1. Establish a single tone but offer more than one voice. Invite staff members, volunteers, visiting lecturers, exhibiting artists, and others affiliated with the museum to guest blog (or, in the case of staff members, to post regularly). Conduct interviews. (Use a Q & A format as it draws attention to the entry.)
If you’re nervous about establishing a voice for your institution’s blog or worry that you won’t be able to post frequently enough, hire a professional writer with blogging experience to do it for you. (We can help. Contact me for more information.)
2. Post at least three times a week. Visitors like fresh content, and regular posting ensures your site will be indexed more frequently by search engines. Having more content to search makes it more likely that people searching the web will find appealing terms and keywords in your posts.
3. Encourage interactivity. Turn on comments, and participate in the conversations within them. Hold contests. Encourage visitors to submit original photos relevant to your exhibition content and programming, and then post the best of them.
4. Provide RSS and XML feeds. IceRocket simplifies the process of creating and publishing feeds. Having feeds will attract repeat visitors because many people read the web through feed aggregators such as Bloglines.
5. Incorporate lots of photos into your entries to increase your blog’s visual appeal.
6. Provide reliable e-mail addresses for the primary bloggers on your site.
7. Provide special offers redeemable at the museum or the museum store (bricks-and-mortar or online).
8. Use traffic tools (such as Sitemeter) to monitor traffic to and visitor interest in your blog. Such tools help you determine how people find your blog, what they’re looking for, how long their visits last, how many pages they visit, and more.
9. Establish a blogroll where you link to blogs that may be of interest to your visitors. Link to these blogs regularly in your individual entries, and you’ll get the interest of their writers, who may in turn start paying attention to your blog and occasionally link back to your blog. (Of course, be careful not to link too heavily to those who compete for your visitor dollars.)
10. Have fun with your blog. Enthusiasm is infectious!