Open Forum

Greetings from Madison! I'm writing to see how others track impact on social media with the content that is shared. (Apologies for any duplication.)

Currently we track in-person attendance, in-person program numbers, and in-person outreach numbers (where a staff member goes off site to give programs) as well as tracking off-site visitation to traveling exhibits or interaction with travel trunks in schools. However, as we are moving to more and more digital programming, including live programs and as we see in the future our in-person programming might be supplemented by live streaming of the same event, we're looking to our peers about how they track the numbers of participants in their programs at a distance. How do you track your social media, video sharing, and website engagement?
Some scenarios that we are debating how to count them:

I. We offered a Drink and Draw program in-person for a few years and this Friday we are going to go on-line with it. We have over 100 people signed up for it and expect more and the reach is much farther than our local audience. Because of this, we will probably keep the on-line component even when we return to in-person programming. How would you count and track the event participation in this case? Some is digital, some is in-person and the two together is total participation. If you were to report this in an attendance number for over all visits to the museum, how would you report it?

II. You create a video story about an artifact your collection. You put it up on Facebook as an ad, which means it gets served to a wider audience than your FB page with some money behind it. Is this considered a program? An educational activity? How would you count the reach and interaction on this particular video?

III. You post about photos in your collection three times a week. Where would you count the engagement with that photo? As an education program? As digital outreach? As an online exhibit?

 IV. You have a virtual exhibit tour on your website. You get pageviews from Google Analytics. How would you count those numbers? As an outreach activity? As a digital outreach activity? You also have traveling exhibits that have people visit them in other communities. Do the numbers for the virtual exhibit get included with the traveling exhibit numbers because they are all outreach?

V. Staff participates in presenting online workshops, speeches, panel discussions, and other outreaches - many of them events that normally would be (and have previously been) done in-person. What numbers do you track, and what category (digital outreach, advertising, outreach, other) do you put them in?

I appreciate any and all perspectives.

Christopher,

I am so glad you posed this question. Unfortunately I don't have expertise to offer but I have tried to pose questions like this for different webinars I've been seeing pop up. I haven't seen any answers come up yet. I would love to follow this thread and learn more.

Best,

Sara

Greetings from Madison! I'm writing to see how others track impact on social media with the content that is shared. (Apologies for any duplication.)

Currently we track in-person attendance, in-person program numbers, and in-person outreach numbers (where a staff member goes off site to give programs) as well as tracking off-site visitation to traveling exhibits or interaction with travel trunks in schools. However, as we are moving to more and more digital programming, including live programs and as we see in the future our in-person programming might be supplemented by live streaming of the same event, we're looking to our peers about how they track the numbers of participants in their programs at a distance. How do you track your social media, video sharing, and website engagement?
Some scenarios that we are debating how to count them:

I. We offered a Drink and Draw program in-person for a few years and this Friday we are going to go on-line with it. We have over 100 people signed up for it and expect more and the reach is much farther than our local audience. Because of this, we will probably keep the on-line component even when we return to in-person programming. How would you count and track the event participation in this case? Some is digital, some is in-person and the two together is total participation. If you were to report this in an attendance number for over all visits to the museum, how would you report it?

II. You create a video story about an artifact your collection. You put it up on Facebook as an ad, which means it gets served to a wider audience than your FB page with some money behind it. Is this considered a program? An educational activity? How would you count the reach and interaction on this particular video?

III. You post about photos in your collection three times a week. Where would you count the engagement with that photo? As an education program? As digital outreach? As an online exhibit?

 IV. You have a virtual exhibit tour on your website. You get pageviews from Google Analytics. How would you count those numbers? As an outreach activity? As a digital outreach activity? You also have traveling exhibits that have people visit them in other communities. Do the numbers for the virtual exhibit get included with the traveling exhibit numbers because they are all outreach?

V. Staff participates in presenting online workshops, speeches, panel discussions, and other outreaches - many of them events that normally would be (and have previously been) done in-person. What numbers do you track, and what category (digital outreach, advertising, outreach, other) do you put them in?

I appreciate any and all perspectives.