SW Digital Audit PilotProject

Evaluation

Vicky Dawson

For Gloucestershire County Council

July 2013


Contents

page

1. Introduction3

2. Headlines3

3. Project outcomes and their achievement3

4. Project description4

4.1 The project4

4.2 The participants5

4.3 The framework5

4.4 Evaluation6

5. Conclusions and recommendations6

5.1 Selection of the participating museums7

5.2 The framework7

5.3 Selection and profile of consultants8

5.4 Project timing8

5.5 Project sustainability8

5.6 Cost analysis9

5.7 Conclusion9

Appendix 1 – The project proposal for the museums11

Appendix 2 – Detailed evaluation 13

SW Digital Audit Pilot Project

  1. Introduction

The Digital Audit Project is a pilot project run by Gloucestershire CC on behalf of the SW Museum Development Partnership (SWMDP) with funding from Arts Council England (ACE). It is an opportunity to test the development of a sustainable and flexible model for driving higher levels of digital engagement by museums in the South West.

It is being delivered to support the attainment of the following Key Performance Indicator agreed between ACE and the SWMDP:

Indicate what you are doing to enable the organisations you support to deependigital engagement by new and existing audiences

‘The Museum Skills programme will deliver digital engagement training to at least 10 museums in each annual skills programme. Each yearMuseum Development Officers will identify 5 priority museums in each county who have the greatest development needs and they will be targeted for support.’

  1. Headlines

Drawing up and delivering a digital strategy is a whole organisation activity.

Museums don’t have any choice but to engage digitally in today’s marketplace.

It is more appropriate to talk about digital communication and engagement than marketing or putting collections online.

Successful digital engagement is a conversation and relies on interesting content and identified personalities (me-brand) rather than how loud you can shout.

The project exceeded expectations and has contributed to the successful development of strategies that will guide the museums’ digital engagement activity.

The project would have benefited from including a six month ‘check up’ of all participants to troubleshoot any issues with implementing their strategy.

  1. Project Outcomes and success in achieving them
  1. A tested framework/methodology for the development of individual digital engagement strategies by museums of different sizes, across the region;

Four museums of different sizes and governance structures, from Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Dorset and Cornwallparticipated in the project. The framework of digital audit and developmental workshop led by a digital marketing specialistwas conceived and tested. Evaluation has demonstrated that the framework was successful on several levels and highlighted areas where it could be improved.

  1. Targeted improvement of the digital engagement strategies of four different sized museums (as identified by the Accreditation scalability criteria) across the SW;

The four museums, at the point of writing, all have strategies in draft form. Three have been passed to the consultant for comment and feedback given. The fourth aims to have their strategy complete by the end of July. Evaluation has demonstrated a high level of recognition by the museums of the value of the strategies to help them improve their digital engagement and a commitment by them to implement the action plans set out in them.

  1. The workforce in the selected museums have learnt new skills and have a strategy and understanding of how to apply them for the benefit of their institutions;

The workforce in all the museums has acquired and applied new skills and understanding which are already enabling them to improve the digital engagement of their institutions. Areas for further training have also been identified and will be communicated to MDOs and local and regional skills development programmes.

  1. Creation of four case studies to disseminate the learning more widely, through publication on the SW Fed website and presentation at county group meetings.

One museum will be delivering a case study at a Museum Skills workshop in September 2013. The others are willing to share their learning at sub-regional meetings as required and will consider making their strategies available as model documents once they are complete.

  1. Project description

4.1 The project

The project ran between mid March and the end of July 2013. It had been planned to complete it by the end of May, but existing commitments at the participating museums (one was bringing phase 1 of a major HLF bid to completion, another was undergoing major governance changes) and family illness caused delay.

The project was conceived on the strength of data gathered from delegates attending the major conference, Museums online: making the web work for you held on 4th March 2013, which was the culmination of the ACE Strategic Support Fund funded SW Digital Development Project (SWDDP)[1].

Pre-conference questionnaires revealed that 31of the 33museums represented (94%) did not have digital strategies. Institutions of all sizes were represented in these figures. In the conference evaluation 28 delegates (84%) committed to positive action, including drawing up an online strategy, discussion with colleagues and putting what they’ve learnt into practice.

The availability of funding for a ‘ready to go’ project late on in the financial year provided an ideal opportunity to build on the momentum that the SWDDP had generated and the gaps in museum strategy it had revealed.

4.2 The participants

Four museums were invited to participate, selected on the basis of their responses to the pre-conference questionnaire (they didn’t have a digital strategy) and their conference evaluation (share learning with colleagues, re-asses website and draw up a strategy).

They were also selected to give a varied spectrum of size, governance and geographical spread. They were:

TrowbridgeMuseum – Town Council funded museum, XX paid staff and a well developed team of volunteers. In the initial stages of assessing the feasibility of moving to a new location.

CoriniumMuseum – District council funded museum XX paid staff, volunteers. Subject to an outsourcing process by the council, the museum was awaiting the decision as to which bidder would be awarded the contract.

ShaftesburyAbbeyMuseum and Garden – independent charitable trust, run almost entirely by volunteers. One part time administrator.

PorthcurnoTelegraphMuseum – owned and operated by The Cable & Wireless Porthcurno and Collections Trust (The PK Trust) which is an independent educational charity and heritage trust; XX paid staff and large team of volunteers. The museum is just completing phase 1 of a 2 phase £1M+ HLF project to build a new store and learning space and redisplay the museum.

Alongside the invitation to participate, each museum was given a ‘contract’ which set out what it would receive by participating in the project and what would be asked of them in return. A copy of this document is in Appendix 1.

Consultants

The speed with which the project had to be set up and the value of the contract resulted in two consultancies which had been involved with the SWDDP being approached to carry out the work –

  • John Brunsdon of Tickbox Marketing was appointed to carry out the audit of each museum’s digital activity. He worked with his business partner Claire Sully, a digital marketing expert, to deliver the follow up workshops. Tickbox provide high-level marketing and engagement strategy for the public and charity sectors and technical implementation of online and offline marketing projects.
  • Vicky Dawson was appointed to manage and evaluate the project. Vicky is a freelance consultant who was project manager of the SWDDP.

4.3 The framework

Digital audit

John Brunsdon audited the digital activity of each museum through telephone interview with staff, a site visit (except Porthcurno), analysis of the website and other online activity. For Trowbridge and Porthcurno he was able to access the sites’ Google Analytics data.

He then drew up bespoke reports for each museum. These summarised current activity, indicated where improvements could be made and put forward topics to be covered in the follow up workshops.

Digital workshops

A workshop was held in each museum. As many as possible of the staff/volunteers who are involved in the museum’s digital activity were present. John, Claire and Vicky attended each workshop.

Each began with a presentation about marketing in the digital age by Claire Sully and went on to tackle questions that had been raised in the audit reports and outlined a structure for developing a digital strategy. If time allowed, a start was made on drafting the strategy.

Digital strategy

Each museum was then required to complete their strategy in their own time. They were encouraged to submit a draft to the consultants and project manager and offered additional email/phone help if required.

4.4 Evaluation

The participating museums, the consultants undertaking the audit and the project manager contributed views to assess the impact of the project: what went well, what could be improved and the value of rolling it out more widely.

Evaluation was principally by telephone interview. At Porthcurno an evaluation video was also made in order to present the benefits of the project more widely. Detailed feedback is recorded in Appendix 2.

The following provided feedback for the evaluation:

  • Clare Lewis, Customer Service Officer, CoriniumMuseum
  • Annabel Turner, AdministratorShaftesburyAbbeyMuseum & Garden
  • David Birks, Education OfficerTrowbridgeMuseum
  • Rachel Webster, Marketing OfficerPorthcurnoTelegraphMuseum
  • John Brunsdon and Claire Sully, Tickbox Marketing
  • Vicky Dawson, project manager
  1. Conclusions and recommendations

The project was successful, meeting its objectives and exceeding the expectations of the participating museums. The consultant felt that the format of the project worked well. Further thought needs to go into tailoring the project to the needs of the small volunteer run museum without professional staff. Further support on the practical aspects of digital communications needs to be provided either through training or signposting to online resources.

5.1 Selection of participating museums

Selection of the museums by targeted invitation meant that museums that would not have participated otherwise were included in the project. Successful targeting depends on having an understanding of museums’ readiness for developing digital engagement. Museum Development Officers (MDOs) would be able to provide this information if the project were to be rolled out more widely. An open application process is more democratic but more time intensive on project management.

At the end of the project there was some concern about whether two of the participants would actually have the capacity, culture and ability to implement the strategy. However, the evaluation demonstrates that even these have already made some changes to their digital engagement they feel enthused to do more and have drawn up a strategy to guide them. Further refinements to the framework (5.2, 5.3 and 5.4 below) and the implementation of the recommendations for sustainability (5.5) should provide the necessary support.

Should the pilot be rolled out as a fully fledged project a targeted invitation to museums supported by an expression of interest would be a good way of selecting participants. It is essential for the museum management to fully endorse participation and indeed to participate in the process.

5.2 The framework

The combination of an audit of current activity, a written report and then a follow up workshop worked well, with participants getting a lot out of every stage of the process. They all felt that it helped them tackle the challenge of writing a digital strategy as well raising awareness and securing commitment from colleagues to contribute towards the process and the implementation.

The very real challenge of working with such a range of size and type of museum, each with its own culture, structure and style of leadership meant that the workshops had to be tailored to each museum. The framework became tighter and the consultant was able to build on the experience and deliver a more focussed workshop as the project progressed. They are now offering a similar service to other clients.

There was some surprise with the marketing focus of the workshop as this hadn’t been highlighted in the list of suggested topics to be covered on the day in the audit report. This led to some disappointment that there was not more practical demonstration of, for example, how to set up a Facebook page, use Mailchimp or achieve Search Engine Optimisation.

However, the consultants’ recommendation is that to run such workshops would not be a good use of their time, as there is plenty of online instruction on how to do these things. The consensus is that they would be better delivered through county museum groups or the Museum Skills Programme.

This approach is endorsed by the project manager as it became clear as the project proceeded that the museums needed to understand the power of digital, the persona they wished to communicate through it and the audience they wanted to communicate with before they could go into detailed technical matters.

The audit will work best if:

  • It is compiled through a mix of telephone interview and site visit and meeting
  • All sections of the workforce are able to contribute to the process, either by meeting the consultant when he visits the museum, conference/Skype calls or contributing information to the museum lead prior to his/her contact with the consultant;
  • A museum’s Google Analytics data is available to the consultant

The workshop will work best if:

  • All sections of the workforce are represented;
  • It takes account of the museum’s own priorities and context as well as the needs identified by the consultant;
  • The objectives and content of the day are agreed between the museum lead and the consultant beforehand;
  • The terms ‘communication’ and ‘engagement’ are used in preference to ‘marketing’ which can be seen as a niche activity and so not relevant to some of the workforce;
  • The examples of digital engagement used by the consultants to illustrate points made include a significant number of examples from within the museum sector;
  • It is held in a proper meeting room with projection facilities and sufficient space for all participants to work in;
  • Any further training needs highlighted during the session are notified to the MDO and Museum Skills Programme.

5.3 Selection and profile of consultants

The selection of a consultant with limited exposure to the museum sector was, in the main, a plus. The company brought a fresh perspective and digital communications expertise which was appropriate, extremely valuable and much appreciated by the museums. It however did lack some knowledge of the challenges faced particularly by volunteer run museums. As a significant proportion of museums in the region fall into this category and they are the ones most in need of support, it is important that they should be able to benefit from this type of intervention.

The project benefited from having a project manager who had also worked on the previous regional digital project, the SWDDP, and who knew the region, its museums and the support infrastructure well. This should ensure that the museums are directed to further sources of help at the end of the project.

To compensate for any lack of sector knowledge, any roll out based on this pilot should:

  • Ensure the consultants are fully briefed about individual museums, the landscape within the sector and the challenges currently faced by museums and that they have access to existing branding work, development plans and organisational priorities;
  • Be clear at the outset that the project encompasses all aspects of digital engagement, and encourage them to source more examples from within the sector as well as ones from outside it. These could be supplied as a handlist for future reference if there is not time to show them in the workshop.

5.4 Project timing

The project took longer than anticipated to complete, due to other commitments, illness and staff availability. Despite major pressures at work all the museums felt it was an opportune moment to participate in the digital audit and were very glad to have done so.

To improve the timing and flow of the project:

  • A longer lead in time should be allowed to brief the consultant and the museums more fully;
  • Dates for the audits, the workshops and the completion of the strategies should be agreed at the outset so that all parties have time to put the dates in their diaries.

5.5 Project sustainability

All participants felt that they had learned new skills and gained understanding over the course of the project which will enable them to make step changes to their museum’s digital engagement activity.

The framework developed, whilst being feasible as a self-help toolkit, is best delivered by someone with both digital and communications experience to provide not only expertise but also objective assessment.

Funding does not stretch to providing on-going expert support for the museums as they develop and implement their strategies or to facilitate a review of progress against their objectives in six months time.

To militate against museums struggling to fully implement their digital strategy, it is important to:

  • Have the full support of the museum’s management and integrate the digital strategy within its overall planning processes;
  • Include MDOs in the process of developing the strategy, ideally through inviting them to the workshops, but at least by including them in the circulation list for the audit report and the final strategy. MDOs would then be the first point of call for the museum, should then need any subsequent help;
  • Support the museums access the skills training they need by pointing them to appropriate online resources, running bite sized ‘how to’ sessions at county group meetings and delivering appropriate training via the Museum Skills Programme;
  • Ensure participant museums fulfil their commitment to sharing their learning by disseminating their experience through their county group, as a case study for the skills programme or sharing their strategy as a model document in the SW Fed digital resources.

In addition, it should be considered: