Ep. 19 — Top 10 Takeaways from the Momentum Weekend Workshop
In this episode, Amy shares her top 10 takeaways from the Momentum Weekend Workshop, her favorite conference of the year. Whether you're looking to engage visitors, strengthen your museum’s brand, or reignite your passion for museum work, this episode is packed with insights to help you succeed.
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00]
Last time on the podcast, I told you about my favorite conference of the year, Momentum. The momentum weekend workshop is hosted by my friend, Lou Mongello. Lou loves a good top ten list so in true Lou fashion, today, I'm going to give you a top 10 list. These are my top 10 takeaways from Momentum. Let's get started.
Hello, and welcome to the Love my Museum podcast. I'm your host Amy Kehs, and I love museums. I am also a brand strategist and communications expert for museums. On the last episode of the podcast, I told you about the Momentum Weekend Workshop, my favorite conference of the year.
In that episode, I explained why this conference is such a big deal for me and my business, go back and check it out if you missed it. So, the conference takes place in Walt Disney World, which is such a great spot for the work we’re doing. It is a great place to be inspired, feel creative and the perfect location to dream big. The workshop is for entrepreneurs and it is limited to 50 people. We have 2 1/2 days of amazing speakers and I always leave having so many new ideas not just for my own business but ways to help my museum clients too.
I’ve been attending the Momentum workshop since 2019. It is a group of really supportive, smart, inventive and innovative people from all types of businesses.
[00:02:00]
I thought I’d compile a top 10 list, Lou Mongello loves a good top ten list. So, these are my top 10 takeaways from Momentum. Some of them are things that I've learned at previous conferences, some things are things that we talk about every year, and some things were new this year. I also decided to separate my top 10 list into two sections based on the two parts of “Love my Museum.” If this is your first time listening to the podcast, let me explain.
Love my Museum is a suite of free and affordable services for museums. It is my guide to help you get visitors to fall in love with your museum. We want them to love your museum so much that they come back and bring a friend.
But, Love my Museum is also for you, the museum worker. Working at a museum can be hard and statistically right now, museum workers are burnt out. I want to teach you ways to work smarter and not harder so that you will love your museum again too.
So here are my top 10 takeaways from the Momentum Conferences that I’ve attended. The first five things are things are things that are going to help you connect with potential visitors so that they will fall in love with your museum. Probably every one of the things on this list we will dive deeper into on future episodes.
The first takeaway is that email marketing is a must for your museum. Lou reminds us each and every year that you shouldn’t build your community on rented land.
[00:04:00]
That means, while engaging on social media is important, that can go away in an instant. All of those “likes” and “follows” don’t belong to you. If you want to grow relationships and strengthen connections with the people that have visited your museum or the people that you hope to visit your museum, you need to start an email list. For museums, I actually recommend using your email marketing platform to segment your list into three segments, but we’ll talk about that another time. Being able to connect with your audience is really important. I've learned so much about creating that audience and providing value to the people on my email list. I have seen how keeping in touch with the people on my email list has helped them and helped me be a better guide for museums. I also have seen the impact that having a good email list has had on my clients and their visitors. One of my first recommendations is always to start an email list and to start providing value to the people on the list.
The second takeway from the Momentum Weekend Workshop is how to repurpose content. I just wrote a fun blog post on how we learned about repurposing content this year with Jeff Sieh, I’ll link it in the show notes. Honestly, I couldn’t decide which section of my top ten list this one should go in because repurposing helps your museum’s brand and it helps you work smarter and not harder.
[00:06:00]
You can take one piece of content and use that in so many different ways and that is really good for your brand messaging. People are watching to see if you are consistent in what you say and what you do. And so using the same words and letting them see the same messages in several places helps gain their trust. It is a really noisy world out there and you’re asking for people to spend their most precious commodity, their time, in your museum. Building that “know, like, and trust” factor is key to helping them fall in love with your museum. Like I said, repurposing content could also have gone into the second half of my top 10 list. Because repurposing content is so much easier on your staff. If you can create one piece of content that can be used several ways, it saves you valuable time.
Ok, number three of my top 10 list of things that I've learned at momentum, is the importance of long form content. This goes hand in hand with repurposing.
Long form content can be a blog, a podcast, a video on your museum’s Youtube channel. Whatever long form content you're creating should be the beginning step of your content creation. That blog post can then be repurposed into an email sequence or a few social media posts. That long form content is where you should be concentrating your time and it is also where you can be the most creative.
[00:08:00]
It’s also where you can talk the most and dive the deepest into the work your museum does. Use your long form content to tell the stories behind your collection, or maybe tell the stories from an exhibit in a new and different way. Maybe it is how you preserve parts of a temporary exhibit. If you are not doing any sort of long form content right now, definitely start. Along with an email list, it is the thing I encourage clients to start as soon as possible.
Number four on my top 10 list is brand messaging. Now we already talk a lot about brand messaging on the podcast because it's definitely one of the things I love to talk about the most. A couple of years ago, I was the speaker at Momentum on Brand Messaging. When you think of your museum’s brand, you probably think about a logo, brand colors, a brand font. Those are the parts of your visual brand but your brand needs consistent messages too. It needs a voice. Thinking about what your museum has to say, and how you say it is so important. Again, it is a noisy world out there and you only have a few seconds of someone’s attention. Brand messaging helps you keep your message about who you are top of mind whether that is for an exhibit, or a program, or a blog post. The brand messaging should be the foundation of what you say out in the world.
[00:10:00]
Ok, number five on the top 10 list is creating community. I always say that every museum is a community museum. In order for your museum to survive, you need to create community with the people who are your biggest fans. Creating community can happen in a few different ways. It can be making sure that you're engaging with your audience on social media. Social media is two way communication. So creating habits so that you are engaging with your audience there is very important. One thing that we talk about in my Love my Museum Consulting is starting with just 15 minutes a week to engage with your followers and encourage that two way communication. Creating community can can be in the programming that you offer. It can be in the value that you bring to a community that are sort of the extra things that you do like a free book library in your parking lot, hosting a farmer’s market, offering your space as a meeting place for a local nonprofit. If you can tie those things back to your mission of your museum, that's great but sometimes, it's just important to be there for your community.
Now the next five takeaways are things that will help you as a museum worker. Current research shows that museum workers are burnt out and so I want to help you fall in love with your job and your museum again too.
So, my number six takeaway from the Momentum weekend workshops is to continue learning. I think a lot of us who work at museums are lifelong learners.
[00:12:00]
For a long time, when I was a museum worker, I thought that meant that I had to go back to school and get a master’s degree or a PhD.
Attending Momentum taught me that that wasn’t the case. You can continue to learn in so many different ways. Learning can be going to conferences. Learning can be listening to podcasts like this. It can be reading books. It can also be getting that next degree as well. Continuing to learn can help your career but it can also just give you joy.
The next thing on my top 10 list of takeaways, number 7, that I learned at Momentum is to be visible. This could be through social media, like on LinkedIn. It could be networking at conferences or even speaking at conferences. Being visible helps your museum and your museum career. You never know what opportunities will come up when you’re being brave and being visible.
Number 8 on my list of Momentum Conference takeaways is finding tools that can help you in your work. It might be a new software application or program. It could be a standard operating procedure. One thing that Lou always asks us during Momentum is to tell everyone a key tool that they use in their business. I always come home with a lot of ideas to try and some of them have helped me make my life easier.
[00:14:00]
I share some of these tools with my clients and have seen them change their habits at work so they are working smarter and not harder.
Number nine on my top 10 list is to think about the big picture. What is your vision for your career? As a museum professional we often get caught in the weeds of the day-to-day work and its often hard to pause and think about that big picture. Make time to dream big. Also, your vision for your future may look a lot different than your co-workers or a colleague at another museum and that’s ok.
Number 10 on my top 10 list of takeaways from the Momentum Weekend Workshop is to have a community. If you have been listening to the podcast for awhile, you know that my career has been full of twists and turns and most importantly a lot of amazing people. People a solopreneur is tough and working by myself has meant that I have to work really hard at this one. But all of those work families, accountability partners, mastermind groups have enriched my work and my life. My takeaway and top tip for you is to find a mentor but also give back and be a mentor too. Find an accountability partner, join a mastermind, find a community of people that can support you in your career. Even though I own my own business, I have a lot of work families.
[00:16:00]
My Momentum family, my museum families, accountability partners from group courses. Creating your community will change your life. If you’re looking for a community or an accountability partner, join my Facebook Group. The Love my Museum Facebook Group. It’s free and we’d love to see you there.
So that’s it. Those are my top 10 takeaways from the Momentum Weekend Workshop hosted by Lou Mongello. It's one of my favorite weekends of the year. I had such a great time this year, I met a lot of new friends and it's always great to see old friends as well. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time.
