Capturing Participation Numnbers During COVID-19 Closure

Scot Sedley

Good morning all,

I hope first off that everyone is safe and is adjusting to our new ways of working and serving our communities.


I know that several museums have started some virtual activities whether that is through YouTube, Facebook Live, their websites, etc.


With so many of our institutions looking at extended closures, one of our challenges during this time will be for us to speak to the numbers served by our museums. I'm curious how other museums are addressing this challenge in terms of tracking participation with these virtual experiences, and how you are entering these numbers into Altru if you are at all.


I'm also curious as to how you are communicating these numbers internally and to external partners.

 

Heather Thorwald

Hi Scot,


Excellent question!  Your post on ACM prompted us to talk about collecting such data at our institution.  It will be important not just for tracking our success with serving our community, but also for reporting to funders.


We typically track overall website traffic only, but we've decided to keep a closer eye on traffic to specific pages where we offer at-home resources, such as activity guides and webisodes.  These pages already existed, but we're now promoting them heavily and adding content frequently.  We'll also be looking at FB numbers and our other social media platforms where we're posting educational content.


For now, our Marketing Director is tracking this information in a spreadsheet as she normally does, in more detail than usual.   I don't see us putting this information into Altru.  However, we're talking about offering virtual outreach classes with our educators.  If we decided to charge for access, I would set them up and sell tickets like other scheduled events in Altru.


Thanks for raising this important discussion!

Regards,

Heather


 

Jill Oster

If anyone is willing to share examples of spreadsheets or data tracked that would be great.  I am hoping to pull together a data report that pulls together some of our various sources of digital engagement.  Would love to see how simple or complex people are getting if they are doing anything like this.


Thanks!

Jill

 

Heather Thorwald

Hi Jill,

 

I’d be happy to send you our spreadsheet when
our Marketing Director has it put together.  She’s really
swamped right now with all of our communication coming up, but she
was planning to get it set up and started tracking in the next
couple of weeks.

 

Please let me know your email address so that
I can send it to you directly.

 

Regards,

Heather

 

Heather Thorwald

Development and Communications Associate

She/her/hers

 

WOW! Children’s Museum

110 N. Harrison Avenue

Lafayette, CO  80026

(303) 604-2424 ext. 703

wowchildrensmuseum.org

 

WOW! Is a community supported 501(c)(3)
non-profit organization.

 

 

 

 

Scot Sedley

Heather and Jill, thanks for your thoughts! 


I have a discussion scheduled with our Marketing and Community Engagement team tomorrow to talk through a bit on this and would be happy to share some resources or ideas we come up with as well. 


One other area we are sort of wrestling with is how to capture items like views on videos on the website or other social channels like Facebook or Instagram. Or even Vimeo or Youtube where each view might be more accurately a family of 2 - 4 people watching at a time. 


When considering whether to enter this participation in Altru, it's an open question for us as well. I've considered adding a program type like our Traveling Education programs or Offsite Community Engagement Events. An example of the latter would be if we showed up at a city festival with a mini-exhibit or experience and tracked participation. We would then later go back and enter that participation as a zero cost ticket just to capture our outreach numbers.


I'm considering something similar for these virtual experiences during closure, though we'd obviously have to draw the line somewhere as a website visit isn't the same as a download of a lesson plan or a view of a 15 minute Fitness Fun:Yoga video/lesson. 


Lots to think through! Thanks for helping me work through some ideas.