Sometimes, during Carnival, it’s hard to remember that there are still a ton of learning experiences to be had in our great state. This week in Louisiana’s Online Lagniappe, we thought we’d highlight organizations with slightly more serious purposes – the groups that help educate and entertain millions year-round.
NOMA (New Orleans Museum of Art)
NOMA’s website does a great job at giving you the NOMA experience, while you’re at home seated on the couch. Their website lists every part of their 40,000 piece collection (or is at least in the process of accomplishing that.) It allows searching by category, theme, geography, or time period. In addition, you can find your favorite pieces in the museum, and then it will helpfully create your own unique collection, which is easily printable. This lets you have a head-start on finding everything once you get there. It’s one of the best examples of an organization helping convert online visitors into real-life ones.
BREC’s Baton Rouge Zoo matches their brand with the theme of their online presence perfectly. An organization that is based around a friendly and open atmosphere needs the same online, or else it won’t be getting the real-life business that it wants. The color scheme is bright, with numerous pictures of the zoo’s creatures – and the animal of the day guessing game is a wonderful idea for bringing visitors back day after day. What could your business be doing to create return online visitors?
The National World War II Museum
Too often, a business will sign up for the next great social network and then promptly forget about it (I’m looking at you, empty Google+ pages.) So it’s always appreciated when a company is actually active on every single profile they’ve created. The WWII Museum’s Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube accounts have all had updates very recently (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube within 24 hours, and Flickr within a week.) It’s a smart move that is a helpful reminder to businesses everywhere – it’s not enough just to make a profile on a social network – you also have to participate in it.
And the Lagniappe’s Lagniappe
Our extra shout-out this week goes to all the Krewes that have an online presence! We love when traditional groups expand into digital territory, so this Mardi Gras season, our thanks, congrats, and welcome go out to Zulu, Rex, Muses (great idea teasing their throws), whoever live Tweeted Nyx last night, and Krewe d’Etat. If we haven’t included yours yet, let us know and we’ll add it.
Send In Your Lagniappe
Is your Louisiana-based business doing incredible things online? Send Flynn Zaiger of Online Optimism a note at Flynn@onlineoptimism.com and it might just be included in next week’s column.