If you’re interested in which museum is doing what in social media, then you must check out Museum Analytics.
It describes itself as “an online platform for sharing and discussing information about museums and their audiences”. So far there is data for over 3000 museums, including some of the world’s most famous such as MoMA, the Louvre, Tate, and the Smithsonian. (But it’s not just the big global museum brands – I counted at least 20 Australian museums, ranging from the major institutions to a wide range of small and regional ones).
The site lists the most visited museum websites (Metropolitan Museum of Art by a fair margin in 2010 it appears) and the top Facebook likes and Twitter follows. Museums are also individually listed and you can see what’s happening closer to home – for instance these are the summaries for Australia and Adelaide respectively. But it’s not just website and social media – the site also has numbers for onsite visitors as well (although it is the data about online activity that makes this site stand out).
On the topic of museum statistics, there has recently been quite a lively discussion on the ICOM Group on LinkedIn (list members only but it’s easy to sign up) about the information and statistics collected by governments and other bodies around the world. If you’re interested in comparing and contrasting museum statistics from around the world (or even comparing which data are collected, by whom, and why), then I suggest you sign up.
One resource I was directed to from the ICOM discussion was a Culture 24’s project about how to evaluate museum success online. You can download a detailed report about the research project as well as tools and metrics for evaluating online and social media presence. It’s a must if you’re getting to grips with tools like Google Analytics or just wondering how best to track your online presence.
Anyone interested in learning more about museum benchmarking in the United States — or, even better, any museum that wants to contribute to the leading benchmarking exercise in the US — should visit http://www.aam-us.org/mbo. “Museum Benchmarking Online” from the American Association of Museums was developed to capture and compare data about museum finances and operations. Not as much about audiences, but it’s important to have comprehensive views of all related data.
Thanks for the link Philip. For Australian data on museum financing, there are data compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and a summary can be found here: http://reganforrest.com/2010/12/more-on-museum-funding-and-staffing/.
It would be interesting to see how the “typical” Australian museum’s funding model differs from that of the US. I remember when I was looking through the ASTC sourcebook of Science Center statistics a couple of years ago, there were marked difference between the US and centres from other countries with respect to operating cost per visitor and other benchmarks (with a caveat non-US examples were relatively limited in number in this particular sample so not necessarily representative).
Best wishes,
Regan
It would be great if Museums Analytics had the same statistics on likes, comments and retweets as a percentage of the total number of fans or followers. Then it would actually be easier to compare the level of engagement between what could be two very differently sized organisations. For example, who is more engaging with their fans – the worldly institution with 20,000 fans who get 50 comments on a post, or the smaller organisation with 2,000 fans who get 20 comments on a post?
Good point Andrew.
I have seen a few discussions along these lines recently – headline numbers are well and good, but they tend to mask the really interesting things that are happening at a small and local level in favour of the big names and blockbusters.
This is just as relevant in the real and virtual worlds.
The challenge is the paucity of comparable data – that’s why developments like the Culture 24 report are interesting to me, because they potentially give us a common language and shared definitions that allow us to go beyond the “bums on seats” or “fans and followers” perspective.