Webinar Highlights: How to Captivate, Connect, and Communicate with Your Audience During Coronavirus

Due to the rapid spread of coronavirus and government recommendations for social distancing, three-quarters of museums across the United States have closed down temporarily. As a result of these closures, many cultural organizations face new levels of uncertainty and difficulty in navigating these unfamiliar waters. In particular, for visitor-serving organizations, not being able to bring visitors on-site produces a significant challenge: while being physically closed, how do museums continue to engage their would-be visitors?

This past Wednesday, over 3,200 members of the museum community came together with Brendan Ciecko (CEO & Founder @ Cuseum) and special guests Susan Edwards (Associate Director, Digital Content @ Hammer Museum) and Koven Smith (Museum & Nonprofit Digital Strategy Consultant), to discuss steps cultural organizations can take to captivate, connect, and communicate with their remote “visitors” and audiences. These experts did a deep-dive into digital communication strategies, creatively leveraging social media channels, and establishing a community without a physical space to gather in.

Watch the full webinar recording online.

Here are a few takeaways and tips from the session, as well as additional examples:

1. Collaboration is Key

The physical closures of museums and organizations across the world have led many such institutions to ramp up their use of digital communications, engagement tools, and content. The demand for, and necessity of producing, this sort of content has presented challenges for most museums, which have often had small, siloed digital teams.

In order to keep up with the current demands for digital, collaboration is going to be key in the coming weeks and months. According to Susan, the first step is to set up a cross-departmental digital task force. She emphasized that the digital team would have to take a step up in such a task force:

“Us digital people, we're going to have to put on our teaching hats, and become instructors of our craft.”
– Susan Edwards

For digital teams, now is the time to rise up as leaders and teachers at your institution - and for other museum staff, now is a great opportunity to increase digital capabilities and work towards the shared goal connecting with your audience, this time: digitally.

2. Bring Your Most Authentic Voice

Some of the most successful digital campaigns that museums have launched in the past several weeks have shed any highly buttoned-up or polished filter to bring the kind of authentic human voice that audiences desire. One of the most talked about examples is at the National Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City. The museum put Tim, the head of museum security, in charge of social media sites, and before they knew it, a new “internet icon” was born.

According to Koven, the success of this kind of content can be attributed to its authenticity:

“There's much more appetite for what seems like a true connection with a real person.”
– Koven Smith

Indeed, audiences are looking for empathy, humor, and groundedness during this difficult time, and are ready to connect with a relatable person, rather than a brand.

Pro Tip: To offer your audiences an authentic message, let different members of various teams and departments do a social media takeover, and allow them to share the most human-side of your organization!

3. Keep Your Mission & Local Community at the Heart

We are now at a point where the coronavirus is affecting different regions and communities across the United States in radically different ways. As a result, locally-focused institutions are best equipped to supply resources and deliver what communities need. 

That’s why one of the best things you can do for your audience is ensure that you stay near and true to your mission and your community. To this point, Brendan emphasized that:

“Positioning and messaging around the civic role that the museum has is far more important today than it was two or three weeks ago.”
– Brendan Ciecko

With this in mind, museums should consider partnering with their local organizations or connecting through their regional museum associations to deliver the content that meets the needs of their communities and constituents. For example, Georgia Aquarium partnered with the Atlanta Humane Society to let puppies explore the Ocean Voyager exhibit. This video was able to attract virtual audiences to the aquarium in a way that is unique to their local community.

Western Museums Association is calling on their museum members to participate in a #MyMuseumCollection campaign, that encourages audiences to share the museum-worthy objects from their own homes.

In areas greatly affecting by the COVID-19 outbreak, like New York and California, museums responded to the needs of their region by donating thousands of nitrile gloves, Tyvek suits, P95 masks to nearby hospital amid the shortages of supplies faced by hospitals.

These types of regional initiatives can be tuned to fit your locality, further your mission, or step up in times of need.

4. Unite through Virtual Communities & Gatherings

As people isolate in their homes and are increasingly limited in their social interactions, one of the biggest losses is a sense of community. Museums have the opportunity to facilitate that sense of community virtually.

Museums like Children’s Museum of Indianapolis are hosting virtual events like “Museum Home Storytime.”

Other organizations like the Fairbanks Museum and Planetarium, Denver Art Museum, and the Frick Collection are building communities with virtual programs like online classes and Virtual Spring Book Club. Importantly, many of these programs are not just virtual - they also involve participatory aspects!

Keep in mind that community is both external and internal. While you’re strategizing ways to engage your public audience, don’t forget about your entire team who are still adjusting to remote work and the lack of “water cooler” interactions with their peers. It is important to take steps to keep staff morale high such as virtual happy hour, sing-alongs, light-hearted gatherings to install an ongoing sense of camaraderie and support across your organization. In the meantime, there is always Drinking About Museums, which has recently gone virtual.

In this time of uncertainty, how organizations engage their visitors is changing fundamentally. As we move forward, museums and organizations need to continue their efforts to connect with their communities and keep up with their mission-driven work through digital!

Looking to help your organization stay on top of the Coronavirus? Check out our Resource Page for Coronavirus in the cultural space.

Further Reading:

• How to Keep Your Audience Engaged, Entertained, and Inspired in the Age of Coronavirus

• How Museums and Attractions are Preparing for Coronavirus

• 4 Ways Museums Can Successfully Leverage Digital Content and Channels during Coronavirus (COVID-19)

• Museum Social Media Entertains During the COVID-19 Crisis