Lately, we’ve seen some great ideas about ways to bring visitors, web traffic and revenue into struggling house museums and other historic properties.

This follows up on our post on Web Strategy for House Museums.
A few things:

1. Flickr for Events: At a family day event at Sarasota’s Ringling Museum in January, I saw a staff photographer taking pictures of visitors. As they asked visitors to pose, they gave each person a small piece of paper with the link to the museum’s Flickr page. It is an excellent way to get folks involved in the museum, and build content and backlinks to your site. Even better, you can leave the pictures up permanently, and have them easily reachable for things like newsletters. Most importantly, it’s a permanent record of your community outreach, and it costs nothing.
2. Tea Party People: On my drive in to work one day this week, that controversial radio host Glenn Beck was reciting these familiar words…then I realized it was Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty” speech. I swear I have not heard his speech recited on radio…ever. And then, I see folks on cable news, making fun of folks at Tea Party rallies around the country, wearing knee breeches and colonial garb. It got me thinking that there is an untapped market for all of these old history museums in this segment. Certainly, home-schoolers are markets for house museums, but this group is even more interesting because the sorts of people who run museums are often scared of Tea Party people. That’s a mistake, because museums get REALLY get interesting when their visitors come from diverse backgrounds. Live dangerously. Dare to host a Tea Party meeting. But host EVERY kind of political meeting.
3. Farmer’s Market: Here in my town of Sarasota, the Phillippi Estate Park holds a weekly farmer’s market. It runs Wednesday afternoons, and seems to be a big success. It brings people to the park, and also generates income for farmers, artists and the like, all to promote Florida farming. House museums are desperate for foot traffic; this sort of thing is perfect because it happens weekly, and does not involve lots of special programs or staff. There are so many house museums in the U.S., and they mostly only have small retail shop operations of dusty merchandise. Note: The Philippi effort uses smart signage and up-to-date graphics to help convince visitors that it’s a top event.
4. New Objects: I am continually surprised at the number of people I know who do not have a clue what to do with objects they want to donate to museums. While I know of a few museums that will take gifts that are related to their mission, I sometimes feel that museums are now a bit overly cautious about what they will acquire. Perhaps in the past they have been saddled with objects unrelated to the mission of the museum. That’s a mistake. Museums need to be aggressive about seeking donations, and always have an open door. For instance, The Valentine Richmond History Center and the Virginia Historical Society not only deal well with donors, but their acquisition policies are not frozen in time. They are always looking for what is next, what is amusing or interesting or illuminating. Objects should not only be for filling in holes with the collection, but should be a way of keeping a pulse on donors, trends and such.
5. Special Church Services: Many house museums allow churches to have Easter services on their lawns. This is a great way to entrench yourselves with the community. Even better, when there are memorable worship services held on your property, you become a part of the narrative of people’s lives forever.
6. Multiple locations: Ever since I have been a kid and spent time at Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities properties and in Colonial Williamsburg, I have been enamored of the “museum” that is larger than one location. Certainly, this sort of idea presents all sorts of difficulties, but it also presents so much promise. Because the larger the geographic scope of an institution, the more potential there is for a wider audience.
7. Angels Unawares: We all know the phrase from Hebrews, namely “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” This is kind of obvious, but it often gets missed. Make sure that your front line staff has an ear to who is visiting your museum, unscheduled. Even someone disheveled might be someone with money, someone who knows money, or someone who has been traveling and didn’t pull it all together. And an open attitude isn’t just for the odd fellow who stumbles in. We know of a certain museum director who had a certain beloved British Prime Minister visit his art museum. And the front line staff didn’t go get him! We also know of a case where a certain sister of a certain Omaha billionaire stumbled into a certain parochial school and ended up being a major donor, because of the way she was treated.
8. Free admission: We’ve seen a number of museums getting rid of their admission. While not all can afford it, having a free admission is an interesting concept. The idea is to build up visitor numbers, and show donors and civic officials that you are fulfilling your IRS mandate to be open to the public. Then, with that increased traffic, leverage sales in the gift shop and more memberships. Williamsburg actually does this, but not by design. The town is free, and access to gift shops and restaurants are for everyone. You pay for the buildings.

Drawing by Thomas T. Waterman of Carter's Grove, part of the Historic American Buildings Survey. Carter's Grove was shut down as a house museum and sold by Colonial Williamsburg back into private hands.

The house museum was once the center of pop culture history in the U.S. But today, once notable places like Colonial Williamsburg’s Carter’s Grove have been shut down and de-accessioned, and house museums across the U.S. and Britain are struggling or closing.

I do not share the doom. I see the damage as entirely self-inflicted. Overly busy curators do make work. Directors lose focus. Boards become inwardly focused. Interpretations become didactic and boring. Donors get worn out, worn down and taken for granted. Capital campaigns take the place of actual mission.

One big hope for house museums comes from the web. Today, the Internet gives each museum a forum where it can communicate to the world. And in spite of budget cuts, there are more resources out there for museums than there were 50 years ago.

Cable television has dozens of channels exclusively devoted to history and home renovation, foundations are more plentiful and governments recognize the importance of house museums. It is time to go on the offensive. Note to boards: if you hear defeatism, you need to make a change.

When house museums are good, the public responds. People are fascinated by seeing houses, and stepping into the domestic past is rewarding in so many ways.

A few years ago, I heard Thomas Savage of Winterthur speak to an Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities dinner. He talked about his youth, visiting house museums, and the need to reinvent the house museum for new audiences. His analysis was on target; in the 1970s, when the Bicentennial was a national mania, attendance was a sort of ritual of families.

Today, most families do not go to house museums, except on school trips, and then only occasionally.

Last week, I was at Fairfax’s Gunston Hall, on assignment for the annual Fairfax County visitor guide. The museum was taking the opposite tack as so many other museums. Instead of deaccessioning collections, they are carefully buying items that include pottery that resembles shards found in archaelogy. They are reaching out to new audiences. And they are regularly conducting research and moving around the rooms so as to better reflect their  evolving knowledge of the period. They are working with local churches and groups on events. They are reaching out and not standing still.

Reach out. Keep your museum open EVERY Day but Christmas and Thanksgiving. Make an effort to give to the community, and they will give back, in droves.

One other piece of advice. One of the most important parts of how a house museum can win visitors is to use the web. Here are some ideas.

1. Use your volunteers to put content on the web. Very often, there are many volunteers at house museums who sit around and wait for visitors, who only rarely arrive. Instead of boring those volunteers by making them sit by the door, get a few laptops and encourage them to key in information about the house to your website. Are there old letters from the owners? Type them up and post them online. Are there old minutes from the founders of the museum? Enter that information in. Other information to put on your website includes names and birthdates from local cemeteries, collections lists, diaries, archival photos, current photos and even audio tours. Do not rest until EVERY object in the collection is posted online, with a description. In Internet parlance, the “long tail” information is important in winning web visitors.
2. Open an Amazon or Ebay store in the name of the museum. There is no better way to sell items from your store than online. Yes, some house museums have expensive online shops. But most house museums do not have the budget. Make sure that you open a museum shop online, and with each item listed for sale, include links back to the main website of your museum. Ebay is also a great way to de-accession useless items that are not historic. An old piece of furniture from the director’s office? Sell it. Someone might appreciate a 1975 chair from a great old house museum.
3. Whatever new you post online, Twitter it. Most people think that Twitter is for getting web readership now. But it also functions as an index of sorts. So if you post a new web page on a historic clock at the house, then you want to “Twitter” the page so that Google can find it.
4. Advertise. Just be careful about it as you can waste lots of money. Remember that for-profit tourist attractions need to advertise to attract visitors. At your local tourism bureau meeting, ask other for-profit attractions about their budgets. Match that percentage. And use Google Adwords, putting a $5 a day limit on the number of clicks. You need to be in the game.
5. Share links with other local attractions. If there is a go-kart track down the road, put up a page of links on your website to other local attractions. Some stuffy people might look askance at this, but the reality is that if you want 13 year old boys to come to your museum, they might do it before or after a visit to a go-kart or Putt-Putt visit.
6. Put out press releases whenever you find a piece of lint. I exaggerate a bit, but make it a  practice to issue press releases regularly, even with small finds. If you have  a full time marketing person, you need to have releases go out at least once a week. While you might occasionally spring for issuing a press release on BusinessWire or PRNewswire, there are man free services where you can post press releases. Press releases will help bring search engines to your site, as well as encourage local newspapers to cover you.
7. Photos, photos. Take lots of photos for Flickr and other sites. Post them online, rights free.
8. Social media: Facebook is great, but it’s not about having a page. Yes, you might want to do like everyone else and have a Facebook page for your museum, but the important thing is that other Facebook users post information about your museum.
9. Content, content: Put as much content out there as you can. Put out educational materials. Put out research papers. Put it all up on the web. And you MUST ensure that your content works with local school boards.
10. Offer the house for free: Give away admissions to the house. LOTS. It’s all about word of mouth. Admissions are only a small part of the budget.
11. Stay away from Flash in websites. You don’t need fancy. You need WORDS. But do pay attention to how your website feels. You want the website to be modern, not “ye olde” as you are trying to attract people in 2009, not 1901. You need to attract the youth, not repel it.
12. Work with other groups on events. Some house museums want to have a strategy where you try to extract as much money as you can from groups who rent your house museum. You want to do the opposite. You want to open up your museum.

Contact Editor Garland Pollard for web ideas for your house museum. Or call him at 703-745-8602.