I was doing a search for vacations and visiting the Smithsonian museum. Is a day long enough to see everything? If you could do it again, how long would you take?

Thanks!
Carmelo

In the museum itself, visitors will find electronic signs that scroll through the events of the day, the museum’s amenities, and a new screen–one that prompts viewers to “follow us” (you caught a pic of this: http://twitpic.com/28y7aw). We’re also testing out smaller signs on stanchions near popular exhibitions including the Star-Spangled Banner and First Ladies (your photo above) that ask visitors to share their experiences. These signs are some of the first of what I hope to be more experiments with connecting the on-site experience with the online world through social media and mobile technologies.

In the online arena, we have saved searches set up to find mentions of the museum’s name in tweets. FourSquare check-ins also show up on this list. We try to follow up with every check-in and mention of a visit with a personal tweet–asking things like “Thanks for visiting the museum! Was Julia’s kitchen your favorite artifact? Any other favorites? Suggestions for improvement?” and “Busy day! Thanks for visiting the museum! What were your favorite artifacts? Favorite exhibit? Any dislikes?”

With this strategy we’ve seen a very high level of response—and some fascinating comments (both positive and negative). In addition, it is our sneaky way of letting people who tweet about us know that we have a Twitter handle. It takes only a few minutes to do this once a day (we schedule the messages to go out late at night) and it helps our follower list grow by striking while people’s minds are fresh from the visit. Our focus here is on relevant followers–by focusing on quality we’re hoping to help encourage an ongoing relationship with these visitors and foster a community conversing about historical topics.

Our mission is one of national outreach and so we also use Twitter (as well as our blog, online exhibitions, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, email newsletter, etc.) to engage people who haven’t yet–and might never–actually get to visit our building in Washington, D.C. We’d love to hear feedback from you or your readers about our approach, ideas you have, things you wish you could do in a museum with social media, etc.

-Dana Allen-Greil, New Media Project Manager
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
@amhistorymuseum @danamuses

p.s. I recently contributed to a book, Twitter for Museums (http://www.museumsetc.com/?p=2874), and called out your blog as an excellent resource in the “Analyzing, Measuring, and Reporting” chapter. Thanks for all the work you do in the field!