"Content is at the heart of our social strategy"

The Museum of London is on the journey toward social maturity. Andrew Marcus tracks its progress and explains what the future holds

Each of the panellists at BLOOM Worldwide’s Social Media Week breakfast, of which I was one, was asked to plot their business against the consultancy’s social business maturity framework. Is your organisation experimental, tactical, formalised, mature or trailblazing?, we were asked. If an experimental organisation is one which cautiously dips its toe in the social ocean, a trailblazing firm is the synchronised swimming team of modern communications. My self-assessment is that the Museum of London is tactical, but a tactical organisation with big ambitions. Let me explain.

The Museum of London is changing. Under the leadership of new CEO, Sharon Ament, we are transforming our business to deliver five goals: reach more people, become better known, engage every London school child, stretch thinking and stand on our own two feet. Ultimately we will increase annual visitors from 650,000 to 1,500,000 requiring a major comms push and to exceed the expectations of our visitors every time they encounter our brand – physical or digital.

On the one hand I am exceptionally lucky because content marketing could not be easier. We tell the story of the world’s greatest city and a passion for sharing this story unifies the team. In many respects social comes naturally to us. Bet you didn’t know that the three-piece suit was invented in London on 7 October 1666? Now you do, as do the thousands who watched our YouTube video on the topic. That’s just one example from millions of possibilities. Trust me, I’m not exaggerating.

Content is at the heart of our social strategy. Earlier this year we appointed our first web and social media editor who will work on achieving our goals through digital channels. As an aside, it’s easy to talk about social or digital as something in a vacuum but my philosophy is that like every communications tool it works best when integrated into the marketing mix.

You might ask why, if everything is so rosy at the Museum of London, are you only two-steps along BLOOM’s five-step maturity framework? And you’d be justified for doing so. The barriers to trailblazing are not unique to us. For example, one is to do with compliance. As they currently stand, our IP policies are incompatible with the Ts and Cs of most social media platforms. In effect this means we prohibit content sharing, particularly images. Between you and me, Selfridges’ original art deco lift on display in the museum would look amazing on Instagram, but to share this would break policy so we have no Instagram account. This might sound bizarre, but I bet if you delved deep you would discover a conflict between your own organisation’s policies and social media Ts and Cs.

Practically speaking, work is underway to make the Museum of London more social and I’m confident that if BLOOM asks me to assess our maturity next year, I’d rank the organisation as formalised. Our social media KPIs link directly to the business objectives of our five-year plan. And, having paid little attention to Google Analytics in the past, we are just beginning to think about what they could tell us about our visitors and their behaviour, both to help us reach more people and become better known.

Our mission is to inspire a passion for London. This is an intrinsically social goal, in the old sense of the word. As we become increasingly social, in the new sense, the Museum of London’s ability to deliver this mission and make an impact will grow and grow.

Andrew Marcus is the deputy head of communications at the Museum of London. Find him on Twitter at @andrewmarcus.