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When most of Britain's finest museums and galleries were founded, they were very much look and don't touch affairs. But for some years now we've been seeing the death of the dusty glass case. Instead, visitors are allowed to press buttons, positively fondle the exhibits, and enjoy all manner of interactive displays in the name of education.

Now, thanks to the explosion of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, as well as the near-ubiquitous presence of the Internet, museums and galleries are breaking free of their glass cases for good. In their place have come whizzy apps, oral history websites and trendy crowdsourced exhibitions. But what is all this social media activity doing for the reputation and profile of Britain's museums, and is it anything more than tweeting in the dark?

Museum marketing consultant Jim Richardson, who runs the social media museum conference MuseumNext, says that social media 'fits perfectly with the mission of most museums, as it allows them to create deeper, more engaging experiences with their audiences.' More prosaically, it also brings in the cash, with the Tate Galleries - one of the most successful users of social media - driving both exhibition ticket sales and shop sales from its Facebook and Twitter sites.

Richardson says that social media, used well, creates a community 'which will evangelise on behalf of the museum, a community which helps the museum to improve its collections, and a community which is actually curating and creating content for the museum'.

One of the most successful ways in which museums are engaging with their visitors is with the smartphone app, especially those for iPhones. These allow museums to change the way visitors engage with their content without the need to invest much in expensive technology, since visitors use devices that they already carry around.

One of the most successful apps of the year came from the Museum of London. Previously relatively unknown for its technological innovation, the museum developed an iPhone app called Street Museum to help launch its new galleries last May.

'We wanted to get the museum out of its dusty archives and out onto the streets and showcase the city.' explains head of communications Antony Robbins. The premise behind Street Museum is simple. It takes 200 images from the museum's collection, and allows those with iPhones to hold them up in certain locations and compare the old pictures with the current street view. Robbins calls it 'a window through time'.

The app, which is now being developed for Android phones too, has surpassed the museum's expectations. 'We expected 10,000 downloads, and we've had 120,000 so far - it's still going strong,' Robbins says. The app encourages those who have viewed the street scenes to also visit the free admission museum and to buy prints of the scenes from its shop. Street Museum also garnered considerable press coverage of the opening of the museum's new Galleries of Modern London, which cost £20 million.

Another popular and innovative app has come from Tate Modern. Tate Trumps is a game you play with friends, in which you roam the galleries looking for pictures that you think will score highly in a fight, create a certain mood or are exceptionally famous. You can pick seven, then compare them with your friends and see who has been given the highest score for their choices.

Tate Trumps is free, but some museums make money by charging for their apps - for example the National Gallery, which sells its Love Art tour for $2.99, and the V&A which has a specific app for its Quilting exhibition, selling for $3.99.

Boosting visitor engagement

As well as making money, social media can be a powerful marketing and information tool. The Tate, for example, is king of Twitter, and has gathered more than 210,000 followers on the microblogging site.

Social media agency Fresh Networks last year named Tate the top brand on Twitter, above high street retailer Topshop, online fashion store Asos and cult comparison site ComparetheMarket (of meerkat fame).

Matt Rhodes, head of client services at Fresh Networks, says that the Tate's popularity is due to the way it uses the site in three clear ways - for informing, responding and having fun. 'The Tate has a clear personality on Twitter and has fun that is relevant to the museum, its galleries and the interests of its followers,' Rhodes explains. 'I particularly like when they compare the weather on a day to pieces in their collection.'

During December's Big Freeze, for example, wags at the Tate posted Joseph Farquharson's The Joyless Winter Day - a painting of a shepherd and his sheep struggling through snow - perhaps to remind us that commuting really is not all that bad. Tate competitions are also run through Twitter.

'There is nothing particularly revolutionary about how the Tate is using Twitter, but that is the beauty of it,' Rhodes adds. 'They have identified their target market and are using Twitter to inform, engage and entertain them. And they are doing it rather well.'

Other museums and galleries are also opening up to the possibilities. Eithne Ní Chonghaile is communications manager of Museums & Galleries Scotland, a development organisation for the country's cultural institutions. She says that Twitter is really useful for keeping visitors up to date with what's going on, and is helping to get organisations up to speed with how to use the site.

'Twitter really lends itself well to exhibitions,' she explains. 'People are interested to find things out and we have quickly built up a following.'

Museums & Galleries were also instrumental in a website called Scotland at War, which attempted to create an Online Museum. The project can be found at www.rememberingscotlandatwar.org.uk and is aimed at capturing the memories of civilians, younger and older veterans, and serving military from Scotland, about how culture has affected them.

The online museum contains an interactive social media area where personal memories can be exchanged and anyone can create a profile to upload their own reminiscences, photographs and videos. Ní Chonghaile says that the project has been both popular and cost effective, as well as capturing 'those elusive younger people' that are the holy grail of many museums.

She is also working more widely with tourist board Visit Scotland to include more museums in its general tourism apps in order to boost visitor numbers.

The difficulty with social media, for many museums, is that they are handing over some of the control of how the exhibits are viewed and talked about to the general public - control that they have been used to having for centuries.

Interactive initiatives

Some museums have embraced this, using new technology to allow the public to choose the exhibitions themselves. The Brooklyn Museum in New York, for example, ran a photography exhibition called Click!, which started with an open call to anyone to electronically submit a work of photography that responded to the theme 'Changing Faces of Brooklyn'.

The pictures were then judged by an online forum, and the artworks were exhibited, ranked in the order they were judged by the forum.

Another New York museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was brave enough to let visitors take their own pictures of the exhibits, choosing the best through photo-hosting site Flickr to star in the gallery's new advertising campaign.

Images included a man appearing to play the guitar with one of the cultural artefacts and a man and baby mirroring the pose of one of the pictures.

Richardson says that the campaign is at odds with the traditional museum philosophy that does not allow people to take pictures, although in real life people now use their camera phones all the time.

'The 'It's time we MET' campaign capitalises brilliantly on these shifting audience expectations and motivations to ask people not only to capture their experiences in the gallery, but also to share them with each other. The hundreds of pictures people posted on Flickr show the MET through other people's eyes and show the different ways that people experience the museum and its permanent collection,' he says.

However, ceding control to museum and gallery users does come at a price. And Richardson points out that Twitter, in particular holds 'both dangers and benefits for an organisation like a museum'.

He explains that museum workers must get the tone right and use Twitter professionally. 'For example it could reflect badly on the organisation if someone who identified themselves as a member of staff made political remarks, talked about 'going out to get wrecked' or used inappropriate language amongst tweets that referenced their work.'

Twitter also invites comments from visitors, which may be critical. 'If somebody has a criticism about an exhibition or the museum in general, inform them that you appreciate their comment and have passed this along to the relevant person in the museum, and then forward the comment so that they can deal with it in line with our complaints procedure,' he suggests.

For most museums though, the benefits of social media will far outweigh the loss of total control. Engaging with visitors online is relatively cheap, reaches younger audiences who may not otherwise visit, and increases income. The challenge is to convert your eager army of Twitter followers or Facebook friends into real visitors - otherwise your museum will be little more than dusty glass cases with a website attached.

Check-in to London's HISTORY

A new partnership between HISTORY television channel and Foursquare is giving London's check-in addicts the opportunity to discover more of their city.

HISTORY is running a six month campaign aimed at uncovering famous landmarks and historic sites, as well as lesser known bars, cafes, monuments and streets. When users check-in they can discover quirky and interesting facts about their location. Tips include:

• Savoy Street - the only street in the UK where you drive on the right, dating back to the days of hansom cabs.
• The London Stone - this simple rock on 111 Cannon Street was once the most famous landmark in the city. Its origins are lost in legend and myth, but it was considered the city's symbolic heart.
• The Dove - Situated at 19 Upper Mall in Hammersmith is the smallest bar in England at four foot two inches by seven foot 10 inches.
• The Thames Whale - In 2006, Britain was captivated by the fate of a 19 foot bottlenose whale that swam up the Thames and became stranded in London.

HISTORY has also teamed up with 25 partner sites to offer check-in rewards including discounts and prizes. These include locations such as The Tower of London, HMS Belfast, Shakespeare's Globe and The Clink museum. After four visits to these or any of the other 600 locations, users are awarded the new HISTORY ♥ London badge. HISTORY will also provide regular updates through its @historyuk Twitter profile.

Achieved amazing results with digital campaigns? Click here for more info on the CorpComms DigiAwards.

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