NOTES: When Your Community Does the Blogging: What, Why, and HowMuseumNext, Indianapolis, September 25, 2015

I’m Lori Byrd-McDevitt, the Manager of Digital Content & Social Media at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis.

In my role I also manage the museum’s blog, which is what I’ll be focusing on today.

I’ll be sharing about how we’ve involved our local community in the blog, and I’ll share ways other museums can do the same.

I love my role as social media and blog manager, because it allows me to directly interact with the museum’s local and online community.

Every day I get to see what they think, thanks to Tweets, Facebook comments, and even their own blog posts about their visits.

o All of this made me think about the role of the museum’s blog as a platform for community participation, which tied in to my own research interests as a museum studies student.

For my masters research I established the term “Open Authority,” which is the coming together of museum expertise and community contributions.

o Museums are unique in their potential to be a confluence of cultural resources and diverse community perspectives.

By inviting in varied points of view, museums can use our inherent authority to open up the interpretation of content, making it more inclusive to all.

I like to use this spectrum to show what Open Authority looks like. Many museums use crowdsourcing as a way to actively partner with visitors, especially online. But there’s much more nuance to open authority than just crowdsourcing.

This spectrum shows that there are more conservative approaches to community participation, which can then also lead to more progressive approaches.

Contributory projects are what we consider crowdsourcing, and are usually more passive for those who participate, with the museum taking the active role.

Whereas Collaborative project can be described as Community Sourcing.o Community Sourcing involves bigger asks made of a more committed, loyal

community. These projects require participants to be more active and motivated in their contributions, and that’s why Community Blogging falls here.

And then there are Co-Creative projects, which involve true participatory interpretation coming equally from both the community and the museum.

o This is a topic for a whole other talk. Today we’ll be focusing on Community blogging as a community-sourced project.

So now let’s dive into Community Blogging at The Children’s Museum Our blog started WAY back in 2010, when we kicked things off with multiple posts

a week written by staff across the museum.o Staff blogging has gone on so long that it’s gotten quite involved. Pictured

here are our Creative Director and our Director of Collections, who’ve repeatedly collaborated on funny posts to highlight their divergence in

perspectives on exhibits. Over the years we incorporated more posts from guest bloggers, often experts or

artists who work with us on exhibits. Falling between guest blogging and community blogging, pictured here on the

right is a photo from a 2013 post by the founder of our local Instagram community, sharing about his experience at our first museum-led Instameet. Our relationship with this particular community has remained strong, since.

From early on we also used the blog to feature visitor stories that were submitted as part of contests. These were one-off contributions, so they’re a good example of an early crowdsourced approach.

We didn’t truly experiment with the idea of Community Blogging until late 2013, when we began to think about how museum families could write for the blog over an extended period of time.

The renovation and expansion of our beloved Playscape gallery was a great opportunity, because locals were so excited for its unveiling. We wanted to let our families play a part in reintroducing Playscape to the world.

So, we created the “Playscape 5,” considering it a pilot for a future, broader community blogging program.

We directly reached out to three families who represented the age-span for Playscape, and whose parents were known social media influencers in the city.

Over a period of six months, each family blogged for us once a month. Beyond the blog, they used the #Playscape5 hashtag to tweet, Instagram, and Vine

their experiences in the gallery as well as learning moments at home. The result of this blog series was that readers could follow along on the Playscape

5’s journey, and see the new gallery through the eyes of families just like them.

The success of the Playscape 5 led us to confidently move forward with a formal, recurring, and branded Community Blogging program, which we call The Children’s Museum Blog Ambassadors.

o Shown here are the various branded graphics we use on different social platforms, which you can see are personalized for each blogger.

We select our Ambassadors through an application-based call out to our local blogging community.

o We reached out to around 75 active bloggers and received 24 applications, which, at 1/3 of the community – was much more than we anticipated.

o So we were thrilled…o In the application we specifically asked about their personal passions and

unique perspectives. As well as samples of their writing style.o We selected our applicants to create a mix of points of view, ages of

children, and unique experiences.o The reach and influence of their personal social media following does play

a role in their selection, but is not the main priority. Similar to the Playscape5, they each blog once a month for six months, using the

#BlogTCM hashtag during visits and when their learning extends into the home.

After our first class of Blog Ambassadors wrapped up in early 2015, we began planning for round two.

We received 18 submissions, and selected four for our second class of Ambassadors, who are blogging for us currently from May through October, and three bloggers for our third class, which will kick off in November.

This time we were happy to receive a number of submissions from Daddy bloggers, of which three were selected.

We’ll get more into the logistics behind the Ambassador program in a second, but let’s first chat about WHY you should try Community blogging.

First of all, it provides an invaluable inside look into what your audiences are thinking and experiencing, over an extended time.

o I like to say that it’s a direct line to your community’s brain! Our Evaluation staff have especially loved these blogs, because they provide such

unprecedented insights. Our bloggers often join in focus groups where the evaluation team can ask additional questions about their experiences, too.

And the blogs also provide an endless supply of photos, quotes, and memorable moments that we can repurpose. We all know it’s not always easy to gather photos of these authentic moments around the museum.

The second reason involves Radical Trust, which calls for a quote from Colleen Dilenschneider:

o “Radical trust is the confidence that a museum has in their collaborations with online communities. Institutions display trust in these communities by being transparent, open, and honest.”

o And I love that quote because it ties in directly to Open Authority, which seeks to have an open dialogue between a museum and its community.

You show radical trust by empowering community bloggers to take the reins of your museum’s platforms.

It seems scary to hand over control of the blog, because it’s seen as this epicenter of a museum’s authentic voice. But that’s why the community’s perspective is so valuable — it’s authentic.

We’re lucky at The Children’s Museum to have such incredibly loyal and enthusiastic families. Community blogging is our way of showing our appreciation, and our trust, really, of a community who is so gracious with their support.

If you value what your community has to say, why not give them wings—let them say it on your blog.

Colleen’s quote also mentioned Transparency, which is expected now in a digital world where institutional responses can be made quickly and openly.

Transparency also forces an organization to be okay with laughing at itself, and to know its strengths as well as its weaknesses.

Opening up the blog to a community perspective not only increases transparency, it shows that you’re confident with who you are.

Now that we’ve gotten through the “WHY,” let’s talk about the “HOW.” It all starts with connecting with your community.

o If there’s a specific audience or goal for your blog program, you’d want to consider how to connect with that relevant subset of your community.

For us, it started by connecting with our local mommy bloggers, which soon expanded to dad bloggers and also, because of our content areas, geek and pop-culture enthusiasts.

We began to build our list of contacts simply by keeping the information from bloggers who request tickets in exchange for reviewing the museum. When this happens we always ask if they’re interested in being on our list of bloggers, and they will always say yes.

o We don’t use their emails for any other promotional purposes. We are strict in only contacting that list if it is a direct email from us about an exclusive blogger opportunity.

We then grew our list of contacts by throwing special “Blogger Previews” for exhibits, and we pulled out all the stops! For larger exhibits, they get a full dinner and goodie bags, in addition to a first look at the new gallery. For all exhibits we host a tweet-up with fun giveaways.

This was our initial way to invite this audience in, to show them that we value their support, and to make them feel like a part of the museum family.

Events like this establish good will. You give a little. But you get a lot.

Moving from connecting to collaborating isn’t easy, but being prepared helps!o An early way we collaborated with a unique community was through our

“Social Media Lifeguards” contest.o This is where local influencers were given tickets to a popular adults-only

museum event in exchange for sharing about it on their social channels.o Even though this collaboration was using their personal accounts, we still

always have to be careful with how the museum is represented, especially when being “family-friendly” is so important.

o So for the Lifeguards we did have specific guidelines for content, which has worked out really well each year.

Likewise, when it came to Community Bloggers, we found that beginning with more structure was key to success.

For the Blog Ambassadors, we meet with each blogger prior to their timeframe, where we lay out expectations, talk about topic ideas, and confirm scheduling.

o Afterward, I maintain an open line of communication; they know that they can come to me with ideas, questions, or concerns at any time.

For now, our Blog Ambassadors have an overarching theme for their posts, within which they have free creative rein.

o Each of their posts illustrates a way that their family was inspired by the museum to extend their experience at home.

o For instance, an exhibit may inspire a craft, a recipe, another trip elsewhere, or sharing a memory.

o Recently a blogger shared about her family’s love of our iconic Chihuly glass sculpture and what it’s meant to them through the years as they’ve discovered other Chihulys in their travels.

I never heavily edit blogs, as this defeats the purpose of being authentic and transparent. I only do light editing if there are inaccuracies in exhibit names or information, or any glaring grammatical errors. And people tend to appreciate those kinds of edits.

A big part of collaborating is, let’s face it, compensation. This is always a big question when it comes to community blogging.

After discussing the topic with some of our more professional bloggers, we’ve decided to not financially compensate our Ambassadors.

We’ve found that they consider blogging for us an inherent value, because it raises their own social media profile and adds to their experience.

o We found that the application process motivated those who become Blog Ambassadors to do their best and value the opportunity.

o They receive a branded, personalized badge for their own blog, and are also free to share the content on their own channels after it’s appeared on the museum’s.

We do show our appreciation in other ways, includingo an annual membershipo “welcome” and “thank you” gift packageso free tickets to special events that may occur while they’re Ambassadors,o and other unique opportunities.o Also, everyone always likes a good button. You should seriously consider

investing in a button-maker, if you haven’t already! More recently, we’ve begun using a Memorandum of Understanding with our

bloggers so that we can further clarify the expectations on both sides.o It mostly lays out the logistics and what we discuss in our initial meeting.o In this MOU we also include a section on legal concerns with how we can

use their content, and best practice in properly attributing ideas or information from outside sources or blogs.

o Believe it or not, “lifting” ideas from other blogs did become an issue with one of our former Ambassadors, which is actually what led us to adopt an MOU. And we’re now very glad we have one.

While we feel like we’re in a good routine with our Ambassador program, there’s still a lot of room to grow,

o both with loosening the structure of the suggested content,o and especially when it comes to increasing diversity in perspectives and

audience representation. In the future, this will call for wider recruitment from outside of our typical

blogger community.o We’d love to see more participation from neighborhood members,

grandparents, families who adopt, families who have experience with special needs, and other cultural perspectives.

No matter who participates, the most important thing is that our blog empowers members of our community

o to share their unique point of viewo and have a renewed sense of ownership over their museum experience.

And that brings me to the end. I’d be happy to chat with anyone more about this, so feel free to reach out. Thank you so much.