The Goal Was Never Just More Followers

What if your feed felt less like a calendar and more like a community?

That question shaped our work with the Cummer Museum. We weren’t chasing viral moments, regurgitating their event calendar or growing the audience just for the sake of a bigger number. We wanted to create a digital experience that felt like the Museum itself: beautiful, curious, welcoming and full of things worth discovering.

The goal was to give people a reason to connect with the Museum long before they walked through its doors.

Give People a Reason to Come Back

A museum has no shortage of things to talk about. The challenge is making people care about them when there isn’t an exhibition opening or event to promote.

We built recurring content around the things people already love about the Cummer Museum: the gardens, the collection, the changing seasons, and the experience of simply being there.

“What's in Bloom?” became a way to bring the gardens into people's feeds. Collection posts made artwork feel approachable and gave audiences something to discover beyond the headline exhibition. Seasonal content showed the Museum as a place to experience throughout the year, not just somewhere to visit for a special event.

The goal was simple: give people something they’d actually want to save, send to a friend or comment on.

Make the Museum Feel Human

The strongest posts weren't always the ones with the biggest announcement. Sometimes, they were the simplest moments. A visitor taking in a gallery. Light moving through the gardens. A behind-the-scenes glimpse. A quiet corner of the Museum that someone might not have noticed before.

Those moments gave people a way into the Museum without asking them to know anything about art first.

That matters because social media is personal. People don't necessarily want to be marketed to while they're scrolling. They want to discover something beautiful, learn something new, laugh, feel inspired or see a place they love from a different perspective.

Turn Promotion Into Participation

This shift changed the way we approached content.

An event became more than a graphic on a feed. It became a glimpse into the experience, from an evening of music in the gardens and an art class inspired by a favorite exhibition to a thought-provoking lecture or storytime in the galleries.

An exhibition wasn't just a title, date, and description. It became the artwork, the people behind it, the stories within it and the details you might miss if you weren't paying attention.

And a garden wasn't just a backdrop. It became content in its own right.

The Bigger Picture

The strategy worked, and the numbers tell the story.

Since taking over the Cummer Museum’s Instagram, we’ve seen an 822% increase in link clicks, an 82% increase in reach, a 583% increase in impressions, and a 963% increase in content interactions, while gaining nearly 5,000 new followers.

But the most exciting part is what those numbers represent: people are not just seeing the Museum. They’re clicking, sharing, engaging, and finding new reasons to experience it.

That’s the opportunity for museums and community organizations. Social media can be more than a place to post what’s happening. It can be a place where people discover something they love, connect with your mission, and feel like they’re part of it.

Give people something worth coming back for, and the community follows.

‍

Written by Alexandra Halbert, Social Media Strategist

‍