How Museums can Harness the Power of Bloggers

By now many museums with at least a skeleton staff have some sort of blog or are at least thinking about or moving toward creating one.

However, overlooked in that discussion is harnessing the power of the currently more than 100 million blogs on the Internet. Hopefully at least a few of those writing the 100 million blogs are going to be ever-so-keen about your museum and its offerings and will be interested in writing about it.

The Minnesota Historical Society recently invited bloggers to a preview of the new “Minnesota’s Greatest Generation” Exhibit at the Minnesota History Center. This was a first for the Minnesota Historical Society. In the past it has done this for the traditional media outlets of radio, TV and newspapers but this time they would be offering two exhibit preview events, one for traditional media another for bloggers.

Bloggers presented a challenge, first blogs are both numerous and ephemeral. Traditional media outlets are limited in number making them much easier to target and send out a “Media Alert” notices for the exhibit,  Also, while the Minnesota Historical Society has a track record of working with traditional media it has had little experience working with the blogging community.

Secondly, while we were excited to offer a media event to bloggers to view our exhibit, we were concerned about appearing to ghettoize bloggers by separating them from traditional news media or the possibility some bloggers may feel offended not being offered the chance to attend the event for “traditional” media. Also at question was the issue that many traditional media outlets such as the Saint Paul Pioneer Press newspaper and KARE 11 TV have their own staff bloggers for their online web sites.

We decided to open both time slots up for bloggers to attend but the first time slot would be offered to general media and the second time slot would be a blogger exclusive event. We ran this idea by some prominent bloggers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul community and the feedback was positive.

However…
With all of our planning we overlooked one small thing (but with large consequences), the time of the event was terrible. We scheduled the media events to take place on a Thursday between 10am to 1pm. We heard back from several of the bloggers that they were interested but unable to get away from their day jobs for the event. Douh! This led to a very small turn out indeed. Two bloggers (of 32 invited) turned out to the first media event and one blogger turned up to the second. In spite of the low turn out MHS considers it a success for a first time attempt and will continue with the practice, but will in the future offer better time slots for bloggers.

Compile a list of bloggers relevant to your organization or cause

Museums should start paying attention to bloggers and compiling a list of relevent bloggers. This is difficult. As mentioned before blogs can be many and ephemeral. While it can be helpful to look at blogs with large number of followers and lots of activity, to be truly successful you need to go for blogs that are relevant as well.

Sometimes numbers matter but nothing beats a good understanding of the blogging communities or blogs that are most relevant to your organization and/or what you are promoting. Some bloggers can carry a lot of influence even if they may not have the “numbers”. In addition to these, nothing beats a blog that is an enthusiast for your organization or cause.

Ultimately it comes down to research.  Start reading blogs, do searches on topics relevant to your organization or search for mentions by blogs of your organization on sites like technorati.com or blogsearch.google.com (if you are not already doing this you should!).

Build Relationships

Ok, you now have your list; now work to build a relationship with the bloggers on that list.  Send them relevant and timely information about your organization and events. If possible provide tickets to show openings or pre-show screenings with behind the scenes tours for the media. Send follow-up “thank you” notes to the blogger for communicating the message to the public. Also similarly like the press, museums should not expect bloggers to cover them for inviting them to the event. What is being built is a relationship. This is the first step in to their world.

Consider any giveaways carefully; the giveaway should be appropriate to the blogger and audience. Some bloggers may feel that even free admission is unethical, others may not feel that it is an ethical issue; others still may not mind at all and also enjoy the free wine and cheese at the event. Use good judgment.

Track Results

In the end it is important to have tangible results so track any postings about your museum with keywords through sites like blogsearch.google.com or technorati.com.

If after all your efforts you are receiving little to no coverage or inaccurate coverage go back to the bloggers an find out why and what information you need to provide for coverage. Again, museums should not expect bloggers to cover them for sending them a press release or inviting them to an event but if you find yourself not getting any coverage you may wish to relook at what blogs you are trying to get your message out to.

Museums are in a great position to harness the power of bloggers to help get their message out than commerical companies. I am going out on a limb but I imagine it is easier to get bloggers in their community interested in a media release on an exhibit opening than say, a new facial cream. The key is museums need to start compling lists of blogs and forming relationships that they feel are a good fit with their mission and institution.