Theme 1: Digital engagement and activities

This theme answers the heritage sector’s top 25 on digital engagement and activities including:

digital marketing and communications
websites, email and social media
fundraising and eCommerce
recruiting and working with digital volunteers
online events and activities
accessibility, inclusion and sustainability
analytics, visitor data and segmentation

In this theme: Digital marketing | Using digital to engage | Data to help audience development | Increasing income | Digital participation

Digital marketing

Digital marketing is key in connecting your small to medium-sized heritage organisation to new and existing visitors and audiences.

Questions

1. What is digital marketing, where do we start and how can it benefit us?

2. How can I undertake digital marketing on a budget?

3. How do I use digital to reach new audiences?

4. How can I ensure our digital marketing activity is accessible?

5. How do I evaluate the impact of my digital marketing to help improve my marketing and communications activities?

Using digital to engage with audiences and visitors

These questions focus on how you can use digital tools and platforms ― including social media, emails and your website ― to engage, develop and reach new and existing audiences and visitors.

Questions

6. How can social media help me reach more visitors for my heritage organisation?

7. How do I use email to increase visitor engagement and loyalty?

8. Where do I start when building a new website for my heritage organisation?

9. How can I improve my website to make it more user friendly, accessible and fit for purpose?

10. How can I make our digital engagement activities better for the environment?

11. How do we increase opportunities for our visitors to engage more deeply with our online archive?

12. How do we reach digitally excluded audiences?

Digital participation

Online participation can help your heritage organisation expand audiences, increase accessibility and engagement with new communities. These questions will help you plan excellent online events, build online communities and explore the ways in which the latest technology can improve the visitor experience to your organisation’s offer.

Two women stand either side of an open car boot. The boot is full of boxes and parcels and they are surrounded by even more.

Questions

13. How do I run excellent online events – such as talks, workshops, conferences, school assemblies and AGMs – to engage my visitors?

14. How do we make our online events and activities as safe, accessible and inclusive as possible?

15. How can we build new and inclusive online communities?

16. How can we use latest technology ― such as AR and VR ― to increase visitor engagement and participation?

Data to help audience development

You can learn a lot about who your online audiences are through the data your digital engagement activities collate. These questions look at the ways in which you can use data to help you understand the demographics, behaviours and motivations of your digital audiences.

Cobweb photo by Christoph Schütz on Pixabay

Questions

17. How can analytics help me find out who my online audiences are?

18. How do I get visitor feedback online to improve what we do?

19. How can I use segmentation to understand my audiences?

20. What is visitor data and how do I collect it when I don’t have a ticketing or ‘Customer Relationship Management’ (CRM) system?

21. What is ‘Customer Relationship Management’ (CRM) and how can it benefit my heritage organisation?

Increasing income and capacity through digital

Digital can help small to medium-sized heritage organisations increase both their income through digital fundraising and eCommerce, but also increase work capacity, such as utilising digital volunteers.