When I first came across Circa, the blog of the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA), I could immediately tell that they recognized the amazing potential of the blog platform. With its weekly schedule, high-quality stories, rich media, and even its own name, Circa is far more than a museum...blog.

I spoke with Karen Kelly, the Senior Editor at NCMA. She has been managing NCMA’s blog since it was relaunched as Circa. We talked about the role of the museum’s blog, how she gets participation from a wide array of museum staff, and how she manages to keep it all organized and consistent.

**FULL TRANSCRIPT**

Hi, and welcome to What’s On. I’m Nick Faber, Director of Content Strategy at Cuberis. My guest today is Karen Kelly, senior editor at the North Carolina Museum of Art. And we’re going to be talking about the museum’s blog.

In my job, I spend a lot of time looking at museum websites, and one pain point that I often find is the museum blog. I did an unscientific study for an article we wrote a few months ago, and out of 100 museum websites I looked at, only 51 had blogs. 8 of those hadn’t been updated in over a year. I could just imagine someone sitting at their desk, asking, “What should I write today?” And I guess if the answer is unclear, it’s easier to write nothing at all.

Which is a shame. Your museum is full of more stories than you can fit in your physical space, and a blog is the easiest solution for telling them online. But without any strategic focus or planning, the blog can become an afterthought.

When I first came across Circa, the blog of the North Carolina Museum of Art, or NCMA, I could immediately tell that they recognized the amazing potential of the blog platform. With its weekly schedule, high-quality stories, rich media, and even its own name, Circa is far more than a museum...blog.

I spoke with Karen Kelly of NCMA. She’s a writer and editor and has been managing NCMA’s blog since it was relaunched as Circa. She talked about the role of the museum’s blog, how she gets participation from a wide array of museum staff, and how she manages to keep it all organized and consistent.

First, I asked her about her position of Senior Editor at the museum.

KAREN: Well, as you say, I work as a writer and editor at the museum and I'm positioned at the nexus of several departments. Of course, marketing and publications, and interpretation and curatorial, and also membership and development. So, juggling a lot. If there's a baseball analogy--which there isn't--but if I had to come up with one it would be shortstop, third base coach, catcher, batboy, and groundskeeper. A lot of groundskeeping.

So how does the blog fit into that? I work with an associate editor--I have to--who is priceless. So what comes across an editor's desk at a museum is anything from exhibition scripts to the humble business card. Beautifully designed catalogs to restaurant menus and anything that we produce that has text on it. So I collaborate with teams on creating content, and also refining content, and joining in on those conversations about how to communicate to the public in the most effective way.

The blog is a part of that, and also a part of our marketing scheme, but it's very Janus-faced. It looks both at how can we create content that extends the mission of our exhibition, but also how do we draw people to our exhibitions, and I think a blog post can do both.

NICK: You mentioned helping to fulfill the mission of the exhibitions, how does that fit into the overall mission of the museum?

KAREN: So it's part of our marketing campaign, but it's integrated into our exhibition goals and our marketing goals. Our goals for our permanent collection, and our goals for getting folks to the museum, but also informing them and luring them to the museum. I don't think we could sustain the blog if it weren't integrated.

And it came about as the direct result, I'm frank to say,