With the outbreak of covid-19 museums and galleries were forced to close to assist in the reduction of the spread of the virus. This resulted in museums turning to social media and online platforms to engage with their existing patrons and even expand to new audiences.
Museums leveraged their existing Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages, but very few expanded beyond to new media such as TikTok. TikTok is the latest social media craze sweeping the globe. It is a platform mostly centred around singing and lip-synching movies, music or soundbites, along with dancing. They are short clips and are generally centred around viral challenges.
TikTok is especially popular among younger audiences (13-25 years) compared to Twitter which has an older demographic, one already fairly committed to museums, Facebook has an ageing population and Instagram’s demographics are also ageing albeit more slowly than Facebook.
Why TikTok might be the key to saving museums
Museums need engagement from younger generations to secure their future survival.
Research shows that if people do not engage with museums when they are young, they are much less likely to when they are an adult. Of those who did not attend museums when they were young, 69% will not visit a museum as an adult.
What museums do now to engage young people secures their patronage for the next 50 years.
To engage young people, many museums are turning to social media. This is a sound strategy as more than a third of respondents aged between 18-30 stated that technology is a big factor in their level of engagement with a museum, and more than half make their decision to visit an arts institution based on the social media presence of that museum.
Based on this research, it is important for museums to follow digital trends and be where the youth of today are to attract audiences into the future.
Which museums have embraced the TikTok challenge?
The Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania are leading the way engaging a younger audience using TikTok. They have been able to use their platform in an educational format, through using puns, humour and music to create engaging short clips. This has attracted 155,700 followers, and anywhere from 8,000 to 1.7m views on each of their videos.
The CMNH have been able to stay true to their mission of education while using the latest social media platform to engage the younger audiences that are the future of the museum’s financial security. The CMNH joined the platform in January 2020, just before the outbreak of covid-19 and were able to increase their presence on the platform during their closure.
The Uffizi Galleries in Florence and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam joined TikTok when their museums were closed due to covid-19. They have leveraged popular inbuilt filters and used top charted music and humour to create engaging and at times outrageous content.
A missed opportunity for The Met
During covid-19 quarantine, museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), were using their social media platforms (Twitter and Instagram) to set challenges. The most popular of which were #betweenartandquarantine and #mettwinning where people were encouraged to recreate famous paintings from within their own homes. These challenges allowed museums to showcase their permanent collections which are often ignored by visitors to the institution, preferring instead to visit their temporary blockbuster exhibit.
While great success was had by museums using this challenge to draw attention to their spaces, and in increasing their followership, The Met missed a huge opportunity by not engaging with TikTok for these challenges.
This is surprising because one of TikTok’s main components is challenges and The Met were early adopters of TikTok, including developing a partnership with them in early 2019.
Young people engaged with the #betweenartandquarantine and #mettwinning on TikTok but because The Met did not set the challenge on TikTok, they missed a captive and engaged audience. Thus, missing out on an opportunity to gain followers on a booming social platform.
This is a major oversight by The Met.
The Met provides incredible opportunities for their younger members, including social and educational events specifically designed for them. Based on this desire to connect with and engage the 11–30 year-old age group joining TikTok and actively using it seems like an obvious step.
Museums need to engage with Generation Z to ensure their future security
If museums can draw the younger generation in and provide a positive experience, they will have new supporters for their institution for life.
Numerous galleries have specific programs for younger members, and if they are serious about engaging with them, they need to evolve their social media strategy to incorporate TikTok.
Tiktok provides a new opportunity for museums to advertise their collections, engage with a new audience, and draw people into their centre.
Museums, it is time, you are now on the clock.
Curatorial Compass 