Illumination exhibition – national quilting exhibition coming up soon in Taupo.
October 15, 2009
I’m inspired to head back to Taupo and open a twitter account. Great possibilities to share news about museum happenings and behind the scenes activities by the team – you never know, who might be out there listening. Good to be reminded about NZ Live and NZ Museums and what they are doing to promote the NZ events and museum community.
What to do … twitter, blog, facebook, ning, flickr?? October 15, 2009
Even though we have a great website, twitter, blog and facebook (ning maybe??) offer fabulous marketing opportunities!!
Themes at today’s workshop October 15, 2009
It’s lunchtime, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to document some of the themes from the morning session of today’s workshop in Whakatane. We’re aiming to address these themes throughout the day.
- There’s such a variety of tools – how do you choose which ones are most appropriate for your audience?
- And how do you assess the workload involved (and prioritise)?
- How do you build a business case for your organisation to adopt social media (in light of concerns about the pitfalls and issues like copyright, security and workload)?
- How do you optimise your website or blog for search engines, and what does it take to promote your social media?
- What do you do for segments of your audience that struggle with technology (either in terms of access or confidence)?
- What are the ramifications for copyright?
- What are the ways we can use social media in our exhibitions?
- Who in the organisation should blog, and what sorts of policies do organisations need for social media use?
If we don’t have much time to talk about social media strategy development or how to promote social media, there are links on this blog (see the page ‘workshop links’) that provide further information …
We’re recognising that these tools are accessible and relatively inexpensive ways to promote your museum, and also excellent ways to gather feedback from your audiences.
Bay of Plenty museums explore blogging October 15, 2009
We’re talking about blogging at the moment. We’re pretty impressed that the wordpress service (and others like it) is free. Here are some great ideas from today’s participants about how museums might use blogs.
Blogging for museums is good for:
- adding a personal touch – making it real to people
- generating feedback and interaction with your audiences
- keeping your information more lively and up to the minute (if your website is cumbersome to update
- promoting specific events or exhibitions and creating ‘buzz’
- featuring guest bloggers – maybe experts on the topic of your exhibition, a visiting artist, children’s work from the education programme.
Attending the workshop: Karen and Karen from Taupo Museum, Pip, Fiona from Tauranga Heritage Collection, Irene from the Sir James Fletcher Kawerau Museum, Toni from Massey University, Kathy from Tauranga Art Gallery, and Rangipai and Kay from Whakatane Museum.
One thing … October 7, 2009
Whanganui Regional Museum
At the end of our Whanganui workshop, here’s what participants said was the one thing they’d do next …
‘Visitor contributions are a ‘next step’ for our website – to keep the website fresh and to target younger audiences and families.’
‘A blog is a very flexible tool. I think we can generate a spark of interest in staff and our community through a blog – using the blog to gather information, stories and feedback from around the country.’
‘Blogging, enhancing our pages on NZMuseums and social networking – using Facebook to connect with our alumni.’
‘Getting a Twitter account – it’s a natural progression from our new e-newsletter.’
‘I can see how we can strengthen the museum – using social media may appeal to a new wave of volunteers.’
‘I’m going to make a case for the museum to be more visible on the larger website because it contributes to the revenue earned by those other services. Maybe I’ll set up a museum blog to highlight our unique stories.’
Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories and expertise!
Yellow pages are dead – long live social media! October 6, 2009
It’s been a great session with the Whanganui museums today. Participants said they wanted to get these things out of the workshop:
- ways to connect to the collegiate community
- avenues to earn money
- making my museum more visible
- increasing the value of the museum to the community
- increasing the professionalism of our museum
- what comes next after a website?
- new, smart ideas to encourage contributions from the community.
Of course, the yellow pages aren’t dead – Mark points out that social media is another channel to reach audiences. This means more work for stretched museums, so prioritising is important.
First steps – make sure your museum is on NZMuseums and NZLive – these organisations will do the marketing for you if you provide the content. Send them content regularly – press releases and events. They love getting new content and will post it to their sites. They’ve also got staff on hand to help you out.
Then maybe contemplate a blog – especially if you don’t have a website at all – to share your stories and engage your community (and don’t forget to promote your blog to your networks). Further down the track, perhaps a twitter account to promote your events and highlight your collection and also a flickr page for photos and images.
Social networks are another step up again … What’s important about these sites is that you can put your information in the places where your audience goes. They are likely to spend more time on Facebook and Twitter than on your website.
‘There’s so much out there that you have to remain focused and in control – or you’ll be overwhelmed and confused … even depressed!’, says Mark from MAVtech Museum.
I think the key is focus on your goal – what you want to achieve – and then use the tools that will best help you achieve this – whether it’s increasing audience visits, raising money or professional development for staff. You’re likely to use a range of marketing methods (print, online, environmental) to achieve your goal.
‘You have to realise that there is redundancy – what you do on twitter and the blog and on Facebook may overlap, but that’s not a problem – you are making sure you reach as wide an audience as possible’, Mark adds.
As well as marketing and building audiences, social media are invaluable for supporting the professional development of museum staff. Again, information overload is a potential problem – find one blog you want to read and one community to join (it might even be a community that relates to your personal interests instead of your professional ones, to get you started).
Whanganui workshop gets underway October 6, 2009
I’m really delighted to be working with museums from the Whanganui region today – we have Kevin from the Army Museum, Wallis and Yvonne from Whanganui Regional Museum, Anne and Mark from MAVTech, Lynne from Marton Museum, Richard from Wanganui Collegiate Museum and John from the Whanganui Riverboat Museum. We’re talking about blogging, so we’re writing a blog post …
What is this blog for? October 4, 2009
This blog is for a series of one-day workshops run by National Services Te Paerangi, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, called How to Promote your Museum using Online Tools. The workshops are intended to introduce museums to the benefits and practical realities of using social media (web 2.0) to promote themselves and grow their networks online …
