Top TikTok Museum

INTERVIEW: Black Country Living Museum on being the most followed museum on TikTok in the world

Dec 08, 2020

maxwell museums magazine - 8 December 2020

I’m very excited to be brining you this week’s interview. Regular readers will know that I’ve joined TikTok - and I LOVE it. (Yes you can follow me thanks for asking). It’s brilliant: fun, funny and creative, and yes a little addictive. Museums though are slow to embrace the platform because I suspect there’s a lack of resource and energy to direct into yet another social media account. But one museum has gone in all-guns-blazing, and has been rewarded by rising to the top of the global TikTok rankings. Read my chat with that very museum below.

Don’t forget, every Friday I send you my friday briefing which rounds up all of the week’s best museum news. So keep your eyes peeled for that, or read last week’s edition here. Oh, and I’m looking for sponsorship for this newsletter. See below for the deets!

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what’s on

Museum openings across the UK and the wider world are still patchy. Even so, I’ve managed to round up 3 new offerings to give culture lovers a fix:

Bags: Inside Out at the V&A, London - from Birkin bags to Louis Vuitton luggage, this show explores the style, function, design and craftsmanship of the ultimate accessory. Opens 12 December
Winter Weekends at the Henry Moore Studios & Gardens, Hertfordshire - the countryside sculpture park which usually closes in the winter will open over the next two weekends so people can enjoy some much needed outdoor space.
A New Look at Old Masters at the Met Fifth Avenue, New York - the Met's collection of European painting is temporarily rehung and reimagined to create new dialogue.

review roundup

Your at-a-glance guide to a fresh exhibition.

Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch: The Loneliness of the Soul
The Royal Academy. Until 28 Feb 2021

you leave with a weight hanging over you, with the suffocating blanket of Emin’s heartache smothering you. It’s not nice, it’s not pleasant, but it is seriously good art. Time Out

It is clear from this intimate and revelatory show that Emin is haunted by the spectre of her expressionist predecessor. Both are painters of feelings. Both set out across darkly treacherous territories, navigating love and loneliness, sadness and longing. The Times

Tracey Emin, You Kept it Coming, 2019. Acrylic on canvas, 152.3 x 152.3 x 3.5 cm. The artist & Xavier Hufkens, Brussels © Tracey Emin. All rights reserved, DACS 2020

interview

The most followed museum in the world on TikTok will be a surprise to many. It’s not one of the most visited, nor is it in a major museum capital like London or Paris. But in an astonishingly short amount of time, a relatively unknown venue in the Midlands market town of Dudley has amassed a huge online following.

The Black Country Living Museum (BCLM) is a large open-air museum that offers an immersive experience as it tells the story of one of the very first industrialised landscapes in Britain. Set across 26 acres, it has over forty carefully reconstructed shops, houses and industrial areas to explore. These have proved to be the perfect backdrop for TikTok’s short, snappy and visual videos, allowing them to gain over 330,000 followers in just 3 months, beating every other museum on the planet. To find out how they’ve done it, here I speak to Abby Bird, Communications Manager at the Museum, who is behind the phenomenal viral success.

Congratulations! The BCLM is a TikTok sensation. How did you do it!?

That’s the million dollar question! I wish there was one ‘big secret’ key to unlocking TikTok success that I could share with other museums, but the reality is that there are a lot of contributory factors at play. First of all, TikTok is very visual, and we’re a living museum so we have a ready-made set. Our entire site is incredibly beautiful and immersive. Second of all, we have historic characters who love being in front of the camera and who are really good at it too. Third of all, we have an open-minded senior management and leadership team who are willing to be experimental in terms of digital outreach. And finally, you have me, a TikTok addict with a special interest in history and a passion for film-making and photography. Some would say this was always meant to happen...

A popular recent TikTok from @blackcountrymuseum

Why did you decide to join TikTok? Was there any reluctance from inside the museum?

Not really, but I understand why other museums may be reluctant to have a presence on the app. It’s very different from other social media platforms. It requires good instincts, a lot of hard work and planning, and a deep knowledge of the app’s subculture (which increasingly is informing mainstream culture) to do ‘properly’ (i.e. to get enough engagement to be worth your time). For us, the call the meaningfully engage with younger audiences in the middle of a pandemic was just too strong, and everyone was really keen to try it.

How does having a big following on the platform benefit the museum?

You used the word ‘sensation’ earlier and I think that word is completely accurate here. We’ve recently joined as partners with TikTok; are now officially in the top 100 UK TikTok accounts; and we’re the most followed museum in the entire world on the platform. Sometimes the reach and engagement just absolutely blow my mind.

Worldwide pandemic or not, it would be impossible for those numbers not to have a positive impact on us as a museum. Just the other day our Sales & Ticketing Manager informed me that around 20% of calls to our Sales & Ticketing Team reference the account specifically. But the thing is – we’re actually closed to the public save for a few days in December when we have a ‘grounds only’ offer on. As a visitor attraction that charges an entry free, we’re not going to be able to translate this success into ticket sales any time soon. That can feel a bit disheartening.

But there are other metrics we’re looking at – visits to the website, reach, engagement. We’re a museum and a charity and as well as being financially independent, we’re also here to tell the Black Country’s story and Britain’s national story in a way that’s accessible, meaningful and engaging. And us being on TikTok is all of those things. Alongside what I would imagine to be a huge build-up of brand salience in the run up to normalcy, that to me is an enormous win.

Can you tell me a bit about how you produce them? They are quite high production. And who are the cast of characters you feature?

I either use a Sony A7iii or a Google Pixel 4XL shot in 4K. Mostly it’s the former. I use a continuous lighting rig also, and then I edit and colour grade in Premier Pro. I know how to do the basics and I’m really fascinated by it all, but I’m by no means and expert. If your ideas are solid, you really don’t need any of that to be successful. Most major TikTok influencers are just using the latest iPhone and the in-app editing software. I just like the precision of doing it on a screen.

The cast of characters you see are people who work here as Historic Characters. They’re all people you’ll see if you were to visit the museum, they do live demonstrations, street theatre. They’re the real stars of the show!

A recent TikTok from BCLM which has had nearly 2 million views (@blackcountrymuseum)

What are your tips for people who want to get started on TikTok?

I think the biggest tip I can give to those who want to get started is just to start using TikTok personally. It’s really important to understand the subculture (especially since it now so often informs ‘mainstream’ internet culture) and to have a good feel for the app before you dive in.

Then there’s all the standard stuff: have a decent workflow in place, make sure your content is supporting your wider organisational objectives, experiment, fail, be critical (but not too hard on yourself), and try again.

Even though TikTok functions differently to many other social media apps, I think that the theory of creating engaging and meaningful and ultimately strategically valuable content for your museum is the same. It’s about understanding what you have to say about your museum, and what the audience want to hear. TikTok is the next step forward in the ever-shifting consumer-brand relationship. People (especially young people) are demanding more and more authenticity from ‘institutions’. They want institutions’ voices to sound more like the way they talk. Familiarity and representation breeds affinity, and affinity breeds engagement. Ultimately, you can’t expect to reach a new audience without adapting in some respect. That’s not really a tip but it’s definitely something worth thinking about for anyone looking to get started on a new platform like TikTok.

Finally, the Museum is now in a Tier 3 area. How damaging is that for the museum, and are you worried about the future?

I think it would unreasonable to say there isn’t a worry, but I am very confident in the museum’s offer. We were incredibly successful before and we’ll be successful again, that much I know. But until we can welcome visitors as we did before the pandemic, we’re going to have to take a bit of that experience online so we can still meet our ultimate goal of bringing the Black Country’s past to life.

Follow them on TikTok @blackcountrymuseum

and finally

The soaring glass-roofed Great Court at the British Museum is one of the most recognisable museum interiors in the world. And it turned 20 years old at the weekend! To celebrate, the Guardian have a spoken to two of its creators - including Spencer de Grey, the architect from Foster + Partners - to recall the risks, setbacks, and unexpected discoveries – and that time Nelson Mandela paid a visit. (I worked on this piece so do give it a read 😝)