Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

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.

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The Aigantighe Art Gallery in Timaru has scored two international marketing triumphs - an article in the Feburary 2007 edition of Museums Journal and mention on the home page of Global Museum webzine (check it out before the page changes).

How have they done it? Dr Fiona Ciaran, Director of the Aigantighe Art Gallery, says the article in Museums Journal happened because the journal heard about the innovations at the art museum.

Chen, the living Ming Dynasty sculpture - a human made up like a sculpture in the art museum’s collection - comes alive to interact with visitors and has connected especially well with children.

Activities, such dressing up in the costumes depicted in paintings, means children are dragging their sometime-reluctant parents to Aigantighe.

A sense of humour embodies this museum’s approach. ‘Museums are temples of curiosity: if you’re not having fun with your public, you’re failing to inspire them’, Fiona says. However, having fun is a serious business - the museum wants to get people through the door by making their museum approachable, their audience comfortable and ultimately engaged with the art.

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I’ve just received an email from the Museum Detective about a new podcast on their blog about the high-risk venture of stealing art. The Museum Detective is one of the few blogs I’ve found on NZ culture, and it’s got me wondering …

Are cultural sector organisations taking up this channel for communicating with their audiences? Are we reluctant to blog?

Perhaps it’s because it’s hard to imagine why a cultural organisation would need a blog. Or is it because of the commitment required to maintain one? The difficulties of measuring the effectiveness of a blog, maybe?

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I’m back at base after visiting Auckland yesterday to hold a workshop in the glorious Civic Theatre. We sought feedback from cultural organisations on NZLive.com, as well as ideas for future development. This workshop was preceded by one in Dunedin last week - lucky me, I even got to surf at St Clair beach at the end of the day!

We’ll post a summary of the outcomes after next week’s workshops in Christchurch and Wellington. Some trends are emerging: the new cultural funding guide is popular, and organisations are finding the admin tool easy to use. 

Some of the suggestions from participants included new features (such as event reviews, event photos and online exhibitions, itineraries for various locations, mapping that lets you see events on around you), improving the site navigation and providing data on the number of ‘views’ of organisations’ events entries. More on that to come.

Another area of interest for workshop participants has been how we are marketing NZLive.com. Getting the word out there about NZLive.com will bring more people to events.

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