The object is the content
How a museum collection becomes a feed — the short films we make for the Gettysburg Museum of History, the October campaign, why the event needs its own page, and what to post every week.
Most museums post the building, the opening hours and a flyer for the next event, and wonder why nobody outside the mailing list sees it. The feed is empty because the collection is not on it. Everything a museum needs to stop a thumb is already in the cases. The work is getting it out from behind the glass.
Why does the object beat the adjective?
The Gettysburg Museum of History keeps its collection on open display in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: uniforms, equipment, letters and the stories of the men who carried them. When we started, the collection was on the floor and not on the feed. The posts described the museum. None of them showed a thing you could only see there.
A jacket with a name on it stops the scroll. A paragraph about heritage does not. The difference is that an object carries a person, a place and a moment without having to claim any of them, and a viewer who stops for the jacket stays for the sentence that explains it. So the short films we make start with the piece, not the room. We film the object in its case, write one line — who wore it, where, and why it sits behind this glass — and cut it for a phone held upright.
That is the whole method, and it holds for any collection. A pressed flower, a ledger, a tool with a worn handle: each is a story if someone says whose it was.
How does a collection become a feed?
The order we work in, for the museum and for anyone with cases full of things.
- Walk the floor with the curator and pick the pieces with a person attached. Not the rarest. The ones with a name, a date or a place on them.
- Write one line per object before touching a camera. If the line needs a second sentence, pick a different object.
- Film the piece, close, in its own light. The room is context for a wide shot at most. The object is the frame.
- Cut upright and short. The first second shows the object; the line lands over it; the museum’s name closes it.
- Caption with the fact, then the question. The fact is what the viewer learns; the question is what they answer in the comments.
- Number the series. An object series that runs in order gives people a reason to come back, and gives the museum a format it can keep producing without us.
The archive does the rest. A museum with a thousand objects has a thousand posts, and the ones that work point at which ones to make next.
What did the October campaign look like?
The museum’s anniversary weekend in October needed a room full of people, and a feed that had been quiet needed to carry it. We ran a thirty-day campaign in one look.
A countdown story every day, each one over an archive photograph, so the date was in front of the audience every morning. An object series through the feed, one piece at a time, drawn from the men the weekend was about. An invitation film, cut from the collection, that said what would happen and where. A small paid plan to put the invitation in front of people within driving distance who had never heard of the museum. And one event post that did the practical job: one day, two venues, here is where you go.
Nothing in it was a flyer. Every post showed something from the collection or from the archive, and the practical information rode on the back of it. We publish no figures for the campaign, because none has been measured and cleared, and a museum’s weekend is counted at the door in any case.
Why does the event need its own page?
Because the people searching for the weekend should land on the museum, not on a ticketing site, a listings aggregator or somebody else’s write-up. We built the event page on the museum’s own site, wrote it around the words people actually type for the weekend, and pointed every story, post and film at it.
The page does three jobs. Before the event it holds the programme, the date, the venues and the answer to every question the inbox would otherwise get. During it, it is the link in the bio. After it, it becomes the record — the photographs, the thanks and the first mention of next year — and it keeps ranking for the search long after the posts have scrolled away. A museum that lets a third-party site hold the event gives away the one asset that compounds.
The same applies to the museum’s own listing on Google and to the Foundation’s site. Write them so the person searching lands on a page the museum controls, and keep them current, because a wrong opening time on a listing undoes a month of good posts.
What should a museum post every week?
A museum does not need a campaign to have a feed. It needs a rhythm it can keep with the staff it has, drawn from the collection it already owns. The week below is the one we would hand to any small museum.
| The post | What | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| The object | One piece, one line, filmed upright | The anchor. Every other post points back to this |
| The face | An archive photograph and a name | People follow people, even the long dead |
| Behind the glass | A conservator’s hands, a drawer opened, a label written | Shows the work, and earns the trust |
| The question | One thing the curator does not know, put to the audience | Comments bring the post back in front of people |
| The visitor | A family at a case, with permission | Proof that people come, and what they look at |
| The reminder | The next event, carried on an object | The flyer, but with a reason to stop |
Six kinds of post, not six posts a week — on a quiet week, three is enough. The point is that none of the six requires anything the museum does not already have in the building.
What does not work?
- Stock footage of the period. It belongs to everyone, so it says nothing about you.
- Captions that are museum labels. The label is written for someone already standing in front of the case. The caption has to earn the stop first.
- The building. It is the one thing every visitor has already seen.
- Dates without people. The anniversary of an event means less than the overcoat someone wore through it.
- Posting only when there is something to sell. A feed that wakes up for tickets is a feed nobody has followed.
The collection was always the content. A museum that films its objects, names the people behind them and sends every viewer to a page it owns does not need to buy an audience. It has one in the cases, waiting to be let out.