Year three of the Love my Museum starts today! The podcast gets a makeover and Amy talks about strategic partnerships for your museum.

Links from the Episode:

• Schedule a call with Amy.

More Free Resources for Museums:

• Getting Visitors Through Your Museum’s Doors: Building Connection in a Noisy World ebook
• Museum Planning Calendar
• Museum Metrics Template

About the host:

Amy Kehs is a brand strategist and communications expert for museums. She has owned Kehs Communications since 2000 and has worked for the most renowned and well-loved museums in Washington, D.C. Her goal is to ensure that museums thrive into the next century and she hopes people will come to love museums as much as she does. Her proven process sets up proactive communication habits for museums, cultivating relationships with visitors who will want to return and bring a friend. Want to talk more? Click this link to book a call.

Today's episode starts year three of the Love My Museum podcast, and we're

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getting a little bit of a makeover.

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There's some new graphics, some new music.

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We have a new topic to talk about today.

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Let's get started.

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I.

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Hello and welcome to the

Love My Museum podcast.

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I'm your host, Amy Keys,

and I love museums.

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I'm also a brand strategist and

communications expert for museums,

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and I, I have to admit, I'm, I'm a

little nervous about today's episode.

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Today starts year three of

the Love My Museum podcast.

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And I've got a couple of fun things

planned, if you noticed, where, wherever

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you are listening to this podcast,

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our graphics have gotten a,

a little bit of a makeover.

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There was also some new

music at the beginning.

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There's going to be a theme song, which

I'll play for you towards the end.

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And we have a new topic to talk

about today, and we're talking

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about a phrase that I, I hear a lot.

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The hidden gem.

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It could be even something that

you've heard recently or that you

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have said yourself about your museum.

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I've heard this from museum directors,

staff board members, visitors,

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journalists who come through a museum

and they couldn't believe that they

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have never heard of you before.

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And in the moment, it probably

felt like a compliment.

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Like, oh, they just discovered us.

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How charming.

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But here's what I want you to hear today.

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Being a hidden gem is not a compliment.

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It is a symptom.

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And if your museum has been called

a hidden gem more than once,

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something in your communication

strategy needs our attention.

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Now, if you're new here, let

me tell you a little bit about

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why this matters so much to me.

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We live in a really noisy world.

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People are overscheduled.

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They're overwhelmed.

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They are absolutely bombarded with

messages from the moment they wake

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up to the moment they fall asleep.

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And in that environment, asking someone

to give your museum, their most precious

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commodity, their time is really hard.

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It requires clarity.

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It requires consistency, and it requires

showing up in the right places with

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the right message at the right moment.

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And when your messaging is

cluttered or your visitor

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experience feels disconnected.

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Even the best museums, the ones

with extraordinary collections and

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passionate staff, and, Real community

value struggle to get the attention

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that they deserve, and they struggle

to get visitors through the door.

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Here's what's at stake.

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If nothing changes, it's not just

about ticket sales, although yes, that

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matters, but it's something deeper.

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When your museum stays a

secret, your staff keeps working

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harder than they have to.

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You stay stuck in a

cycle of temporary fixes.

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A social media push here, a

flyer there, none of it really

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adding to actual momentum.

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Those fixes create what I call a.

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Energy leaks Efforts that don't reach

your audience and are quietly draining

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the people trying to make them work.

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Your museum should not be a secret.

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It should be a community hub

with loyal, lifelong supporters.

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Who show up, bring their kids, bring

their neighbors, and become the

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kind of fans who will advocate for

you when you are not in the room.

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And that is what we wanna build towards.

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So if you're new here, let me tell

you a little bit about who I am and

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why I believe so deeply in this work.

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For over three decades, I have

worked in and alongside some of

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the world's most renowned museums

right here in Washington, dc.

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I was first an employee and then started

my own business and have since been

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brought in as an extra set of hands.

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On some pretty high stakes PR projects

and I love every minute of it.

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In my work of museums of all sizes,

even the best museum teams often fall

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into a cycle of reactive thinking.

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A crisis happens, they respond,

an opportunity comes up, they

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scramble the path forward feels.

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Like guesswork.

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They're just trying to keep up.

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They're just trying to put one

foot in front of another and

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the team, they're exhausted.

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I have worked with museum teams of two 10.

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2200.

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I know what that exhaustion feels like.

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I have also been there.

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I know what it's like to care

deeply about a place and still

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feel like you're running on empty

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when 2020 happened and my museum

clients had to shut their doors

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for a bit, and the rest of the

world paused, I didn't, I couldn't.

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I had to keep my business afloat,

so I jumped headfirst into the fast

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moving world of online business.

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Also, I was taking some time to really

study and research what was working in

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and the latest thinking in communications

and marketing and audience engagement.

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And while I was helping those

online businesses, I was

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also learning from them too.

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And the things that I was learning, I.

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Discovered those same tools and strategies

that were driving these real results for

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online business owners, all over the world

could be applied to cultural institutions.

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The psychology, the

principles are the same.

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The platforms are similar.

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The psychology of how people make

decisions and where to spend their

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time is completely transferable.

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I began integrating what I learned

back in the museum world when my museum

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clients opened up their doors again, and

that shift was immediate years later.

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I still hear from those

clients who tell me that now.

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Six years later, what we built together

is still driving their success.

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And that's not an accident.

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That's what happens when you stop patching

problems and you start building systems.

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So what does that actually look like?

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Let me walk you through the framework

that I teach, the Love My Museum Method.

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Has three parts and each

one builds on the last.

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This is something that I use

with my implementation clients.

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Now.

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It's something that I use

with my consulting clients.

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It's something that I've written

about in an ebook, and it is working

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The three parts, I call

them the three keys.

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The first key is brand messaging.

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Brand messaging needs to be

clear, consistent, and confident.

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It is the foundation of everything.

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When visitors land on your website,

scroll past your social media or

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hear someone mention your museum at a

dinner party, they should immediately

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understand who you are and why you

matter, and why they should care.

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That clarity is what builds the marketing

cornerstones of know, like, and trust.

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And without it, even the most beautiful

museum can feel like a stranger.

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The pushback that I often get on this

is Amy, we're just a little museum.

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We are not a big brand.

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That doesn't matter.

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The psychology works the same.

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I also hear, well, we have

brand messaging, but it's

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not really working well.

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Then you're probably

not doing it correctly.

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You probably haven't onboarded

your team to the brand messages.

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You're probably not

using them consistently.

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Maybe they aren't clear.

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And maybe you haven't been

using them confidently.

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It also could be that you think you have

brand messaging, like a mission statement,

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but that's not quite what we mean.

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The second key is visitor experience.

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Here's something that surprises

a lot of museum leaders.

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The visitor experience doesn't begin

when someone walks through your doors.

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It begins the moment they

encounter you online.

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It begins with a Google search,

a website visit, scrolling.

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Through your Instagram, and if that online

experience is confused or outdated or just

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forgettable, you are losing people before

they even step foot in your building.

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I help museums design a visitor journey

that starts online and carries all the

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way through the in-person experience,

one that makes every visitor want

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to come back and bring a friend.

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You do not want to have a museum where

people leave unimpressed, underwhelmed,

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and feel like, okay, I check the box.

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I don't need to go here again.

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You want them to have such an amazing

experience, and you want to have programs

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and events that are seasonal that they

want to incorporate into their lives.

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Every museum needs to be a community

museum, and every visitor that comes to

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your museum needs to be thinking about

when they're going to come back next.

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The third key is media relations,

and this one is where a lot of museum

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communicators have a huge untapped

opportunity because here's the truth, the

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world trusts what others say about you

far more than what you say about yourself.

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There's actually research to back this

up, That is why the third key of the

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love my museum method is about building

authentic relationships with media,

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earning third party endorsements, and

creating the kind of credibility that.

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No ad budget is going to replicate.

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You do not need a PR firm to do this,

and actually, as somebody who has

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been that PR firm that gets called in

for an exhibit opening, I will argue

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that media relations cannot just start

three months before your exhibit opens.

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It needs to be year round.

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Those relationships with the

media need to be an ongoing,

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consistent thing that you do.

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So those are the three keys.

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Brand messaging, visitor

experience, media relations.

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That's the method.

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I have worked with so many museum

teams that have incredible content.

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They have deeply committed staff.

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They have real community roots, but I.

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Maybe their messaging was scattered.

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Maybe different team members were

communicating different things.

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Maybe their visual brand and their brand

messaging and, and their digital presence

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didn't match the in-person experience.

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Staff sometimes is constantly reinventing

the wheel because there was no shared

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system for how communications got done.

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We do not want to work

in departmental silos.

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We don't wanna keep things

really close to our chest.

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The People that are coming to visit

your museum does not know the difference

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between the education department and the

communications department and visitor

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services when we start working together.

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I take everything back to the basics.

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We clarify the message.

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We build consistent processes.

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We give the staff a shared roadmap so

that everyone knew the priorities and how

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their piece fit into the bigger picture.

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And here is what one of the

leaders told me years later.

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The success I have today is because

of the foundation Amy built years ago.

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She encouraged me to take it back to

the basics, to help staff stay on course

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with their task and to be consistent.

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Years later.

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That's the kind of result that happens

when you stop doing temporary fixes and

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you start building something that lasts.

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Let's talk about how we could

actually do this together, because

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in addition to people saying we are a

hidden gem, they will also say to me.

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Amy, this sounds like

a nice thing to have,

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and I am going to argue

it isn't a nice to have.

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It's something that you need.

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and that means starting to do

things a little bit differently.

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If you've ever heard the

saying, give Amanda a fish.

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He will eat for a day.

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Teach man to fish.

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He will eat for a lifetime.

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That is how I run my business now.

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I love being the person

who can give you a fish.

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I love the implementation

work that I do for museums.

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I love.

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Writing the press releases and

making the media calls and getting

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people excited about your latest

and greatest exhibit or program.

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I love that work, but there's

also only one of me, in addition

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to giving museums the fish.

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Now, I also want to teach you how to fish.

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I wanted to create a better way.

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To work with museums.

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I have one project that

I would do every year.

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I've actually been working on this

project on and off for 20 years now,

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and every year that I would come

back, they would still be struggling.

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In between their big project

for the other 11 months of the

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year, nothing was happening.

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There was no media relations being done.

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There was no work on

communications strategy.

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There was no communication strategy.

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And do you know what the other thing

that's happened in those last 20 years?

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They've gone from a full robust

team to a skeleton of a team.

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They've gone from having multiple

donors and partners to having a

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really hard time getting donors and

really struggling to find partners

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If they had had a really

good communication strategy,

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this would not be happening.

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I don't think they're going to be

around much longer, and I don't want

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that to happen to other museums.

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Seeing this happen to them is one of

the reasons why I want to help more

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museums and because there's only

one of me, it's one of the reasons

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why I created a new way to work.

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It's the teaching the Museum

to Fish part of my business.

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But I wanna be really

clear about something.

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I am not a typical consultant.

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I don't come in hand over a

big report and then disappear.

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I've spent too much time inside

museum teams to do that to anyone.

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My goal is always to leave your

museum better than I found it.

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With systems that keep working long

after our time together ends, what

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I offer are strategic partnerships.

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We work side by side.

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Here's what that looks like

at three different levels.

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So the tier one of strategic

partnerships is called the residency.

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This is the highest level of support

and it's designed for teams who are

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ready to do a full communications

recalibration inside and out.

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We work together for six months across

three different phases in phase one.

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I evaluate your current systems.

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I'm looking for those energy leaks,

the places where your efforts aren't

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reaching your audience, where your staff

is burning time and capacity on things

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that aren't really moving the needle.

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I do a.

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Thorough analysis of both your

external messaging and your

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internal communication protocols.

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We end this phase with two reports

and a concrete 90 day plan.

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In phase two, we build, we create what

I call a digital communications hub.

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It is an organized, centralized home

for all of your communication tools.

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There are templates and processes

that I share, and here's what I'm

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especially proud of with this piece.

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We build it so that anyone

on the team can run it.

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If someone is out sick,

the system doesn't stop.

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If there's turnover, the

roadmap is still clear.

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You get to go away on vacation.

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You are using all of your resources.

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This is something that we build together

and it is customized for your museum.

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In phase three, While your team puts

everything into practice, I'm still there.

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I'm helping you fine tune it in real time.

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I'm helping you do some troubleshooting

when things are getting kind of

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sticky or messy, and I'm making sure

that the momentum doesn't stall.

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I want this to become a habit.

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I don't want it to end up on

a digital shelf somewhere.

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So that is tier one.

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Tier two is the advisory.

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This is a three month partnership

where I come in and I work one-on-one

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with the lead contact on your team.

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We do a strategic audit first

of your external communications.

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So whereas tier one also had the

internal communications piece.

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Tier two is only external communications,

and we align my recommendations

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with your specific goals, and

we turn your top priorities into

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a concrete 90 day action plan.

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And then we meet by weekly to

review progress, keep things moving.

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And that lead contact gets access

to my trainings and resources.

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This is really great if you are working

with a smaller team where people are

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wearing a lot of hats and maybe somebody

is wearing the communications hat that

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doesn't have the experience or the

training with communications, and so.

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This really is me teaching them to fish,

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teaching them a method and a

system and a strategy that they are

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going to be able to use long term.

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The result is that your team member

walks away with a very professional

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framework for museum communications

and that confidence to you execute

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on your most urgent priorities.

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because three months

isn't a very long time.

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We usually pick something that's

timely, so it could be that you have

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an exhibit opening coming up, and

so that is what our focus is on.

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It could be that you need a communications

plan for an upcoming event or project,

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and so that is what we work on.

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The third strategic partnership offer

is the museum digital assessment.

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If you're not quite ready for a full

package, a full partnership, but you know

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that your digital presence needs some

work, this is a great starting point.

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In one focused month, I conduct a thorough

review of your entire online presence from

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your website to social media engagement.

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We look at email marketing

and we meet twice.

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We meet once to go over the

recommendation, and then we will pick sort

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of your your highest impact priorities.

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And then you go away and you work on

those things, and then we meet again

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at the end of the month to review

your progress, make sure you are

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still set up for continued success.

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The result is a digital presence

that's intentionally designed to build

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that know, like, and trust factor.

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That first part of the visitor journey.

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Where we are removing friction so that

we're moving from, I found you online

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to, I'm walking through your doors

and that feels effortless for people.

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Sometimes when I talk to museums

about the Love My Museum method,

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they will say, well, Amy, our museum

is unique, or, I don't think what

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you're talking about is going to work.

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The Love My museum method

is flexible, customizable.

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And whether your museum is a

small historic home or a large

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scale institution, whether you

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method adapts to where you are

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You need a strategic partner who is

really invested in your long-term success.

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So where do we go from here?

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I want you to Imagine your museum

is a known beloved community hub.

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People talk about it.

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You have signature programs

that sell out every year.

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Your staff shows up with clarity about

their roles and confidence in the

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systems that you've built together.

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your communications run consistently,

not because one heroic person is

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holding everything together, but because

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You have a real infrastructure in place

for communications and communication

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strategy you stop being a hidden

gem and you start showing up like

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the community hub that you are.

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Running a museum is hard, but

getting expert support shouldn't be.

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The simplest thing that you can do

today is book a discovery call with me.

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It's 20 minutes.

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We'll talk about your museum's

specific challenges and goals, and

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I'll share how I might be able to help.

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It might be the beginning of something

really great for your museum.

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I will leave the link to schedule

a call in the show notes.

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I would love to hear about your museum.

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Thanks so much for joining me today.

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Now, before I sign off, I am

going to play for you the New

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Love My Museum podcast theme song.

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I'll see you next time.