Whereas the identical huge names typically dominate the highest 20 most-followed museums on social media in our annual Customer Figures report, it’s fascinating to see which museums have the best proportion progress, 12 months on 12 months. The Huntington Library, Artwork Museum and Botanical Backyard 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 high 5 museums for social media progress 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 individuals full-time, me and Arianna Muñoz, however different individuals on the staff typically help.
It’s mentioned that video is a very powerful format for social media progress—do you discover this to be the case?
Sure, we’re totally centered on video manufacturing—that’s nearly all of content material we produce. There’s three movies from final 12 months that have been the most important mills of progress. One was about create a pretend tree out of pool noodles, which we use in our conservatory. It blew individuals’s minds that they weren’t actual! One other standard video was with one among our rose gardeners doing a deadheading tutorial.
These successes have been a window into the content material instructions we must always actually put money into. 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 typically work with social media influencers?
Not typically, however it’s an space that we’re undoubtedly seeking to develop. We need to create a extremely 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 carry 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 by way of progress and engagement. In 2024 our Instagram posts had round 95 million impressions and our engagement fee is tremendous robust 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 progress 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 have now 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, consistent with 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 got made a acutely aware choice to pause communications on X. We’ve got seen numerous 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, regardless that 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 maintaining an eye fixed out for adjustments.
