Including...the release of the Arts Marketing Association 2023 conference programme, Bluesky and how museums use tone of voice.

May 11, 2023

Hello and welcome to the latest edition of the Digital Snapshot, bringing you all the latest digital news, ideas, tips and guidance for the arts, culture, museums and heritage world.

Latest News

  • The Arts Marketing Association has released their 2023 conference programme. The theme is Audiences at the Heart and includes a keynote from the Marketing Director at Yorkshire Tea. I'm mainly going to see whether he throws free teabags out into the crowd.
  • TikTok isn't doing itself any favours in the whole front-for-the-Chinese-government department by tracking a journalist via her cat's account. With more and more governments banning the app it's a good time to consider an eventual exit strategy (and that exit strategy is shifting to Instagram Reels so you can be tracked by the US government instead).
  • Geoffrey Hinton - the 'Godfather of AI' - has quit Google so he could warn of AI's potential for misinformation, upending the job market and basically resulting in Skynet. One of the main dangers is the arms race sparked by the public release of ChatGPT, prompting others like Google and Bing to release their own imperfect products to protect their market share.

Useful / bookmarkable

  • Alyson Webb, from Frankly, Green + Webb, shared insights from their content and online strategy research programme at Museum Tech 2023 last week, focusing on the makeup of social media audiences for museums participating in the programme. You can find the slides here, including an interesting audience segmentation on slide 26.
  • Hear insights from case study participants who spent nine months experimenting with hybrid working at Culture24's free online webinar on 12 May. Get tickets here.
  • There's been a bit of buzz around Bluesky, the decentralised social media app by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Invites are rare at the moment but it's worth keeping an eye on, and you can get an overview of the platform here.

Distracting / entertaining / inspiring

Good Reads

  • I often get asked about online tone of voice, so it's helpful to have this article by Anna Faherty to point people to: How museums use tone of voice to reveal their hidden personalities. There are some great case studies, including a new campaign by the Natural History Museum which feels "closer to social media memes than more traditional museum advertising."

And that’s all for this edition.

If you come across any interesting or noteworthy content or have any of your own projects to share please do send it my way.

Don't forget we're here to support you with training, research and consultancy, so please do get in touch.

You can find all past editions of the Digital Snapshot here.

You can find me or The Audience Agency on Twitter.

See you soon.

Adam Koszary

Head of Digital, The Audience Agency

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