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Clients: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met), The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Instagram was created with visuals in mind, but the platform has become quite prolific in the business realm because of its text features. In up to 2,200 characters and 30 hashtags companies and institutions can say just enough (more than a terse tweet, but less than a dramatically long Facebook status update).
Being concise on Instagram is still important to businesses and institutions, especially where writing a bio is concerned. A business must also consider the attention span its audience affords to social media communications. Would the audience prefer to scan through a lot of short posts that are to-the-point with the most important information, or a couple of posts that are crammed with many ideas and details? It all depends on your target!
For example, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Instagram writing-style is cordial, factual, but keeps it light. A family-oriented individual would be attracted to its curiosity-piquing posts. The audience reading its posts want easy to understand, quick, interesting updates in their feed- as opposed to posts that require time or a certain frame of mind to read.
The Museum of Modern Art’s style of writing is completely different. Its posts start with a distinguished quote then follow with details about what is pictured (usually an artist or exhibit). The posts also include things like copyright attributions and how the piece/exhibit was acquired or loaned. One can tell that MoMA is much more artist-oriented from their Instagram communications. An industry type would spend much more time reading about art history online (in this case on MoMA’s Instagram), for leisure or for inspiration. MoMA’s audience also is more likely to frequently be in an interpretive or creative frame of mind to be able to keep up with or appreciate their posts (which may come across as odd or obscure to others).
By analyzing the content of each museum we can see that MoMA’s detailed posts come across as more authoritative than The Met’s short “fun fact” posts. MoMA includes much more objective information than The Met in their Instagram posts, which adds to their authoritative tone. For MoMA, each post is like a short journalistic piece about what is pictured. Although The Met’s collection spans about 5,000 years of art history combined, they speak casually with potential visitors so as to not seem aloof.
Both museums use more still images than videos, but MoMA tends to post more Instagram videos than The Met. MoMA posts about 6-7 times per week, whereas The Met posts once or twice every day. I think the content of each post goes hand-in-hand with the frequency— MoMA posts less but they say more per post, and The Met posts more so they say less per post. Both methods reduce audience burnout.
Initially, I thought that because both museums are art museums, nationally renowned, and based in New York state that their content would be extremely similar. Instead I found strong distinctions in tone of voice. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is clearly targeting “art people”— people who work in the industry and people who live, eat, and breathe the artistic experience. A.K.A., the art connoisseurs. On the other hand, there’s The Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met) that is targeting families and those generally interested or curious in art history from around the world; aiming to educate, inform, and share the artistic experience.
See both museums’ Instagram accounts for yourself at the links below:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.instagram.com/metmuseum/
The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.instagram.com/themuseumofmodernart/