How Museums Can Harness TikTok To Diversify Their Audiences

With a majority of TikTok users belonging to Gen Z, the platform can be a great way to pull in younger, diverse audiences that may not be as involved in or aware of museum happenings. Yet, social media moves at a hyper fast pace, with new trends appearing every day and heavily saturated feeds. Understandably, getting started on TikTok may seem daunting. 

However, there are already some incredible museum TikTok accounts that are not just educational, but fun and entertaining. By utilizing the same strategies and adding your own museum’s twist, you too can use the power of TikTok to engage with a more diverse audience! Here are three tips museums can use to reach a large, diverse mix of audiences on TikTok:

Find your niche!

What do most TikTokers with large followings have in common? They’ve found their niche! Museums that are doing extremely well on TikTok have found what “formula” best communicates their niche. Sticking to this “formula” drives views and engagement on the platform. For example, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s TikTok account frequently features their “snail joke” series by Tim Pearce, their Curator of Mollusks, in which he shows snail specimens along with a fun fact before rattling off snail puns. Their first video featuring his snail jokes has 1.3 million views!

Similarly, the Sacramento History Museum has tailored their TikTok content around their historical printing press and the people who work with it daily. While demonstrating the mechanics of how the presses work, their printing press volunteer and new TikTok star, Howard Hatch, will sometimes tell a printing joke and other times share interesting historical facts about the press. The museum’s most watched TikTok, with 17.2 million views, is of Howard working the press to create a print that has the headline “Sacramento History Museum Reaches 86,000 TikTok Followers.” Many of the other TikToks that feature him have him working the press and talking about related history facts, with humor mixed in. 

These examples highlight how museums have a great opportunity to engage with a large audience on TikTok by capitalizing on what makes them  unique. This could range from hidden histories, museum-related humor, living history reenactments, and more.

Keep up with the trends

I know, I know, TikTok trends last only 48 hours sometimes, but they matter when it comes to content potentially going viral. Participating in these trends can be as simple as using a trending sound on your video to following a trending video format. A great example of this is the Natural History Museum in London’s TikTok account. In one video, they show “Things in the Natural History Museum that *just make sense*” while the trending song “Che La Luna” plays. Keeping with the trending format, the video shows some museum highlights—like their animatronic T. rex, a life-size giraffe, and crystals—while the person filming is shaking their hand in front of the objects in question, as some Italians do when accentuating their speech.

A key element to museums’ success here is to ensure that they have someone who is very knowledgeable of social media trends and that all staff support this person in creating content as soon as they can, so it does not lose relevance.

Bring in outside voices

Let’s face it—we live in the age of influencers. Many businesses frequently partner with influencers to highlight their products, and museums stand to gain a lot by taking the same approach. A successful approach for museums wanting to work with influencers is inviting TikTok influencers (whose content often focuses on local activities) to visit the museum’s new exhibitions or attend upcoming events and asking them  to create content about them. This will both give TikTok audiences a preview of what they could see when they visit and effectively get the word out. Oftentimes, the TikTok algorithm pushes content on users’ pages that are related to where they live. So, taking this approach broadens your museum's reach to people that haven’t visited the museum and may not be plugged into the museum’s social media yet! 

One great example of this is from the influencer account @girlandthegallery, who highlighted the Yayoi Kusama exhibit at the Tate Modern in London. Her video shows the interactive exhibition highlights as she narrates her experience. This video got 14.8 million views!

Of course, influencers will likely expect compensation for their time and efforts. This could come in the form of a paycheck, annual passes, access to exclusive events, and more.

These are just some building blocks towards creating a fun, exciting museum TikTok account. Finding that niche for your museum’s content and playing within it is a creative way to connect with people and engage a wider, more diverse audience. Even if getting started on TikTok still feels daunting, always remember that at the end of the day, social media is supposed to be fun and entertaining, and that if these elements are at the heart of your content it will shine through. 

January 2022