Why you should blog - part III
May 2nd, 2007Papers and notes from the Museums and the Web 2007 conference (April 11-14) in San Francisco are now online.
The wiki notes on the Walker Art Centre’s presentation on blogging are worth a read. They list ‘gems’ from the museum blogosphere for 06/07 (including this very blog!), blogs that have ‘found their voice’, tips for the perfect post, dos and don’ts for creating income from your blog, link-building strategies and - most usefully - simple statistics for assessing whether your blog is working.
Powerhouse Museum’s Seb Chan and Ideum’s Jim Spadaccini also presented a paper on their survey of museum blogs.
They say that top-ranked blogs all have a high number of posts (gulp - hard work for the bloggers!) and allow audience participation through comments. These blogs sustain the pace by having a team of bloggers and/or some automated content. They keep their audience loyal with focused, consistent content that goes beyond marketing blather.
The Q&A session associated with their presentation has been documented by the Walker Art chaps, with discussion focusing on issues of trust: trusting the online community when you first begin blogging, trusting time to prove the concept of your blog, and your organisations having to trust the staff who write the blog.
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I was on a panel last night for local artists and arts organizations seeking to leverage the internet, and there were several questions about the viability of blogging for nonprofits… It’s interesting, despite all the research and anecdotal success stories we’ve heard about blogging, it’s still very hard to point to any concrete returns on investment. It’s hard to pitch the idea to the higher-ups and say, “well, this will probably take 20% of my time the first few months…” when they aren’t sure what benefits they’ll get. I continue to advocate (as in our MW workshop) for just starting it, maybe even on your own time at first, working out the kinks, and then pitching a working, complete, and hopefuly comment-full blog to the directors.
Anyway, thanks for the links, and as always, great blog!