On Thursday, 3 March the students of the master in cultural management at UIC had a masterclass on Social Media Communication Strategy with Beatrice Burrows, Digital Marketing Officer at Tate Gallery.
Tate London uses digital marketing tools to fulfil its mission of increasing the public’s knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of art. The core benefits to Tate of using social media are to bring art to everyone and generate conversation. Beatrice, graduated in 2011 from Cambridge in Literature, thinks that “Tate is not only an amazing brand but it also has a very strong mission: to bring art to everyone in an enjoyable way”
Tate has four galleries which host British and international modern and contemporary art: Tate Britain (Millbank), Tate Liverpool, Tate St Ives and Tate Modern; the later of which receives 7 millions of visitors annually being the most visited gallery in the world. Furthermore, a New Tate Modern will open in June 2016 for modern and contemporary art from all over the world. It will redefine the way people walk through the gallery by offering them a completely immersive experience.
According to Tate´s Marketing team, digital is more than a website, but every interaction with the audience has the potential to be digital. Tate´s social media strategy is based on four pillars that consist on making people: talk about Tate, talk about art, talk about emotion and talk about their creativity (audience’s pictures or sketches inspired by Tate´s artworks). For example, they post weekly features like ‘Tate weather forecast´ads on Twitter and in the London Underground. Ads on the public streets related with the traffic condition or the daily flights. They also use Facebook to advertise exhibitions and posting them on other Facebook pages using behavioural targeting.
Furthermore, social media are a common space to provoke debate and activate people through art. They post discussion based contents, offering something that fans can respond to or interact with. Beatrice says: “We ask people things like ‘have you ever fall in love in an art gallery? or What artworks make you feel calm?.” Emotion is a key factor to make audience talk about art.
Tate’s digital media strategy is really differentiated and personalised; they have seven leaders, one for each digital platform, who generally do three posts a day. They create the contents according to the type of exhibition, the potential interested public and the social media channels they will use.
Lastly, they use “key voices” in social media where curators, artists and conservators have their own voices on social platforms. This means they can communicate directly with their own audiences. For example, they do Tate tours on Twitter leaded by the curators themselves. They explain about the artworks in each room in the exhibition and after the tour they have twenty minutes for live questions and answers on Twitter.
This and many other examples more about the use of social media and digital strategies by Tate has created an exceptionally strong brand that captures new audiences and breeds loyal followers.
