Use of twitter and Facebook by top European museums

Abstract

With social media becoming so pervasive, museums strive to adopt them for their own use. Effective use of social media especially Facebook and Twitter seems to be promising. Social media offer museums the possibility to engage audiences, potential and active visitors with their collections and ideas. Facebook and Twitter are the market leaders of social media. This paper records the top European museums and their Facebook and Twitter accounts. It records the use of the two media, and by applying statistical analysis it investigates whether Twitter use is in accordance to Facebook use. Findings reveal that this is not the case. By using Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis the paper finds that there is, however, a district group of top museums which manage to excel in both media mainly by adopting carefully planned strategies and paying attention to the potential and benefits that social media offer.