Talk to me about arts blogging

On Fridays, I'll post interviews with folks far more knowledgeable than myself on specific marketing and publicity subjects. This week, ArtsJournal's own Douglas McLennan on marketing your blog, the changing face (or platform) of journalism, and why the world doesn't need publicists - gah!

Douglas McLennan is an arts journalist, and the founder/editor of ArtsJournal.com, which just celebrated its ninth anniversary. He is also the director of the National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP), and speaks and writes frequently on issues in digital culture, the arts and journalism.








When did you start ArtsJournal?

The site launched September 13, 1999.


How many readers does the site get daily?

We probably have about 45,000 users every day.


Have you ever considered selling your newsletter list to arts presenters? I'll bet they've asked...

We have 33,000 newsletter subscribers, and it's a great list. I certainly have had requests to sell the list, but I'd never do that. I also get requests to have me send out messages to my list but I haven't done that either. But we offer advertising in the newsletters, and they've been really successful and most of our advertisers are repeat business.


What software do ArtsJournal bloggers use?

We use Movable Type Open Source. The whole site runs on it. I've hacked the code for the main site, but the blogs are pretty straightforward.


Would you recommend that platform to other bloggers? Why yes or no?

MT has been great. There's lots of flexibility and it's a very stable platform. I do wish it were even more configurable. I think blogs are a transitional form, and so the software needs to be ever more adaptable. So far, MT has been great at evolving. I'd definitely choose MT over Blogger. They're both free, but MT is much more flexible. I haven't played much with WordPress, but people love it and I like some of the modules they use. You can be up and using MT in about an hour and looking great, so it's not very difficult.


How do you/have you market(ed) ArtsJournal to the world-at-large? For example, when you launched the site, who did you reach out to?

I've never really done any marketing for AJ. When I launched the site, I sent emails to people I thought might be interested in it, but I haven't done anything more than that. It's really been word-of-mouth and links elsewhere on the web. One interesting thing is that many of our newsletter subscribers forget there's a website. They think of AJ as a newsletter. There's yet another group that gets AJ as an rss feed and another that sees it embedded in other websites. So about a year ago I stopped thinking of AJ as a website and more as a service. If I just think of it as a website, I'm missing a huge number of users who never see it that way.


What is your advice to new bloggers (not necessarily on ArtsJournal) on how to market/publicize their blogs?

I tell them to make sure they're listed in blog directories. I tell them to email all their friends and people/organizations whom they think might be interested. And I tell them that getting on as many blogrolls as possible helps their search engine rankings. Mostly, though,  I tell them that the way to get the biggest audience is to post as often as possible and to be consistent about it. If you post every day and then suddenly skip a week, you lose most of your readership. But you can post once a month and if you're consistent, you'll capture a set of readers. The big numbers though, go to bloggers who post often.


Do you think we'll reach a point where blogs/bloggers need publicists and/or marketing consultants? Advising them on where to advertise their blogs, advocating for them to other blogs and publications? Are we already there?

Interesting question. I actually think there's a revolution in thinking about marketing. I think you can't think about marketing in the usual way - it can't be all about just "selling" you something. We're mostly numb to those kinds of messages. I think the new marketing is about building communities around whatever it is you're trying to do and making it possible for that community to interact with one another through you. It isn't just about buying a ticket to this concert or that play. That's only part of it. The other part is making it possible for people who are attracted to whatever you're doing to interact with others who are interested in your work too. That's what helps make the experience really meaningful. Look - sell a ticket to somebody and they'll come to the concert and maybe never come back. Get them interested in the experience and the others who are there for it, and you've got a follower. I think there will be no need for publicists or pr people in the traditional sense. I think there will be big demand for people who think about audience relationships and strategies for how to build communities.


Who/What do you think is ArtsJournal's competition for readers? Other blogs? Or do you think ArtsJournal readers are primarily print newspaper readers? Do you send out reader surveys to collect demographic information?

That's a tough one. I don't really think about it at all. I see myself as a curator; someone who sifts through a large universe and picks things I think are important. I've never been driven by competing against anyone. I don't think AJ readers are primarily newspaper readers. I think they're people who are interested in culture in a larger context. I haven't done any demographic research but anecdotally I think I have a pretty good idea who the readers are. But I have to say, I don't really write the site with a firm idea of who the reader is. I choose things because they interest me.


When do you think newspapers will croak for good? At some point Jonny Greenwood or whomever is going to declare that Radiohead no longer wants to be reviewed in print because it's bad for the environment, and that will be the end, right?

I think there are already artists and arts organizations that have given up on newspapers. Hard to argue with their logic. I don't think newspapers will ever really go away. I do think that 2-3 years from now it will be the exception for local newspapers to have staff critics. They'll still run some form of writing about culture. But it won't mean much. Really a shame. I think newspapers have hurt themselves greatly by the ways they've come to think about arts coverage. There's a huge audience out there, but newspapers have pursued a dumb strategy when it comes to A&E coverage.


I feel like I came to the blog party circa five years late. Ah well. Are blogs over? Close to over? What will be the next big thing?

Blogs aren't over. But blogs don't have some magical property. Blogs are merely a quick publishing platform that allows the world to see what you write. They're like a pen is to paper - a tool that enables you to write. What you choose to do with it is entirely up to you. There are as many kinds of blogs as there are people. Some of the bigger blogs are starting to look more and more like traditional publications. Some traditional publications are looking more and more like blogs. Some are very journalistic. Many are like personal diaries.

What's next? I think there won't be a huge revolution. Changes will be incremental. Video, audio, collaborative. Etc. The next immediate thing is the explosion of mobile use and interactive multi-media. I think this will very much change the way we use the web today. It will make how we use the web/create for the web today seem like the Dark Ages. Any artist, arts organization or journalist who isn't thinking about the way mobile use is going to change things, is going to be left in the dust.


Final and most important question: who's your favorite ArtsJournal blogger? ((cough::cough))

Favorite, eh? You know me, I'm shy about offering my opinion...