Bench Learning: Zoos and Aquariums Social Media

I’ve been looking for an excuse to share this YouTube Video of a River Otter playing the piano that Humberto Kam from the MBA mentioned.     It think it rivals the YouTube video of Mariachi Connecticut performing for a beluga whale at Mystic Aquarium.    Aquariums and Zoos  (and animal welfare groups) may a key asset to leverage for  their social media content strategies:  cute animals.
But is that really true?   If Zoos and Aquariums had a benchmarking process or what I starting to call “bench learning” where there is a dashboard of peer metrics to review and discuss with peers, they might discover a wealth of insights.

Anthony Brown who does social media for the Zoo here in San Francisco let me know this morning that such a bench learning list exists.

He is using a Google Spreadsheet to collect the data, although it is possible to leverage APIs .  The goal is share with peers to get a better understanding of where they are as an industry on Twitter.   He hopes to create a reference point for new/improved twitter usage across the industry.   Some questions he hopes to answer some questions about practice and from there get to a peer dialog “best practices.”
Do you benchmark your organization with peers in your sub-sector?  How do you do it?  What have you learned?  Has it helped improve your practice?