Hello, good to be here.

I've always known that I wanted to work in museums. It's been there in the back of my brain for since I was maybe at A levels. I always used to think it's because I liked history. And I do like history, I'm fascinated by history, but I think it's more that I'm actually just fascinated by people, and what makes them tick. I think museums, when they're done right, they kind of open up worlds and ways of viewing the world that you didn't think about before. So I think that's what kind of brought me into the world of museums. It's also a good trait for a lot of us to have too, to be concerned with other people and what makes them tick. So that's why I got into museum marketing. And then the Black Country Living Museum, I remember, everyone goes on a school trip there, who lives in the West Midlands, it's like a rite of passage. I always remember being fascinated by it, because it just takes you back into this time that, you know, and it allows you to experience this time fully. It's so immersive and it's so evocative, and you smell the smoke, and you hear the horses trotting past. I was just always fascinated by it. So then when a job came up there, I was like, this is the one, I am going to go for it. And I've been there for seven years now, a long time, it's pretty much spanned my entire career. I worked in an auction house for a year before that, and then when I landed the job at the Black Country Living Museum, it was a coordinator post initially, and then I kind of moved up, and then here we are.

Yeah, I think so. I've always had like a vivid imagination, and yeah, I've always been fascinated by the past, and particularly, I'm always fascinated by the West Midlands working class history. So yeah, I think that's probably what drew me in. I always think like I would love to do a couple days as a historic character, because I think it's such a cool job.

Most marketers, if you really dig down into it, are, again, the interest in other people and what makes them tick. That's really, for me, what marketing is about, it's about getting, understanding what motivates other people and using the right set of tools to encourage behavior change. And when you understand that that's what marketing is really about and not sales, it's actually really fascinating area to work in. But we get a bit of a bad rep, don't we, marketing people. People think of like the old Gil from the Simpsons or something.

Yeah. I think it's even more pronounced in the museum sector, especially in museums that don't charge entry. Sometimes it's a big question mark over what the marketing function actually does. I think that comes from a misunderstanding of what marketing is, though. That's why I'm drawn to it, because it's so much more than sales. It's about really understanding other people, what makes them tick, and then using tools to try and figure out how to encourage behavior change.

That's the hard, that’s a million dollar question, isn't it? I think that getting social media right is one of the most strategically important things that we can be doing as museums. And I think, because of its unparalleled capacity to affect the type of change that we say we want to see in museums, and the type of changes I think we need to see, and that's because social media and its uptake and its usage, especially among young people, 19 to 24 year olds, they're using social media daily. It's one of the key ways in which we give brands meaning. What I mean when I say brand, is I don't just mean logos, and colour palettes, and brand assets, I mean, the set of expectations, beliefs and experiences that people have about your organisation, and the amount of people that we can reach on social media, there is just no other touch point available to museums that can give us access to such a wide audience.

Also as well, at the same time, social media is sort of changing the way that museums are consumed. You can get a taste of the museum experience online now and particularly on social media. But I think when it comes to social media, it's really important that we don't get into the territory of social media replacing a physical visit, because right now, it doesn't, I don't think. Maybe in the future, maybe VR will support that, I don't know, but right now it doesn't. So for me, whilst museums can partially be consumed online now, especially via social media, some people might never visit and they only interact with the museum on social media, and that's it. This means that we do need to increasingly be involving researchers and curators in the content generation process, it's important that we don't forget that social media is fundamentally a marketing tool, that is there to drive people to your museum, and that is, I think, where the real engagement should be happening. Not the real engagement, but the deeper engagement with the subject matter, because nothing replaces a physical visit, especially not if you're a living museum. But I think, in general, it's one of the key ways in which people become familiar with your museum and your brand, having never met your brand before. So it is fundamentally a marketing tool for me.

Yeah. But increasingly, social media is going to be the only way you know a brand. You know what I mean? I just think that's fascinating, because we used to be dealing in like posters and taking out advertising in magazines and shoving leaflets through people's doors. It just doesn't make sense for 18 to 24 year-olds anymore.

No, no, I mean, we did a survey on TikTok not too long ago, and I think each platform has its own user profile. With TikTok, pretty much the vast majority are under 30. So we're talking Gen Z younger millennials. Now if you look at our Facebook audience, I mean, it's mostly over 40, mostly over 45. And actually it's really funny, you can see it in the names that people have when they comment on your posts. On Facebook it's like Karen's and Debbie's and, you know, all that kind of thing. And then if you go on TikTok, the names are distinctly younger, shall we say.

Every boy is called Aiden. For whatever reason, 50% of the names involve BTS, and I don't know why.

Yeah, no, I know, but I just don't understand what the obsession, the uptake is with including them in your name, you'll often get jiminswife96, and you're like, ok.

That's the one. I've referenced BTS in more than one of our TikTok posts because I'm a fan.

Yeah, I think, to your point about trying to take ourselves less seriously on social media and trying to employ humour, I think it's a really important tool of engagement on social media in a sector that I think, if we're completely honest, it's kind of elitist in many ways. And being less formal is going to be really, really important for us. But I think it's important to understand that being less formal and being silly, and employing humor is really only one way to engage an audience, because that's what social media is really about. It's about engaging an audience by telling a good story, and telling a good story, being humorous is only one way to do that. Like if you go on our TikTok channel, you are also sitting next to 1920s grandpa by the fireplace, and he's telling you stories of old and it makes you kind of cry. It's just about making people feel things and engaging them in that way. When it comes to employing humour, I think a couple of things are important. First of all, obviously, it's about understanding that that's not the only way to get engagement. You can do it in other ways, although it's helpful. And second of all, I think when it comes to employing humour on the internet, it's got to land, you know what I mean? You got to have the right people doing it. And the right people to do it are the people who spend a lot of time on the internet, a toxic amount of time on the internet, I would argue, because you can't just throw, because everyone has the capacity to be funny, everyone has the capacity to employ humour, but certain social media platforms require a certain type of humor. That's why I always bang on about the fact that social media requires a certain level of experience and expertise to get right, you can't just stick anyone on there.

Well, that was the other point I wanted to touch on, actually. So I think that, again, with social media being as strategically important as it is, because I don't know of any other way that you can reach hundreds of thousands of young people in a three month period. We've shown, we're not the only example of how powerful social media can be. It takes trust, because the article I linked you to, Georgina Brooks idea about like, you know, if something makes sense on the internet probably doesn't make sense in your boss's inbox or your boss's boss's inbox, is an issue, but it's not an issue if there's trust. So the only reason I was able to do what I did with TikTok is because my line manager and his line manager turned around to me and was like, I don't really understand what TikTok is about, but I trust you. And I think that there needs to be trust for the level of expertise required to manage social media, and that's key. But also the flip side of that is that you have to earn your trust. So you need to be presenting people with data, you need to be training people, you need to be bringing them along on that journey. And that's something that we're working on in the museum, at the moment is, you know, talking to people about, not just what social media is, but the role that it plays, and trying to bring them on board in ways that are meaningful. But I think the real big key is, you are going to run into situations where you've got a huge gap between what the internet wants and what maybe your leadership team and your senior management have no knowledge of. But I think the way you bridge that gap is you have trust in the person that's managing the social media.

I haven't, no.

But I understand why you would think that, because I know plenty of people who have. And I think that you do kind of have to accept that actually, sometimes there are just going to be grumpy people who are like, well, TikTok is not for us, and it's just silly teenagers. I think actually it just would be easier and more efficient for you to say that you don't like children, and you think they're idiots, because that's what you're basically saying. But no, we haven't, but that's I think, because I took the data and I was like, ok, look at how many people are using TikTok, look at the type of people that are on there, we are talking about a platform that within a few months time is going to have as many monthly active users as Instagram, right? This is a big ponte efficient, it's also full of young people, it also has a really strong learning component. So if you go on TikTok, there's a little light bulb in the left hand corner, you click on that, and it'll only feed you learning content, right? So, to me, it's a no brainer, like why would you not want to be on there? In the next three to six months, not being on TikTok is going to be like the equivalent of saying, well, I'm not really on Instagram, I'm not interested in it. It's just going to be a bit weird.

Yeah. I mean, we're a three person team at the moment, so we're tiny. So a lot of people are like, oh, God, the social media team at the Black Country Museum is really cool, and interesting that you think we have a social media team. It's literally me, and then I line manage marketing coordinator, and then it's my line manager, who's head of comms. So it's a small team.

I think so often, and I don't mean to be so pessimistic, but I often think that when it comes to museum social media management, often we conflate social media management with Twitter account management. And when we talk about social media, what we are really saying is Twitter. I think that's fine, if you're interested in talking to a fairly middle class audience that are slightly more educated than the average population. That's fine for most traditional museums, but I don't really think it solves the problems of making museums less elitist. I don't really think it solves the problem of engaging with young people. So at the end of the day, if you're a marketer, then you're going to be end-user focused, and you're going to be audience focused and it is literally your job to fish in the right pond. So if we say that we're interested in engaging young people with history, then we need to be where young people are, and right now, literally young people are on TikTok. And I don't disagree, there are also young people on Twitter because I think Twitter is also a young platform. My question would be, is that actually who you're talking to? And if that's what your data says, that I'm on Twitter, and I'm talking to young people, fine, I have no problem with that. But my question would be, are you? Because a lot of the time we also say in the sector, like young people, millennials, millennials.

Things are starting to hurt that shouldn't be hurting, I am definitely not young. So I'm talking about actual young people, like 18 to 24 year-olds that are doing the renegade dance on TikTok, like those are young people.

Well I am not going to do it for you.

I think about this a lot, and I think probably a lot of small reasons, but I think the one big reason is that the content is engaging, it makes you feel something, it makes you laugh, it makes you cry, and it tells a good story. Who we are on TikTok, and this is another thing I wanted to talk about, is who we actually are in real life. You see 20s grandpa sitting by a fireplace, we have grandpa sitting by a fireplace, who is telling you stories of the past, and it's really fun. We have people dressed up in costume, we even employ humour, we do a lot of slapstick comedy in the summer holidays. So it's not like we're catfishing you. Who we say we are on social media is who we actually are, you can expect all of that and more when you come to the museum. So I think that's why it's been so popular. And also on top of that, we adjust the content that we put out to the platform, right? So we look at the things that are trending on TikTok, and we take our subject matter and our offer and we adjust it to that. And we use the language, this is going to sound really cringey, but we use the language that young kids are using, you know what I mean, and it makes it more relatable to them.

Oh my God. It's all probably going to be put in a cringe compilation, because I - do you ever think back to like sometimes the 2012 humour and all the memes that were popular then, and now I just don't even crack a smile at them.

Oh, God, it's so crazy, isn't it? Yeah, totally. I think that probably will happen, there's nothing we can do about that. I would say that the trends on TikTok probably have like, anywhere from like a week to a month long life cycle, before they start going off the for you page. Sometimes they're a little bit longer. So I mean, I've been on TikTok for a couple of years, and by the way, TikTok is not a new platform, it really bugs me when people say TikTok is a new platform. No, it is not. So yeah, they have a short lifespan. But this is where I think it comes down to intuition and creativity. A lot of the time, I will look at a trend, I'll be like that fits, and I can't really explain why, I just kind of know. So again, like you can know all the theories about TikTok, you can understand what leads to better engagement on the for you page and the right hashtags to use and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but unless you have the good intuition for it, it's kind of going to fall to nothing really. So a lot of the time, I just think, you know what, I've got a story at the museum that's going to fit with that, and if I don't, then I just leave that alone.

And also I talk to people in the museum as well. I'm like, I'll show people and I'll be like, here's this meme, what piece of historical information do you know that can fit with this? So I will often talk to the researchers and I'll be like, do we have anything that we can reform? Do you know of any objects that we can use or pieces of history that we can use to riff on this trend? And a lot of the time they'll just send me random emails at like 11 o'clock at night, I've seen this TikTok thing, maybe we could do this. So that's how we kind of work.

In terms of your audience response, obviously, it's been pretty, pretty positive, mostly. Have you had any kind of notable negative responses, and how do you deal with that when you do get those less than desirable reactions?

A lot of the time we look at, I don't know if you've looked at all the videos on our TikTok account?

Not all of them, but some of them.

Feminist history is a strong theme, because I think that's what Gen Z are interested in. They're very interested in social justice. So we try to focus on subjects that matter to them. And because TikTok affords a certain level of anonymity, in the same sense that I think Twitter does, you do get trolls come out whenever we touch on subject matter to do with women, which is really unfortunate. But I'm not a big believer in deleting comments, and just pretending that those viewers are not there. I like to address them with facts and data, and then if they want to continue belittling women, then that's on them, but a lot of the time our followers do that job for us, they'll say like, what are you talking about you moron? You know what I mean? For example, when we were looking at women's role in World War Two, the amount of comments that we got of people saying like oh, well at least you didn't have to go off and die, but also this history can exist simultaneously, so calm down. So those are the negative comments we'll get. And I think that's just because of the level of anonymity on the platform, to be honest.

Yes, so there is a way to make TikTok hook up to your analytics, I've just struggled to do it. Basically, I can figure out how many people are going on to the website, but not really what they do after. But I'm also at the same time not crazy on tracking conversion, because I just don't think that that's how people make decisions. You don't see an ad and then go oh, I am going to buy that. There's multiple touchpoints that you have to go through, you get a recommendation of a friend, they've maybe seen an ad, there might be someone mentions the TikTok video, and then maybe later on that night you Google about Black Country Living Museum and buy a ticket and I can never attribute it to TikTok. So I'm not a big believer in conversion tracking. That said, I did do a poll because I wanted to know a bit more about our followers on TikTok. And it's really interesting, because like some 10,000 people or something responded, and the vast majority of them, I'm talking like 85%, 90%, said they were under 30. And also that same amount said that this was the first time they’ve ever engaged with a museum on social media ever. So we're talking about really young, really culturally disinterested people, the museum gold dust, really. And then also in the same time, we have seen an uplift of 18, no, a 15% uplift of 18 to 24 year olds visiting the website. I don't know that they're from TikTok, but I'm guessing that's probably what it is.

Yeah, I think so. Definitely.

Do you find that they're already visitors or would be visitors who you struggled to engage with social media, or any that you've specifically reached out to and it just isn't clicking? And if so, do you then try and tailor your content to meet that audience, or you just accept that that someone you are not going to reach through social media and you have to try other channels?

I remember trying to use some of the TikTok content on Facebook, and it went down like a led balloon, it was bad, bad. And I kind of knew that that was going to happen, but I just wanted to see for myself really. So yeah, I mean, it's difficult, branding theory, old school branding theory is that like, you should maintain a consistent tone of voice across all channels. It doesn't work like that anymore. Principles, marketing principles stay the same, but practice changes. And we do adjust, we do adjust the type of content that we do on different platforms. In particular, Facebook, we like to stick to themes of nostalgia and things that are going to appeal to people basically that are over 40. The good old times, and historic photos and things like that, that's just what works with them. And we even use different emojis on different platforms. It's just like that specific. And then Instagram, it's more about the aesthetic parts of the museum and making it look beautiful, and then the tone of voice is slightly less formal. And then we get to TikTok and it's just chaos, it's completely informal and using skull emojis all over the place. So yeah, we do tailor it quite significantly. We didn't used to, though.

Do you use TikTok?

I mean, to be honest with you, most of them are filmed on a phone. I mean, we sometimes use a DSLR.

Well, we sometimes use a DSLR if the lighting is really bad, but they are mostly just done on a phone. And this is why I always say, like you don't need a big expensive kit to get started on TikTok, it is just more about the ideas really. It is actually less about having an expensive kit and more about having the time and space to think and be creative and manage a platform that can sometimes get 10,000 followers a day because that's what we were at in December. I mean, it was insane. We get quite a lot of support from TikTok, so we're part of what is called the Learn On TikTok programme, I think. And they basically give us financial support, which we use for people power, not filming power, because it takes a lot to organize the videos and get people in the right place and get the buildings unlocked and get the right props and get the right clothing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you have to do all of this without disturbing the visitor.

Yeah. So moving forward, what's the vision for the future? How are you going to continue to bring the Black Country Living Museum to the future generations, to whatever comes after Gen Z?

What does come after Gen Z actually? That's a good question. I don't know.

That's the thing. I think they really shot themselves in the foot by starting with X for these lesser generations.

Where do we go next?

Yeah, yeah. How do you bring it to that next group? Is that something that can't really be conceptualized yet, or do you already have some irons in the fire?

Right now we're sticking with TikTok because as I have said, we're active on other channels by the way. We do pretty well on Facebook. It's like when we started getting all this recognition for TikTok, and I was like, that's cool, but we also do other things as well. We have the highest, one of the highest visited follower ratios on Facebook for any museum. I think we're only just behind the Tate. So we do pretty good with our group that we call Facebook families, that's our segment, that's our segment for Facebook. And it's really inventive. But I would say that what will guide us in the future is we want to fish in the right pond. Someday that pond may not be TikTok and if that ever stops being the case, then we move, you know what I mean, we let the data guide us, we don't just stick on a platform because that's what we're comfortable with. That's where the middle class people are, and that's what, I'm middle class, so I'm more comfortable talking to highly educated, more liberal, middle class people. If we are genuinely committed to getting young people and people who are less culturally engaged, if we're committed to that, then we need to be where they are. And right now that's on TikTok, but it might not be going forward. And if that's the case, then we'll change.

I think really, the biggest tip I could give if you're looking to get started on TikTok is just use it. Download the app and use it. You know what I mean? Because it's really hard to try and get a feel for TikTok and its subculture, which is increasingly for the mainstream culture to be fair. Songs that trend on TikTok magically find their way into the charts and people are like, oh, this is weird, why is this trending? It's TikTok, it's always TikTok.

We're talking about the sea shanties, because that doesn't make sense to me. But apparently they're very popular now.

Very little makes sense on TikTok, you have to let go of logic, because it's just a crazy place. But I just would advise, just use it and let go of preconceptions, because I think that sometimes when people go on to TikTok, they watch the first few videos and they are like, this is cringey, and there's loads of little children dancing on there. Use it and interact with the content, and eventually, the For You page will tailor content for you. So you'll start to see things that you're interested in, and then you won't see - if you're not interested in teenagers doing the renegade, then that's not what you're going to see. Like if you're interested in dark academia or cottage core, then that's what you're going to see. Do you know what I mean?

You're still saying words that make no sense to me, what's dark academia, what's cottage core?

These are like aesthetic lifestyles that you can see on TikTok. So millennials, we romanticize like getting away to the beach, traveling the world because I think we just became like a bit, I don't know...

I think we are the generation where gap years were a thing, and we're all told we could go on gap years and travel.

Yes, that's millennials, but Gen Z, they like to romanticize for whatever reason, living in cottages and reading literature and picking wild flowers, and that's the cottage core aesthetic.

Interesting.

So it's just like the same way that we were like, you know, wearing ombre hairstyles and going to the beach, it's the same things, but different really.

We've got a couple of questions that we ask everybody. So first, Abby, if you had unlimited funding through some magical benevolence, what kind of museum or cultural space would you put that towards, either sort of before or even after COVID?

I think how I would start is by asking people. And I think that sounds like a ridiculous thing to say, but I would start by asking people what it is that they want, because I think sometimes we tend to skip over that process in this sector. And I think that when you're genuinely end-user focused, the product always ends up coming out better, rather than you just guessing or making assumptions about what you like. So I would assume that if we were talking to younger people, or people who are less “culturally-engaged”, we want spaces that are going to be immersive and evocative and really bring the past to life in ways that make sense. Not very, very complicated, I guess interpretation about a pre-Raphaelite collection, like most people don't know when that is, like my mom doesn't know when that is. If I said to my mom when's the Victorian period, she'd be mhm... Do you know what I mean? So we need to stop making assumptions that people, you know, that everyone has this middle class sentiment and approach to art and culture, because they don't. So if I had infinite money, it would be a space that was based on what people said they want, and it would be approachable, and it would be immersive and it would be evocative, and it would be, you know what, probably the Black Country Living Museum, I am not going to lie to you. I just think it's the best.

Beautiful plug there.

I can tell you that it was, it was hard to live in the working class Victorian Midlands, I can tell you that, I can show you objects. But when you step into a two up two down house, and you see that, like eight people were living there, and you can see how hard it was to even make a bloody cup of tea, you have to walk an entire range, you're going to understand that hell of a lot better than if I just show you an object, it's going to make a lot more sense to you.

Think about your audience, don't just do what you want to do. Think about your audience, even if you're not part of that audience, try to understand what motivates them. And also allow yourself to be driven by the data.

Abby, where can people find you and where can they find the Black Country Living Museum?

I'm not on TikTok, but I'm on Twitter, and I also have LinkedIn. And if anyone wants to have a conversation about the world of TikTok or social media, I'm very open to that, so please contact me. And then where can you find the Black Country Living Museum? Well, right now we're not open, so go to our TikTok page.

Thanks very much.