How to measure online success?

By Erik Hekman on 5 November 2011

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to download and read the research report from Culture24 focussing on museums and the Internet. Online strategy and how to measure online success were central in this four year during study. Developing effective ways to define, measure and evaluate the success of online activities is an issue faced by all parts of the cultural sector. Organizations regularly invest in cultural websites, social media activities and online services without a clear idea of what the services are trying to achieve, or their intended audience.

The key findings of this research were:

1. Be clear ‘what’ you are trying to do online and ‘who’ it is for
2. Focus your online investment
3. Recognize the value, and the limits, of social media
4. Questions whether the web is enabling you to reach new audiences
5. Standardize methods of exporting online metrics to external stakeholders

This report couldn’t have come at a better time since I am also participating in a similar project in The Netherlands concerning museums and online/offline metrics. I’m currently creating lists of items one can measure online and creating web scrapers to obtain data from Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and LinkedIn. My main goal is to monitor on a regular base the online activities of museums. Once we have gathered enough data it should possible to conduct content analyses. But first I need data!

Thanks to the research report I know we are on the right track and it gave me insight into some metrics I did not think of (e.g. Google Analytics).
Download the research report at WeAreCulture24

tagged with: metrics, museums, social media

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