#followamuseum

Jim Richardson 0f Sumo has dubbed February 1 follow a museum day, in an attempt to draw Twitter users' attention to museums.

The follow a museum site has a useful country-by-country directory of museum Twitter accounts.

Here's what I look for when I'm thinking about following an organisation on Twitter:

• Is there a named person/people in charge of the Twitter account?
• Is the activity on the account regular, or are there random blips of tweeting?
• Is the activity all around promoting exhibitions and events (which are only really interesting to me if they're in my home town) or is there more behind-the-scenes information?
• Is the stream just made up of announcements and retweets of positive comments, or does it look like people at the museum are actually talking to the people following them (about things other than the museum itself)?

A note on hashtags

A hashtag- a # placed in front of a word or acronym in a tweet, such a #followamuseum - is a way of associating messages with a particular theme.

The power of the hashtag is seen particularly in search; following this link will take you to a Twitter search page that dynamically updates as new Twitter messages carrying the #followamuseum tag are posted.