Thoughts from the Bloggercon

What a nice turnout for the Bloggercon! I was excited to be there, despite the heat, because (believe it or not) I was not a blogger this time last year! We had lots of bloggers, and also several people interested in how to start blogs for their associations, some total newbies to the craft.

Here's just some random takeaways for you:

The Associapedia has a good web 2.0 glossary of terms for newbies - it's a great tool you can use when explaining anything about social media to people who don't know the basic definitions of things like wikis, blogs, socnets, microblogs, twitter etc.

Q: What’s the validity of the content of blogs? How do you know if the content is legitimate? If anyone can blog, how do you know who's writing "correct" information? A: As you would imagine, there's a whole range of quality. But that can be a role for an association, to be the editor, to be the entry point through which its members know whose blogs to read and what are the valid sources of content.

Q: What about your association blog competing with your “for profit” products like publications, articles and books? A: Blogs can be complementary, can expand that content. Blogs can be the source for the most current related info.

Rohit Bhargava – 25 basic styles of blogging and when to use each one

Every association has the same major goal of engaging their members - so it's a strategic imperative to consider social media vehicles like blogging to achieve that.

The value lies in the socializing of content - the ability to link is key to what makes a blog different from a static publication.

Q: Who really cares if you have a blog? A: Google cares! Google is the "weather of the internet" and if you are not connected into that conversation, then it’s going on without you.

Another value of an association blog is that it can make stronger connections between your members, who get to know each other through blogs or online before they meet in real life - many, many examples of this at this ASAE conference.

Suggestion: Moderate comments at first for a new member, then give them “approved” status so their comments no longer need to be moderated. Use the “flag as inappropriate” tool - blogs can be self-policing.

Cross pollinate! Let members build a conference program via the blog by asking for their input. Use the blog to point to articles in association magazine.

Give up control, you'll get so much more out of it.

Look up what’s already out there! Maybe you already have members blogging on your industry issues, and you can aggregate feeds instead of creating an association blog from scratch - et voila!

How do you maintain momentum? Use drafts. Mix up formats (short/medium/long, links only, video/podcast entries) - if you keep yourself interested, your readers will be interested. Use posting schedule – if you get a spurt of inspiration to pen a few posts, save them up and schedule them to post over several days. There is no "right length" for a blog post - but there are some metrics that show that some types get more comments, others get more unique page views - but take or leave that type of information, it will always depend on the content and context of what you are writing about. No one-size-fits-all rule for everything.

Have a personal voice. Be genuine. Even for an association blog as opposed to a personal blog, do NOT make it about the company line.

Platforms – Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress, Movable Type – all are fine to start. Main question to differentiate them is whether you want it hosted externally or not.

Book recommendation for newbies - The New Influencers by Paul Gillin - Good overview of the value of blogs. "Lurk before you leap." - read blogs, comment on blogs, easy to get a feel for how it all works before you start one yourself.

I'll be presenting a session in the Social Media Lab on "Real Time Communication: Blogging and Twitter" so I may have more takeaways for you after that. And, we're doing the Unbloggercon at 4 pm (in the CAE lounge) which is just another round of the Bloggercon for the benefit of those bloggers who were speaking in sessions at the time of the last one.

So basically, I may be all blogged out. Ha. We'll see...!