The world of museums and web 2.0: links between social media and the number of visitors in museums

Abstract

With the advent of Web 2.0, the life of museums has undergone a profound change: today, almost all museums in the world use social media as a communication strategy with their visitors. However, only a few papers have analyzed the role of social media in attracting a greater number of visitors to museums. For this reason, the aim of this paper is to analyze how museums use social media to improve their relationship with visitors and, at the same time, to ensure a better positioning of museums on the market by increasing their number. We tried to find some answers in terms of checking whether a direct connection exists between the number of social media subscribers and the number of visitors to the museums. Secondly, we looked into the rating of museums on social media and analyzed whether ratings do indeed contribute to increasing the number of visitors. To answer these questions, we conducted a research on 14 museums which are considered to be “popular” – seven located in Bucharest, Romania and seven located in Paris, France. The reasons why we chose this mix of museums are the following: the chosen museums are representative for the two European capitals; there is a variety of social networks used by these museums, which indicates an ongoing interest (in the case of the French museum) or a more recent interest (in the case of the Romanian museums) for personalizing the relationship with visitors through social media. The qualitative and quantitative analysis carried out refers to the year 2018 and the data was collected from the selected museums’ official websites and their respective Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TripAdvisor and Google pages. Also, as an added benefit from processing the information gathered through the specialized studies and from the statistical data regarding the museums, a “sketch” of both the typical French and the typical Romanian museum visitor was obtained. As one can expect, there are both similarities and differences between the two portraits, despite the fact that France and Romania have a similar cultural background. If the quantitative analysis suggests that the investment in social media is desirable, regardless of the size and notoriety of the museum, the qualitative analysis leads us to the conclusion that personalizing the relationship with visitors becomes a “must” for any museum regardless of its country of origin, in the sense of creating differentiated strategies for each type of visitor and, in particular, for Millennials, in terms of competitive advantage.