Is there more to it than posting a status update?

6 DISCUSSION
In this chapter the findings of the research are further discussed. The most surprising, or in
other ways significant findings are explored and reflected on. Also, some managerial
recommendations on how the museums could re-think their social media presence is given in
this chapter.
As clarified earlier, the museum product entails parts of tangible and intangible elements. The
tangible ones have to do with the actual museum and the artworks, while the intangible ones
refer to the experience of the visit. As clear as this division is to the museum employees, they
do not think of this, in the online environment. One of the informants noted their museum’s
entire webpages are built from the museum perspective, instead of the customers’. One can
only think what that does to the online experience. Another informant noted that it is not
always even the meaning of a museum having a social media presence to make the customer
visit the actual museum. In a case like this if the customer, for example lives in another
country, but wants to experience that they belong to a certain group of supporters of that
museum, they should be able to identify to that museum through the online relationship. As
the posts the museums interviewed write mostly have to do with events in the actual museum
building, how does it correlate with the idea of not having to come to the actual museum
while still being able to be their fan, suppoter or even partner online? The museums were well
aware that content is turly important in social media, but it does seem that they do not think
about the content as much as the need to be present in social media.
The presented thought that the employees should not represent the museums in social media,
is understandable, yet it creates a series of additional questions. Why would the employees
not want their name and perhaps profile picture be seen with the post they create for the
museum, as their names and contact information are always, for example, seen in the formal
press releases they write. People cannot click a press release signature for more information
on that person, unlike they could do for example in Facebook, but then again one can block all
personal information on oneself also in Facebook, so that only one’s friends see it.
Gilmore (2003, 85-87) notes that the overall conceptualization of a museum service requires
multi-dimensional criteria, for example, communincation. The biggest problem in the
museums interviewed, who have a social media presence, seem to be the way they
communicate. It is above all informative instead of conversational. Also the content, to some
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