlin Kearney:
Yes. It may not be a groundbreaking idea, but I would say new isn't always better. Revisit some of your favorites or biggest hits, the things that your community already knows and loves about you because those familiar things can be really reassuring, especially during this time.
Brendan Ciecko:
Thank you. That's great advice and Sloan, how about you?
Sloan MacRae:
Yeah. Along those lines. Find the talent that's already there and don't reinvent the wheel.
Brendan Ciecko:
Excellent. I love that. Don't reinvent the wheel. Some of the things that you've done in the past might be the best things to reintroduce to your community. That is applicable to organizations of every shape and size. I'm so happy that both of you have put that out as your idea to run with. Thank you Sloan for joining us today. Thank you Caitlin for joining us. It was a blast to discuss some of these new and old ideas and strategies around thinking outside the box, thinking a little bit more creatively to reach audiences wherever they are. Today we know that they're quarantined at home in most cases and I hope that you and your families and your peers and your community are safe and sound and healthy during this time.
There's a lot of uncertainty, but this gives us light of so many new opportunities and it's an incredible time to discuss them and to bring them to the global community. I thank you for your expertise and for sharing this and for everyone at home who's tuned in, thank you so much for joining us. I hope that you have a great rest of your week and until next time, thank you. Thanks a lot.
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