The Natural History Museum of Florence and its social media communication strategies
Best Practice Sessionalba scarpellini, Italy
Published paper: The Natural History Museum of Florence and its social media communication strategies
Alba Scarpellini – alba.scarpellini@unifi.it
The Natural History Museum of Florence (MSN) always needs to communicate its collections and the knowledge gained from their research activities.
New technologies and social networks offer many tools that allow a better communication and more diffuse.
It was quickly moved from a uni-directional communication of the conventional type, for a two-way communication where the distinction between the sender and the receiver is increasingly blurred.
The MSN has built up its presence on a social network to extend and differentiate the opportunities for participation to propose to his audience by using the communication resources and relational of web 2.0 .
Thanks to the exhibition “Virtual Renaissance Art in Second Life and Virtual Words” (2007/8) conceived and curated by Mario Gerosa, the MSN was the first university museum to have a “avatar” on Second Life .
The exhibition Dinosaurs in flesh and bones (2012) and the event Digital Invasions (2013) have allowed the MSN to create a strong effect of engagement with the social community.
The Msn has created a profile on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, Foursquare, Youtube, so it is the more social italian naturalistic museum.
The December 30, 2013 Facebook friends were 25,000 in second place was the Muse of Trento with 20,500 friends.
In 2012, the MSN has obtained a special mention by ICOM to be been able to constitute the social media team, invest budget for communication in a social campaign that generated the interest of thousands of people, and have been able to compare with users of all ages.
The strategy of social media marketing has been successful, because on published content has been able to create the dialog between users and the museum is between the users themselves. Not only counts the number of people involved, but especially because they have an active role and participate.
Most people comment on our content, the greater the chance of getting a higher profile and to acquire additional “friends.”
The MSN analyzes the impact of its communication on Social media. They make available useful tools for doing the statistics (Facebook Insights, Museum Analytics and Google analitycs.)
The tables and graphs give us lots of information about followers and this allows the MSN to understand what are the post that create the greater interaction with the users and which post are not successful and should be modified .
To overcome the crisis of these years the Italian museums should find money using the best marketing and communication strategies.
Unfortunately, in Italy, there are a few museums that have professionals with specific responsibilities for communication and marketing.
For this reason it is important to invest in training and give a proper professional qualification to those already working in these areas. In the future, the MSN will implement the best strategies to promote and engage visitors. If the MSN will be able to engage people who visit it these will be ready to support its causes and its projects.
Proposal type: formal paper
Reference material on http://www.slideshare.net/albascarpel