The Museum Detective has sent me this well-considered response to my post on why you should blog.

Desperately seeking cultural blogs in NZ

by the Museum Detective

I was asked by the blogger - in - chief of Lively to comment on the dearth of blogs hosted by cultural organisations in NZ. (Thanksfor the challenge Sarah!). I spent an evening rummaging for institutional blogs in the New Zealand cultural sector or were close cousins.

It appears that our librarians are having some fun. The Wellington City Library and the Economics librarians at the University of Canterbury have set up blogs to feature new acquisitions or provide links to relevant articles and events.

I guess the challenge for institutions it to figure out why they might like to set up a blog - what will its purpose and function be? To bring in new audiences? To bring a friendly face to the sector? To engage in contemporary debates? To serve as a public notice board or host a discussion forum?

There are significant differences between personal blogs, where the author can write, debate, comment on topics in whatever style they wish and that of a blog where the voice represents an institution. But here are some ideas …

Some people get hooked into ’saga’s’ or ‘personality stories’. One example I was told about involved a Sydney-based woman who blogged about her business. For the first year traffic to her site was modest, and then one day she hit on the idea of her cat taking over the blog posts. So the cat wrote about her owner forgetting to buy her dinner because she was busy working on a particular contract and other sagas began to unfold; apparently reader traffic to the blog perked up substantially. I’ll just sweep the factor of whether this cat story is true or not under the carpet because I really just want to highlight the potential that this story offers.

Museums could adopt a similar ‘personality’ blogger - first on my list would be the Aigantighe’s ghostie. This Scottish matron could write about the daily antics of the museum staff: how the curator was absorbed in a particular art work at the moment; that she needs to take aspirins during the school holiday period because of the hordes of children that are romping through the galleries to see the colour fairies; that the museum director was particularly quiet at the moment which usually meant she was scheming something.

Another model would be to roster blog hosts: curators could write about what they are researching on at the moment; the conservator could write about experimenting with a new preservation technique; a registrar could write about how many bird bones they had catalogued that week. What may be the daily grind for one may well be a thought-provoking story for another or an unexpected educational resource for someone else.

Perhaps press releases could turn into blog posts and various staff members could add their views. There are many possibilities. While blogs have a comment feature, it may not be that active; some readers simply like to lurk in the background (I’m a lurker). Some bloggers have do not activate the comments feature.

Below is an extract from a post written on 26 March 2007 by Seb Chan of Fresh + New, the Powerhouse Museum’s blogger:

Take risks. In the Internet Age, it’s easy — and relatively inexpensive — to try new ideas. The cost of failure is low for any individual experiment. […] Approach community building with confidence, teamwork, and appropriate expectations.

Confidence: Building an online community requires a different tone and approach than a traditional news site: personality, humor, and authenticity are key.

Teamwork: Community sites have a better chance of success if staffers throughout the newsroom and the organization use them rather than being the province of a small “community team” that has little or no contact with the newsroom.

Expand your team beyond your staff, and even beyond your site. For example, reward local bloggers who link to your site just as much as you reward readers who contribute to your site directly. Consider growing the “ecosystem” of local sites that link to yours as part of your mission.

Expectations of contributors: Don’t expect nonjournalists to feel comfortable taking on the role of journalist. While some contributors may be eager to write a “story,” others will want to share lived experiences. Finding ways to accommodate, encourage, and learn from contributors is key to success.

Expectations about growth: Communities are organic. They grow through the web-equivalent of word of mouth. Expect a significant period of time – as much as six months, maybe much more – before a community gains a life of its own.

I guess the important factor is that cultural sector blogging is still in its pioneering phase.

In February 2006, Jim Spadaccini of Ideum wrote that there were less than 30 known museum blogs. Twelve months later, there are over 100 that are dedicated to the world of museums. Some blogs are institutional and others are written by interested individuals.

The annual Museums and the Web conference is underway in San Francisco and Jim Spadaccini and Seb Chan will be presenting a paper about some of the successful museum blogs out there; they will also comment on the reluctance of museum’s to adopt blogging technology as a way to create new audiences.

So why not have a look at the conference website and maybe, just maybe, your cultural organisation might take a ‘low risk’ risk and start blogging. Remember it doesn’t have to be your own blog; you could start adding posts to other blogs. Why not start with Lively or museumdetective.com?

Comment – If I have missed your organisation’s blog please let us know!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 10:38 am and is filed under Culture online, Marketing, Social media, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.