Good morning, team Cultural Content ☀️
On an unassuming Thursday in early November 2021 we created Cultural Content, with our first post going out a few weeks later.
Since then, we’ve welcomed just over 1,000 new subscribers 🥳 and have had cumulatively over 25k views (which is a nice sign of repeat readings and sharing of content amongst non-followers).
Thanks to everyone that’s read, shared or even guest posted. Here’s to 2023 and ongoing discussions around content in the cultural sector… 🚀
Here’s the 10 most popular posts we’ve run in that time (scroll to the end for the most popular) - enjoy!
10. Louise Cohen on Content Strategy
This was one of Cultural Content’s first posts and marks the first few weeks of Louise joining the content team at One Further 💪💪
She’s (AFAIK) the only person in the sector to have written an award-winning content strategy and has witty and clever things to say on the subject… also muppets.
9. V&A’s Jo Jones on evolving their ASMR YouTube series
This was another early guest post, this one continues to accrue more views over time and was given a nice boost when Kati Price gave it a mention in her keynote of Museums and Tech 2022 a few weeks ago. It describes Jo’s process of evolving the V&A’s brilliant ASMR YouTube series during lockdown and what she learnt along the way.
8. Catching up with Leeds Museums' and Galleries Digital Engagement Officer Meg Jones
You might know Meg from her fab Museums ‘n’ That podcast – as well as other great social media gold. In this post she talks about:
how she got into the sector
what makes her proud
as a child, what she wanted to be when she grew up
7. Quizzes
In this issue I took time out of my day to play on online quizzes and report back. They’re a big hit in terms of SEO, here’s how to do them right…
6. Is it time to BeReal?
This is our latest post from Stephen Franklin at National Archives (of notable TikTok fame).
Social media managers are often in the position of trying to make a call on whether a new platform is going to be The Next Big Thing or if it’s all going to die away in a few months. Here’s his analysis on whether it’s time to BeReal?
5. Explore the collections
This was the first post I did on web content pages as opposed to social media. And - if I was doing my own content strategy SWOT - it’s certainly been the case that these content design and website based ones have performed the best. In this one I look at different approaches to creating ‘explore the collections’ pages and user journeys.
4. Exhibition pages
In this post I look at Exhibition pages:
Specifically, what specialist and generalist users want from this page, how to prioritise their needs, and build a page that works for all. INCLUDES DIAGRAM.
3. The Cultural Content Report 2022
We surveyed those working in content roles across 169 cultural orgs around the world. We wanted to find out how folk plan and evaluate their work, and what the main challenges are. Here’s what we found…
2. Articles, editorial, blogs
This piece was a write up of some thoughts I had on what the purpose of digital editorial content in the cultural sector is, and asked
Who are we trying to reach with it?
What does it achieve in terms of wider organisation goals?
Contains A Matrix.
1. Homepages
I wasn’t expecting this to do as well as it did, but there you are: an outline of why people are on museum homepages (in the main) and how best to serve them, including a DIAGRAM.
Here’s some nice things people said about it…
…And that’s it.
Thanks again for being part of the readership – writing isn’t always the easiest thing to prioritise, but it’s been really rewarding to see this channel grow.
Is there anything you’d like to see more of in Cultural Content next year? Let me know 👇👇