Ep. 14 — How To Do a Communications Audit
In this really short episode, Amy walks you through a Do-it-Yourself communications audit for your museum. Doing a communications audit will give you that birds eye view of all of the places you use your brand messaging for your museum.
Show Links
Resources mentioned:
Audit Your Messaging Blog Post
Book a Call
More FREE resources:
Museum Metrics Tracker Template: https://bit.ly/amysmuseummetrics
Planning Calendar for Museums: https://bit.ly/2024museumcal
People First Framework Guide for Museums: https://bit.ly/4PSguide_lovemymuseum
Check out the website at: www.lovemymuseum.com
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00]
On this really short episode, I'm going to walk you through a DIY communications audit for your museum. Doing a communications audit will give you that birds eye view of all of the places you use your brand messaging for your museum. Let's get started.
Welcome to the Love my Museum podcast. I'm your host, Amy Kehs and I love museums. I also happen to be a brand strategist and communications expert. Today, we're going to audit your museum's external communications. This is going to be a really short episode, because I want you to be able to refer back to this episode whenever you need to do this. The first thing that I do for all of my consulting clients is a communications audit.
[00:01:00]
Depending on the client, this may include both internal and external communications. Today, we're only looking at external communications. A communications audit is something that you can do on your own though and today I'm going to walk you through part of what I do so that you can do it yourself to see if your brand messaging is clear, consistent, confident and staying on track. Before we begin, let's talk about what we are auditing. We are looking at your external communications, all of the ways that you talk to anyone outside your museum's walls. Now there are several audiences that this might include. Examples might be your past visitors, potential visitors, the media, donors, community leaders and other government officials.
[00:02:00]
And for each audience, you should identify how you communicate with them, what you communicate, how often, and who's responsible. For example, maybe you have a newsletter that goes out to your donors once a quarter and Sally is responsible. Even just making that decision and putting that in writing is going to help you out. Maybe you have a media list that you send a calendar of events to each month and Bob is responsible for that. Now, ideally, Sally and Bob are meeting so that they can coordinate that content and they can repurpose it so that they aren't replicating efforts. You get the idea. Now if that just blew your mind and this isn't something that you are already doing, please send me an email or book a call so that we can talk. Okay. Now back to your communications audit.
[00:03:00]
I'm going to tell you the basics of what I look at and what I do. The areas that we are going to look at today and what you should start with are your website,social media platforms, media relations, email marketing and long form content. Long form content would be like a blog or YouTube channel or a podcast. You'll look across these platforms to see if your brand messaging is clear, consistent, and confident.
Let's take a few minutes and talk about each one. So let's start with your website. My recommendation is when you're looking at your website, try to pretend that you are a visitor who has never been to your museum before. But you're planning your first visit and you go to the website from the website. Can you easily plan that visit?
[00:04:00]
Is there information about hours, admission, amenities on site, accommodations. Onsite, directions, parking, special events? Do you have information on there for large groups like school groups? Is there a place to sign up for your email list on your website so you can continue that communication? What if the visitor can't come in person? Do you have information about your exhibits or research on the website? Do you have a calendar of events? Spend some time on your website and try to put yourself into that visitor shoes. You also might want to compare your website to other museums of a similar size. What are some things that they do that maybe would enhance your visitor experience on your website?
[00:05:00]
Next let's look at your social media. How often are you posting? Do you have a clear brand voice? Is your brand consistent? Are you using the correct fonts and colors in the graphics on your platforms? Do you have content pillars that you use to write your content? Do you engage with your followers if they leave you a comment? Do you post consistently? Posting consistently and engaging with your followers will lead to growth on your accounts. Do you borrow audiences by maybe planning collaboration posts with other organizations in your town? I have a client that I started working with in 2022. And when we started, they had 3,400 followers on Instagram.
[00:06:00]
By getting them a good content calendar, by getting their brand messaging organized, being consistent and having a dedicated social media manager…their audience doubled. Now let's take those same questions that we asked about social media and let's look at your email marketing. Whether it is with your general audience list or a media list, are you consistent? Are you providing value to your audience? Do you stay on message and use your brand messaging? Are you asking the people on your list for feedback and how are you collecting that information and growing your list? Last on our list to audit is long form content. Do you have a place where you can dive a bit deeper into your mission or talk about the things in your collection?
[00:07:00]
Can your curators share about your collection on a blog or in a podcast? In addition to your own platforms, how can you borrow audiences and maybe write a guest blog or be a guest on a podcast or maybe speak in front of a group?
While you're looking at all of these places that you use, your words, you might come across older content that you could repurpose, or you could use on a different platform.
Also, start thinking of a system to help you repurpose the content that you're already generating and be sure to prioritize your audiences. Externally, your donors and the media should be the first to know when it comes to new information.
So, how did you do? Did you find some of the content that is on brand that maybe you can repurpose? Did you find some gaps in the consistency or the clarity of what you're saying?
[00:08:00]
Come up with a plan. of how to improve your system over the next 90 days and talk about it at your next staff meeting. Remember I made this episode short so if you need to go back and listen again, you can, you can also find this list of questions on my website and the link to that is in the show notes.
If you still have questions about doing a communications audit, book a call to talk to me. That link will be in the show notes as well or you can send me an email. You can also jump into the Love my Museum Facebook group for museum professionals. It's a brand new group and we will be talking about a lot of things in there like communications audits. I really hope this was helpful. Please, let me know if you have any questions and I'll see you next time.
[00:09:00]
