The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has over 101,000 Facebook fans on two official pages: 55,787 here and 45,925 here.
Two nearly-identical pages notwithstanding (wouldn’t life be easier with one?), the content includes information on hours, directions, current exhibitions, upcoming events, pictures, videos, and more.
It’s fair to say the central focus is on the Facebook page walls, where any of those fans can scribble a message:
Scrolling backwards in time through the month of December, I counted over 60 unique wall posts by visitors from around the world. If the purpose of a wall is a guestbook, then it serves the purpose.
But the museum must realize these fans are manually opting to include a “Fan of MoMA” link on their personal pages, right? Can it hurt the museum to post a quick comment, even once a week, saying, “Thank you for your comments?”
What if someone asks a question, such as Marie Vlasic above? Is anyone responding?
I ask because MoMA is clearly participating on Twitter, with its 1,624 followers:
While I could clearly ask this question over Twitter (where it seems an answer would be more forthcoming than on both Facebook pages), there’s only so much I can write in 140 characters.
Also, might I suggest the person(s) behind @MuseumModernArt spruce up their bio section by following past advice to the @LATimes and better identify themselves?
About Ari Herzog
Hi Ari,
Thanks for the questions and for giving me a chance to respond. I am the digital marketing manager at The Museum of Modern Art and I am responsible for our Facebook page(s) and our Twitter account. As you might have ascertained, we’re relatively new to social media and we’re learning as we go, so I really appreciate this discussion and I think they’re all good points. I thought it might be best if I responded by the points you brought up.
1) The two Facebook pages – The reason we have two similar pages is because I was recently given the admin rights to another MoMA “Places” page that was created by a student outside of the museum. I contacted the creator of the page and offered to send him our content (he had an incorrect address for the museum and a logo I had never seen before). He offered that I become an admin to the page and take control of it. These two pages are actually about to be folded into one page. I contacted Facebook about the possibility of doing this and they replied that they could. I am literally waiting to hear back from them about when this can done so that I can notify our fans.
2) Responding to Facebook comments – I do respond to our fans’ posts. I think you might have a caught a lapse in my responses in the example you use for a couple of reasons. For one, it being the holidays, I had been away with family and made a decision to be offline. This coupled with the fact that the posts you mentioned are only a 1 day or so old, I think it’s a bit unfair to suggest that we’re not communicating with our fans.
I have found, though, that the Wall on our “page” is not a place people come back to frequently to keep up on conversations and comments. Perhaps (and I hope) I am wrong. In some cases I have responded to a fan via a direct message if I thought it was the most appropriate way to communicate with them. We are fortunate in the fact that a lot of fans’ posts are positive reviews of a recent visit to the museum or of a specific exhibit. Could I be responding to posts like these by saying “thank you” and/or trying to get the fan to expound on what they particularly enjoyed or got out of their visit? Yes, absolutely, and in thinking about this more, I will start doing that as much as I can. I agree that it’s important to let people know that there is a person behind the page and to foster conversation.
3) Placing my name in MoMA’s Twitter bio – I have been thinking about this lately as I saw that Shelly posted her name in @brooklynmuseum’s bio the other day and others are doing it more and more. I will most likely do this and appreciate you pointing this out!
As I said, I am learning as I go and am constantly learning how to improve communicating with our visitors. Thanks for considering us and I hope this discussion continues!
Cheers,
Victor Samra
(victor _ samra at moma dot org)
@ariherzog Hi Ari, Thanks for the blog post and the head’s up. I just posted a reply and hope to continue the discussion! [link to post]
– http://twitter.com/museummodernart/statuses/1084353327
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Thanks Arri!
When I was first new on Twitter — a whole month ago– MoMA followed me back. Cannot say what that means for an artist!
I am about to post a blog about the Short Awards and getting #art as a major recognized category.
Social media is a natural home for art and art lovers. It is kind of like the local cafe or tavern where we can congregate.
MoMA is certainly one of the leaders of how to use the media to share fine art news. I look forward to watching and participating as that reach grows.
Judy Rey Wasserman
Founder & Artist
Post Conceptual UnGraven Image Art Theory
Interesting discussion regarding institutional “brands” on Twitter and the identity of person behind it [link to post] What do you think?
– http://twitter.com/marialgilbert/statuses/1085535023
– Posted using Chat Catcher
Hi Ari, Victor,
Victor – thanks for the shout out. It’s nice to see someone noticing what we do. We copied that bio idea from @jetblue and it’s helping a lot – people need to know who’s tweeting (I get questions about that via Twitter, so it seems like people are noticing that little tidbit and that’s good). This is even more important when I see a comment like the one above from Judy Rey – it’s vital the people we interact with know not only *who* we are but *what* we do at the museum. In the case of both of us, we are not curators and that needs to be clear. We’ve got a few more changes coming in next few days which will help clarify even more so be on the lookout – I’ll be tweeting that update.
Both – ah, yes, Facebook. FB pages are nice because you can easily encapsulate what is going on at the museum in a single page, but they are a total disaster when it comes to actually reaching out and communicating with people. If people post to the wall, there’s no auto-notification when you post back and our experience, like Victor’s, is that people don’t check back. I just went into our page settings and disabled the wall and enabled the discussion forum (why, we didn’t have this enabled before I just don’t know) to see if that changes the interaction – I’m hoping there’s a chance for more meaningful dialog since there is reply notification in the forum feature (note, however, there is no notification to admins when a thread is started and that’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen). Generally, FB pages were designed as a “marketing feature” to be tied into FB advertising – they just were not developed with interaction in mind. IMHO, FB pages are a total community void, but a marketers dream and that’s why community does not work in that structure (community is not marketing, darn it). FB groups have a better structure for interaction, but since you can’t install apps onto group pages they are somewhat less fun for users. I’d love to see FB put some effort into both pages and groups. A lot of work could be done, but it doesn’t seen like a priority over there – especially on the group front (w/o a tie into their ads structure, there’s no revenue for them in making those changes, so why bother). FB frustrates the heck out of me.
Sorry, I know this was long-winded
Hi Victor, thanks for responding in kind. One suggestion I can offer off the cuff is to edit your FB page to indicate the wall is a guestbook, and that if anyone would like a quicker response to do x, y, or z, such as sending a FB message to so and so user or sending an email directly to you, etc. That way, someone wouldn’t inadvertently leave a wall message and hope for a weekend response.
Inclusion of your name in your Twitter profile is a contentious issue these days, but I support it wholeheartedly. You’re a brand, and I like to know there’s a person behind the brand. Not unlike posting a comment as “Victor” and not “Museum.”
Shelley, I’d enjoy chatting more with you about the connections between marketing, communication, and community. It sounds like you’re distinguishing them, e.g. Facebook for marketing. I’d argue marketing and communication are the same from the consumer’s perspective.
Judy, what do you think? Is your relationship with a museum, such as MoMA on Twitter, one of marketing, communication, or something else?
Oh, I’m delighted to see this post. When I did a seminar (Social Media for Luddites) in mid-November, I did a comparison case study of MOMA’s Facebook presence and that of the Vancouver Art Gallery. MOMA won hands down for a whole bunch of reasons: listing its exhibits, number of group members, inclusion of links to its podcasts, and allowing people to post Flickr photos taken at gallery events. Oddly, the VAG had two ‘groups’ as well – and it was unclear whether either of them were official. What was clear, though, was that social media requires a commitment that MOMA is clearly prepared to make (I’m with you on the low-tech holiday season, Victor, although I couldn’t resist creating a blog for my cousin’s band as a tiny thank you for being my host for a week).
Ruth Seeley´s last blog post..Why communicating with your stakeholders doesn’t constitute spin
Ari, this is a great discussion (and I’m so happy to see that Victor responded in the comments). A friend of mine recently started a blog discussing the intersection of art, culture, and technology and her most recent posts (see http://www.juliaxgulia.com) are in fact studying MOMA’s online presence. Thought you might be interested to read another perspective.
Hi Ari,
Nope, not what I’m saying. Community is community, not marketing and that’s the way we think of it. Unfortunately, Facebook just does not give institutions the tools to really work with community well on their site (see lots of reasons in rant above). I just think if you are going to criticize MoMA for their effort, you’ve got to look at why the tool may or may not work well too and that’s what I was getting at in my comment. I’d love to see FB put in some effort to make pages and groups more community oriented, but they are not doing it which makes our jobs pretty difficult if we are there for the community, not there to market (and that is what the BkM is there for-community).
Shelley´s last blog post..The 2009 Mut Expedition – back in the field