Blogging - It is worth it?
I’ve been thinking about our museums blog alot recently. Should we continue with it? Does anyone really read it?
I was asked to contribute to a recent study by a student at Leicester University which looked at why museums blog. The general consensus seemed to be that blogging by museums was still in its experimental stages but the potential was there to reach new audiences through it.
I guess the advantage of a blog like this is that it allows us to tell the story of what goes on behind the museum buildings.
Many of our visitors and people involved with the museum service only see a tiny part of what goes on so I’m going to try and give more of an idea of the huge variety of things that happen in a busy, but small museums service!
Any comments on what you’d rather see, or hear about, would be most welcome!
November 5th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Greetings from Wanganui, New Zealand!
It’s very hard to know who, or how many, read anything online. The one thing we can be certain of is that the number of readers hugely outweighs the number of commenters. We can see that from our own online behaviour, after all - how often does any of us leave a comment on a site?
The nature of the online world, the way in which new possibilities become available before we have begun to understand / get a feel for / make best use of what’s already there, means that whatever we do is always going to be experimental. As far as blogging is concerned, I think part of the key to readership is posting at a reasonable frequency, so that there is a reason for readers to come back regularly. On the whole people who may comment will read for a good while before they do so - the place has to become familiar, as it were, before they are comfortable to do so.
Museums, even the largest, rarely have the resources to be at the bleeding edge - the trick is not to neglect the bleeding obvious. We know that people (or at least a significant fraction of people) are interested to find out more about what it is that working in a museum actually involves. A blog seems to me to be a good way to talk about that, since it requires a more personal, less corporate, tone of voice. Of course it also requires a commitment from sufficient people in the organisation to provide the posts, and a commitment from the organisation not to worry too much about only presenting the monolithic corporate image.
Museums are full of enthusiatic (indeed one might say obsessive) people with a passion to communicate ideas and stories - we’re paid to do that after all. Blogging is just another string to our bow.
Sorry for a comment that’s so long it should be a post by itself! Now can someone explain why a multi-stringed bow would be an advantage?
November 11th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
I read it and I second what Pete says but it takes time to compose an articulate and meaningful addition - and that’s in short supply.
I do like the sense of immediacy and personality that comes through in blogs in general and if there’s one available on a site I generally look in to get the ‘vibe’ underlying the rest of the site.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Thirded. I tend to read and not comment. I also feel that blogging can be a bit like writing a personal diary; even if no one reads it, just the act of writing can be cathartic, and it’s good to have a place to express ideas that may not have an outlet elsewhere.
Plus, there’s the “long tail” thing; unlike published newsletters etc., blog posts can be read and get reponses many months (or years) after the post has been written…
December 5th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
I’ve been reading this blog for a while and this is my first comment. I live in Haddington and worked in NMS in Edinburgh until last year. This is good behind-the-scenes information and adds to the more formal info on the EL museums website. Please continue with it.