Whereas the identical massive names usually dominate the highest 20 most-followed museums on social media in our annual Customer Figures report, it’s attention-grabbing to see which museums have the best share development, 12 months on 12 months. The Huntington, in San Marino, California, noticed its viewers on Fb, X, Instagram and TikTok develop by over 25% between March 2024 and March 2025—now totalling greater than 750,000 followers—making it one of many prime 5 museums for social media development on the earth prior to now 12 months. We communicate to Deborah Miller, the Huntington’s director of digital and social content material technique concerning the rise of YouTube, the autumn of X and dealing with the world’s cutest social media influencer.
The Artwork Newspaper: How many individuals work on social media on the museum?
Deborah Miller:Two folks full-time, me and Arianna Muñoz, however different folks on the workforce usually help.
It’s stated that video is a very powerful format for social media development—do you discover this to be the case?
Sure, we’re totally targeted on video manufacturing—that’s the vast majority of content material we produce. There’s three movies from final 12 months that have been the most important mills of development. One was about the right way to create a pretend tree out of pool noodles, which we use in our conservatory. It blew folks’s minds that they weren’t actual! One other standard video was with certainly one of our rose gardeners doing a deadheading tutorial.
These successes have been a window into the content material instructions we must always actually spend money on. After which the third video was a collaboration publish with The Tiny Chef Present [an Emmy-winning animated children’s television series]. We placed on a tiny afternoon tea for Tiny Chef and took him on a tour—it was such a success. Plus he’s in all probability essentially the most cute influencer we’ve labored with.
Does the museum usually work with social media influencers?
Not usually, however it’s an space that we’re positively seeking to develop. We wish to create a very intentional technique round who we work with, the way it showcases the Huntington and what the connection is. I believe influencers and content material creators can deliver in several views and audiences.
The Huntington’s highest following is on Instagram—would you say that is a very powerful platform for the museum?
Instagram might be our most dynamic when it comes to development and engagement. In 2024 our Instagram posts had round 95 million impressions and our engagement fee is tremendous sturdy at round 8% [Statista reports that the average influencer engagement rate on Instagram in 2024 was 1.85%]. However essentially the most thrilling platform for development for the museum prior to now 12 months is definitely YouTube. It launched YouTube Shorts in 2021 and I believe we started posting our quick movies there in late 2023. Shorts are an excellent bridge to the longer video content material we now have on YouTube, so we’ve been experimenting on there. Final 12 months we gained 60,000 followers, and we simply handed 400,000 subscribers in complete.
Our knowledge reveals Huntington misplaced round 5% of its followers on X prior to now 12 months, according to most museums on the earth. You additionally haven’t posted on the platform since 1 February 2025. What’s the museum’s plan for this platform? Are you contemplating diversifying?
We’ve made a aware choice to pause communications on X. We’ve seen loads of different establishments doing the identical, each domestically and nationally. We’re monitoring the channel and since 2022, it’s been in decline. We joined Threads and, though we haven’t invested closely in it, it already has double the next that we at the moment have on X. We’re additionally monitoring Bluesky, however the person base continues to be low compared to different platforms. The social media panorama is risky so we’re all the time holding an eye fixed out for modifications.
