Can disappearing texts, images and videos increase the visibility of your museum? As strange as it sounds, the answer is “yes.” Trying to attract potential visitors? Reach them via smartphone—with mobile video. If you want to create the ultimate museum experience sample, virtual reality can take your advertising to another dimension.

Snapchat

So what’s the big deal about Snapchat? 100 million daily users—35% of whom are millennials! The ephemeral nature of Snapchat is a great thing, because…

What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. With Snapchat, there’s no need to worry about cleaning up your “posts” or “pins.” They simply disappear. In this age of perpetual digital memory, this feature (ironically) has lasting value.

How can museums benefit? Encourage visitors to create their own Snapchat content. Give them an opportunity to express themselves and share with their friends without worrying about tomorrow.

The New York Times recently described an interesting use of the Snapchat “lens” feature. Ordinarily, people use it to adorn their selfies with flower crowns, dog ears or alien eyes. Recently, however, 20th Century Fox replaced these features with characters from the recently released X-Men: Apocalypse movie. Famous paintings, dinosaurs, skeletons, or suits of armor, anyone?

Want to Add Fuel to the Snapchat Fire? Try Mobile Video

The adoption of mobile video by Snapchat users is generating statistics that are almost impossible to believe. Bloomberg Technology reported on April 28th:

“The majority of people using Snapchat Inc.’s application are making videos, fueling a boom in watching them, the company is telling its investors.

More than a third of Snapchat’s daily users create “Stories,” broadcasting photos and videos from their lives that last 24 hours, according to people familiar with the matter. Now users are watching 10 billion videos a day on the application, up from 8 billion in February."

Can you imagine any other way in which that many people per day might see a video of someone having a blast in your museum?

Virtual Reality

Trying to get people to come to your museum? Do you have anything that can be put on video? Would a small, intense sample cause members of a certain demographic to nag their parents to take them to one of your exhibits? It just might if it’s in 3D or Virtual Reality (VR).

The next big thing according to Mary Meeker’s 2016 Internet Trends report is Virtual Reality (VR). While some museums with big budgets have been experimenting with this type of technology for some time, it is about to become mainstream.

Low cost VR headsets are already being shipped to video gamers. This technology is going to proliferate as more devices and tools are made available at consumer-friendly prices. Imagine taking potential visitors on a quick virtual tour of your museum.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek’s Starship Enterprise said it best, “Engage!”