Going Viral: Using Digital Platforms to Grow Your Fanbase and Increase Your Educational Impact

Presentation theme: PR for planetariums

Like many institutions, pandemic closures forced the Museum of Science, Boston to expand its presence in the digital realm. Even after its doors reopened, the Museum has continued to make digital outreach an ongoing focus, especially when it comes to space-themed content. Space-related videos featuring educators from the Museum’s Charles Hayden Planetarium accumulated approximately 7 million views across various social media platforms in the first eleven months of 2023, and in spring 2023 the Museum launched a brand new weekly space science newsletter that attracted over 10,000 subscribers within 4 months of its debut. This expansion into the digital realm has vastly increased the number of people engaging with the Museum on space-themed topics and learning to see the Museum, and its planetarium educators, as an astronomy resource. In this presentation we will go over our strategies for creating and distributing space-themed content across various platforms and share some broadly applicable approaches that can allow other planetariums to increase their digital outreach.

Image © Arena Berlin