Journalist vs curator: seven tips to a digital content strategy

What is digital content for? As galleries and museums, we have objectives that range from selling a ticket to securing the future of the visual arts. So how can we hope to have a consistent and appealing offer in our digital content? And are the articles, videos and social media posts we’re producing purely in the realm of content marketing, or are they something closer to journalism, or something new altogether? At the RA, a confusion over our objectives had led to mixed-quality content, a tired digital team, low viewing figures and some unhappy, confused colleagues.

In this session, we’ll share our key lessons from rebooting our digital editorial strategy – with four reframed objectives and seven clear principles for creating considered, high-quality content. Plus, we’ll reveal the surprising piece of content that continues to be our most-read year after year.

Bibliography:
- I took part in this Culture24 project which informed many of the ideas in our strategy:
http://weareculture24.org.uk/projects/action-research/phase-4-whats-the-story/
- I came to the RA from The Times; much of the approach to the strategy comes from the principles of arts journalism (thetimes.co.uk).