From time to time you can find a news story in newspapers or on a web portal somewhere about the declining number of visitors to museums and how that presents a problem to the profitability of the museum itself. Many museums are publicly owned and their purpose might not be to turn a profit. Still I’m sure that museum management would like to see positive results and that their hard work is appreciated in the form of decent number of visitors. That’s what we’re going to be talking about today, how to increase number of visitors to museums through increased engagement.
Visitor engagement is becoming more important for museum exhibits
What exactly do we mean when we say visitor engagement will differ from one example to another, from one type of exhibit to another. Computer history museum that I run for example might think about adding interactive touch panels alongside exhibits so that people can themselves additionally browse information about a particular piece, instead of just putting up a sheet of paper.
Other types of museums will have other different types shoe-ins for visitor engagement. I’m NOT saying that a car museum should allow visitors to turn on and take a spin in their exhibits, but a certain added degree of engagement will help draw in more visitors. Maybe a virtual gas pedal that simulates the sound of the engine. What you can do will depend on the budget of your museum and on your creativity. Great thing about crazy engagement ideas is that you will save money on promotion, because news shows and social media will do the work for you if you have a really interesting shtick that’s out there. Crazy ideas that are out there seem to be speciality of MOT, seeing how museums that are our members seem to be seeing increases in number of visitors. Join us and see what we are doing to lure visitors to our museums.