viral marketing on a small budget: the "race to the museum" initiative

Dana Allen-Greil• Chief, Digital Outreach and Engagement• Find me on Twitter: @danamuses

Melinda Machado• Director, Office of Public Affairs

The Challenge

• Increase visitation during typically slow period (January and February)

• Budget: $0• Creativity: 100%

An experiment

First time curators have given up any control over the display of its objects over to the Museum's audiences

True collaboration across all departments

Inaugural attempt at pitching enthusiast bloggers via Twitter

Online experience built entirely with free Web tools we had never used for such a purpose

“In the National Museum of American History, there is a cabinet full of keys—keys that fit the 73 cars in the automobile collection. Most are sitting under car covers...but now the covers are coming off!”

Blog posts were written about each auto “contestant.”

The contest got top billing in our January enews.

A dozen Facebook posts piqued interest prior to the vote, announced the voting period, and then announced the winners.

We used HootSuite to monitor the use of our hashtag #Race2Museum and other mentions of the initiative on Twitter

A. B.

C. D.

E. F.

G. H.

And the winner is…

In addition to traditional television news, we used the museum’s blog and YouTube account to tell the story of “moving day.”

Results3 Weeks the voting period was open

24,000 Public votes received

6.5% Increase in visitation in January and February

53,000+ Pageviews to related blog posts

20,300 Pageviews to vote opening post; most popular blog post of all time

Lessons Learned

Customize content to multiple platforms and types of media to maximize reach

Tap into existing enthusiast communities via social media

Design experiences that can be engaging for off-site and on-site visitors

Don’t be surprised when a shy curator becomes your next media superstar