Exploring the importance of Facebook post writing as a museum engagement tool

Social media are proved to be valuable tools for museums to communicate, interact and engage with actual and potential audience. Yet, very little research has been conducted to investigate the possible communication strategies for museums to boost online visitors’ engagement and we still lack a comprehensive understanding on how to improve posts writing for engagement purposes. This study investigates the importance of post writing in increasing Facebook engagement, by focussing specifically on the extent to which the adoption of images, hashtag and mentions in Facebook posts influences the engagement of museum online users. In particular, we tested whether the distribution of engagement of posts with image, text, hashtag or mention is the same of engagement of posts without those features. These research questions have been addressed relying on 4,888 posts of the larges 50 Italian Museums over the time horizon 2018-2019. Results provide some recommendation for social media manager and museum managers.