Why I blog

Just for fun, I'm taking part in this Problogger Group Video Project: Why I Blog. If you blog and want to take part, upload a video before April 1.

Here's my entry. I wasn't very creative, but I kept it short and sweet (like me). It's late, It's Friday night, I should be at home with my kids, and I figured lots of people will be getting creative so I'll be rebellious (!) and keep mine to 30 seconds. I'm psyched to see what they do with the finished mashup; but in the meantime, you can click on any of the other videos in the feed below mine (after it ends) to see others' entries.

Keep the faith

Sometimes you just need to hear a friendly voice. Thanks, Rex Lee!

"...what you're evangelizing isn't about a bunch of technology. It never has been. It's about the human potential."

Graphing Social Patterns conference in DC

Source: FlickrHubby Andy pointed me to an upcoming Graphing Social Patterns (GSP) conference taking place in DC June 9 - 11:

GSP is three days of tutorials, sessions and keynotes exploring social networks from two perspectives:

Business & Marketing Strategy:

• Overview of MySpace and Facebook Platforms
• Distributed Communication: Widgets & Feeds
• Social Advertising & App-vertising
• Social Networks for Mobile Devices
• Privacy Management for Social Networks
• The Zen of Poke: Social Network Ethics & Etiquette

App Development & Technical Strategy:

• Overview of The Google Social Graph API
• Social App Development: Elements of Style
• Intro to OpenSocial Apps and Containers
• Viral Strategy and Engineering the Viral Loop
• Driving Fanatic User Engagement and Retention
• Business Models, Ad Networks and Monetization

It's techy, clearly, but would interest anyone really getting ready to implement social media platforms for their association and they have really impressive discounts - normal registration fee is around a $1,000, but it's $200 off if you register before April 21, and a massive 40% off if you work for a non-profit. Other discounts for groups, students, government etc.

One for you data people

Stewart Mader on SMT points to this list of social media metrics by Rachel Happe at her Social Organization blog. Could you adapt this list to metrics you could use to measure Return on Engagement for your association?

Data Portability - what a headache.

Here's an interesting post by Robert Scoble (he who needs no introduction) on the issue of data portability.

We've talked about this subject a couple of times in my Web Strategy group, (Dennis has posted lots about it here) and it's a really thorny issue. You want to be able to sign in ONCE, to all of your networks, or update something once and have it update everywhere, but you also want to keep some things private, and protect yourself from spam. OpenID (or yahoo version here) is a start but I suspect they haven't really worked a lot of these issues out yet. This is definitely something to keep an eye on.

A Twitter Primer

What I love about blog-arguments over some web tool's value (on the enthusiast side, which I am usually on, I fully admit it, I love shiny new toys), or lack thereof (on the detractor side) is that the argument itself usually gets a lot more people interested in whatever it is we have been arguing about.

To that end, if you want to give it a try and see what all the fuss is about...

Sign up for Twitter here.

Follow me here.

Check out the people I follow - you'll see a bunch of association bloggers and a bunch of social media people, and some news sites like CNN Breaking News. Click on profiles for a brief description and website for each person that catches your eye (or all of them, if you are one of those really thorough people). If you find some you recognize, or otherwise find interesting, click to follow them. You can just as easily stop following them later if you decide you find them boring.

Later on, spread your wings by looking through the lists of those you follow and see who THEY follow. That's the serendipity part.

If you want to see tweets on your phone, turn "Device Updates" to "on". I would recommend you not do this at first, though, except for your nearest and dearest, unless you want to annoy everyone in your office by having your phone beep continuously all day long. Instead, get your Twitter updates online - see this post for suggestions, but the easiest way is just to bookmark the Twitter home page.

Then you're ready to do some tweeting!

Like for all social media, there's an unwritten code of ethics. Her are some good tips from B.L. Ochman:

1. Don’t be pedantic. We don’t care what you’re eating for lunch, or that you just woke up.
2. Don’t use Twitter just to pimp your blog posts.
3. Don’t rant (unless you are Vaspers.)
4. Don’t pimp your clients all day
5. Don’t over-tweet. If you need half a dozen tweets to make your point, do one that points to a blog post.
6. Don't share breaking news that you can't confirm.
7. Do link to interesting articles, sites, blog posts.
8. Do continue your conversation with another tweetie offline after a couple of @someone tweets
9. Do include links in as many of your posts as possible.
10. Don’t be dull.
11. Do pick up the phone and call tweeties with whom you interact often.
12. Answer and ask questions.
13. Be polite
14. Don’t be boring.
15. Don’t be overly critical of other people’s points of view.
16. Don't be promiscuous with the "Follow" button. There are only so many hours in a day.
17. Don't feel bad about blocking people. You don't have to let everyone and his dog follow you. Twitter is a network, the benefit should be two-way.

OK then, go on, you're still reading this? What are you waiting for? There's a whole world out there ready and waiting for you to join in.

Create —> Launch —> Edit —> Launch —> Repeat

Here's a really good post on how the concept of agile planning can benefit marketing strategy. I blogged about agile planning here.

"The missing elements that make content marketing truly work are strategy, observation, and rapid readjustment. And it’s exactly these elements that make social media such a dynamic and profitable environment for ambitious new media content producers."

"Social media represents such a fantastic opportunity because it allows us to create and launch media properties directly to the public. But even more of a blessing is the direct and indirect feedback process that naturally happens in this space.

You put something out there, and the crowd will reveal the direction you should go. It’s not necessarily always the wisdom of the crowd, but rather the desires and objections of the crowd that guide you."

What does this mean for associations? It means you can create a way to think strategically about your programs and services by building in an iterative process where you use feedback to improve those services all the time. "You have a strategy and curriculum in place, but you allow for improvisational flexibility that improves the quality of the content and enhances the learning experience."


"The editing phase represents your go-forward strategy for content, product development and promotions. In essence, a new media property is a constantly evolving platform that stays tuned to the audience or becomes irrelevant."

Or, in other words, beta test everything.

Three ways associations can use Twitter

I posted the question "Any associations using Twitter? Let me know" on Twitter and got these three within a couple of minutes.

Use it to supplement your association magazine:

AFCEA - Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association - Twitter name: signalmag - AFCEA's International Journal, dedicated to covering C4ISR, information security, intelligence, research and development, electronics, and homeland security.

Use it for your e-learning programs:

WOMMU - Word of Mouth Marketing Association's WOMMA University - twitter name: wommu

Use it to build you conference buzz and for your real time conference communications:

NTEN - Nonprofit Technology Network - NTC 08 conference - twitter name: 08NTC


Do. Make. Learn!

Twitter tip: TweetScan

Need to cut through the noise? Use Tweetscan to run a search on Twitter for any keyword.

Don't get Twitter? Here's why you're missing the point.

Bit of a to-do in the Blogoclump about Twitter. Cindy says, why? Kevin says, who cares?

When I joined, I followed a few of my friends. I was using it on my phone and I kept turning their notifications on and off for the same reasons quoted - I was getting irritated by the continuous chiming and all the random tweets that were not relevant to me.

But then, I put a Twitter feed on my blog, which sends out new blog posts. I was doing this, not specifically to promote my blog, but to make sure I was sending out valid content along with my "works sucks today" tweets; and I knew most of my small handful of Twitter followers were subscribed to my blog and might want to know that I had put a new post up.

And then, all of a sudden, my blog traffic started to increase. Bonus! I thought.

I started to get some new people following me. I went to see who they were, and if they didn't look like stalkers, I followed them back. Turns out many of those people are either bloggers or social media enthusiasts or both, with interesting things to say. I realized I could use Twitter to ask questions about the issues I blog about.














Of course there's lots of noise. But there's lots of noise everywhere, that is the 21st century world we live in. Doesn't mean you shouldn't listen, and learn to hear the signals when they pop up.

Part of that, too, is serendipity. Twitter has allowed me to RANDOMLY come across really interesting content that feeds my mind. I can go searching online for information about whatever topic I want, but that is not the same process as finding something by wandering - and to me, both are equally important and equally valuable.

Obviously, people have different uses for Twitter. You can use it for valid or work reasons, or you can use it for personal downtime reasons.

It's just a communications tool - it's up to you if your conversations are stupid or not.

Tweeters, check out Tweet-r!!

OK, so I can't resist one more quick Twitter-related post. But I've recently started following a few A-list bloggers, and news feeds, and random super-cool social media people, some of whom are asking to follow me, which is exciting, and so anyway my "Twitterfeed" is getting out of control. I am still working out whose tweets I'll get on my phone and whose I don't, so my phone pretty much chimes all day long, but in the meantime, I started having my Twitter.com page open in Firefox all the time so I could easily click on interesting links.

Then yesterday, I got a suggestion to set up a BeTwittered feed on my iGoogle page (just click on "add stuff" and search for it) - which is cool enough, but I still have to go and look at it when I think about it.

And now this trumps all! Tweet-r runs on Adobe AIR, and once installed you can see your tweets in a little scrolling window AND they pop up as they come in!! How wicked cool is that! Plus, if u have a webcam installed you can instantly send a picture as a tweet, or drag and drop any file and attach it to your tweet. Works on Macs and PCs.

THIS ROCKS.

"Free is the future" - more on generosity as a business model

Last night, at my Alexandria Web Strategy Discussion Group meeting, we had a great conversation about lots of interesting things, and one in particular has been on my mind a lot lately: about how sharing and generosity can actually extend your association's reach.

We started by talking about how the blogosphere was all abuzz last week about the SXSW conference and how Twitter is the new Twitter. Dennis McDonald asked, what does this actually mean for conference organizers, that their audience could (and already does, as evidenced at the ASAE Technology conference in January) send out messages in real time, via their phones and laptops, about the conference session taking place? What about issues of intellectual property and a speaker's content being sent out willy-nilly across the internet? What about negative reactions to that content or speaker?

On the issue of audience reaction, conference organizers should be beginning to realize they need to step up their game. They will learn the hard way - when their audiences start speaking up, or walk out en masse, spurred on by "Twitter-momentum" - that the content they are putting out there is just not good enough. And yes, that will make them worry, but this has to be a good thing. Who wants mediocre content? If an association can't find enough really good speakers to fill the slots for two annual conferences, then streamline and just have one great conference. Or test out some new blood and encourage audience feedback during the sessions.

But what about the issue of a speaker's intellectual property? In some cases, and I have been to several meetings like this, a specific announcement is made asking the audience to "keep the information in the room" - and everyone agrees. It relies on the honor system, obviously, but you have to trust your audience. (And, at least in the Twitterverse, it's not (for now) about sending out lots of content! It's about real time reactions, and it's about sharing links to websites or stories or blog posts already out there.)

But shouldn't speakers (and consultants), in more general circumstances, be willing to share their insights freely in this new relationship economy?? Here's someone in the thick of it who says no. While his experience is valid, I think - and this might be a little radical - that if you share your expertise freely, you will expand your reach and you will find a whole new market of people who like your ideas but need your help to implement them and are willing to pay for that.

This applies to consultants and to associations in general. Lee Lefever at Common Craft gets it (his emphasis):

"Make something useful, brand it, and give it away for free. Encourage others to share it and make it easy for them to do so.

Look for markets that will be happy to pay for a custom or specialized version of the free item. Make sure your free products appeal to these markets.

Be open and friendly. Talk to people who ask about sharing your free items. What do they want? What do they need? What would help them? Look for opportunities to build paying models around these needs.

Look for tiers of freeness. Consider creating free versions and pay versions, with the pay versions offering higher quality, ease of use, special access, etc.

Look for ways to collaborate with other organizations for free. Trade time, brand, information or whatever makes a win-win for the parties involved. "

A generous, open-source attitude can benefit everyone.

Interesting mashup

Take a look at this. It's a world map overlaid with all sorts of terrorist events in real time, updated "every 310 seconds" .

I don't buy all this fearmongering, personally, (I had to laugh at the links at the bottom - "Outbreaks/Bird Flu map - coming soon!!") - but the technology is cool. You could use this type of thing in far more useful ways for, say, an association with lots of international members and events.

Makes the world seem pretty small, anyway.

Just get crackin' part 3

Still talking about how to present social media to the "powers that be" in order to show how it can create value for your association?

Here's a great post by Chris Brogan which can help you formulate your proposals.

Internally within the organization - social media can SAVE TIME and we all know time is money. For project management, training, internal messaging (IM is quicker ans easier than email), committee work.

Externally between staff and membership - social media can RESULT IN ENGAGED MEMBERS. Through community development, product/services development, content creation and collaboration, data collection (better targeted services).

Externally to reach potential members - social media can help with RECRUITMENT and MARKETING.

The rest of Chris' post is about thinking about where you place the people responsible for social media positions within your organization - or, if that is you, how you market yourself as such.

"If you’re going to present yourself as a business professional showing the value of these tools to companies, step up your game. Do. Make. Learn. And build the appropriate “human interface” between what these businesses understand and what you’re offering. It’s there. You CAN do it. You have to be working at it from that perspective."

Just get crackin'.

Long time coming...

Facebook launches new privacy features. 'Course I still don't have time to go through and do anything with this - number #237 on my "to-do at some point" list.

Sweet Analytics beta

Check this out.


(You need to download Adobe AIR first, if you don't have it already, which takes about ten seconds, then the beta 3.) It's a sweet desktop application that gives you all the google analytics info for your website in a much more user-friendly interface.

Heard it on Twitter first...

Uber-blogger Shel Israel's show Global Neighborhoods on Fast Company.tv launched today. Should have lots of good stuff. Check it out.

Just want to get crackin' - part 2

In this post yesterday I talked about the first of two useful - and FREE - e-books that can help associations get started on developing their customer service driven strategies within the world of social media. The second e-book is Learning 2.0 for Associations by Jeff Cobb. (I linked to his blog page about the book, not the book itself, which is a large file; if you scroll down through to the comments you'll see different download versions.)

E-learning is an obvious area where associations are already engaging their members online, or can easily see the possibilities of how they could be.

"In the Learning 2.0 model, temporal and geographic constraints are dramatically loosened; the old expert-student paradigm shifts to a learning network, a learner-centric paradigm; and, last but certainly not least, the potential scale of the network assume astronomical proportions..."

The technological explosion of social media tolls is exponential and, as Jeff says, can be overwhelming. You need to start simple.

- Maybe you offer courses by correspondence, so you already have the content, you just want to investigate how to run the same courses online through webinars.
- Maybe you want to provide additional course materials through podcasts or videos.
- Maybe you want to repackage some of your existing content that way.
- Maybe you want to post your session slides online for your members to be able to discuss and share them.
- Maybe you want to extend the reach of your course sessions, seminars or conferences though a blog.
- Maybe you want to set up a virtual classroom so your participants nationwide can interact in between actual sessions.

Jeff's book provides a whole load of good, simple examples of all of these ways of expanding your e-learning reach and methodologies, without overwhelming you with tech-speak (which we enthusiasts and early adopters have a tendency to do!). He explains how "embracing Learning 2.0 may mean embracing [the] concept of the teacher as network administrator - someone who, rather than dispensing expert knowledge, facilitates the connections that lead to the achievement of learning objectives."

If you think you are ready to get started, he asks you to consider, "are your staff and members open to the kinds of interactions and diversity of thinking that the successful use of social media requires? Are there pockets in your membership base where you can take first steps? Is social media truly relevant to the types of learning your organization seeks to provide at this time and under its current strategy?"

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then go for it! Get crackin'!

Aaaack! Link Splicer gone mad!

Sorry all, I clicked on something to do with my del.icio.us links in feedburner, and it went and sent them all out via my feed - which would be fine, except I have not gone in there for months so have no idea what all that stuff was. Sorry!! Ignore!! If there's anything bad, don't think any less of me!! : )

(Sheepishly),

Mads

Quote of the day

"Participation is no longer an option as Social Media isn't a spectator sport.

Whether you believe it or not, these conversations are taking place with or without you, so ignoring them only eliminates you from the conversation and also removes your company from the radar screens of your customers."

Brian Solis, Customer Service: The Art of Listening and Engagement Though Social Media

Word of the day

"Anec-data" = "the feelings, fears and thoughts of our constituency; both our current members and potential members."

From Emily, one of my recent commenters. Awesome!

Bored of all this theory? Just want to get crackin'?

So you know associations should aspire to a customer service culture, as per the Seven Measures mantra.

And you know social media tools can help you do that.

And you know there's a global paradigm shift towards the user, where you need to let your members have more of a collaborative voice before they abandon you for some other association that does that for them.

You know all this, right?! We've been banging on the drum for ages! And now you want to just know how to start!

Here are two useful FREE e-books to help get you on the way. They are written in clear, simple language, won't take long to read, and can get you started RIGHT NOW.

The first is Customer Service: The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media, by Brian Solis. 31-page e-book is here. It's not aimed at associations specifically, but there's nothing in here that can't be used in the same way as a for-profit company would.

"Outbound customer and community relations is among the most important campaigns any company can integrate in its immediate and future initiatives. It not only helps PR and customer service, it builds relationships, creates enthusiasts, and ultimately instills customer loyalty."

IMPORTANT NOTE: It's not about the tools. "Technology will always evolve and the tools will continually change".

As per Brian, here's how you start.

1. Find a champion (or several) within the organization, at any level, who is willing to speak up and present the idea of monitoring relevant online conversations to whoever will ultimately give the go-ahead. Maybe that champion is you, but if not, call in a favor (or find someone who can).

2. Set up a person or group of people whose job it is to listen to what's out there. Call them "Community Relations Manager" or whatever pithy title works for your association.

3. Get them to start by setting up Google Alerts for your association, your services, products, your "key personnel", and your competing associations in the same field.

4. Get them monitoring social media search tools like Technorati, Bloglines, My Blog Log, etc. through which they can see the context, how often, how positive or negative, etc., in which the association and its relevant services are coming up in blogs.

5. AFTER they have a good sense of the ongoing conversation, they might be in a position to set up a Facebook group or other external or made-to-order internal social network, or to set up an association blog, or even a microblog (Twitter/Jaiku) presence.

The point is: START BY LISTENING FIRST. Appoint one person (if you are a small association, or several people across several departments (PR, marketing, product development, training, etc), if you are a big association) to listen to the conversation that is already taking place about your association, and from there you will find the rest relatively intuitive as far as how much more you can expand your association's reach.

Read the book for specific examples, but this is it in a nutshell and you can start TODAY.

I'll talk about the next e-book in part 2.

My $0.02 on the SXSW story

Actually, I really don't even have $0.02, what I do have is a link to what I thought was a great rundown of why the crowd at SXSW was so unhappy with Sarah Lacy's interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and what lessons should be learned.

In the post, Jennifer Laycock lists "Four Social Media Lessons from SXSW's Mark Zuckerberg Interview". Which are:

Mistake #1 - Not Being Interested in What People are Saying
Mistake #2 - Acting too Familiar with Your Audience
Mistake #3 - Speaking For (and Over) Your Customers
Mistake #4 - Failing to Admit When You've Screwed Up

While the context here is obviously that of the interview, and the author relates the four mistakes to "poorly executed social media marketing campaigns", I think the lessons are also useful in denoting possible pitfalls of leadership in general.

I think these mistakes can easily be made by leaders who don't trust their staff, or associations that don't trust their members. We need to really quickly learn to manage these attitudes, because they are no longer acceptable, and because if we don't, we'll really see the shift in power that is happening in favor of our users/members/audience in action, just like what happened here. This brave new world distrusts the company line, has zero tolerance for bullshit, and questions everything.

"When it comes to any type of conversation, be it a social media conversation or an interview of the youngest billionaire in the world before an audience of techies, it's essential to remember where the focus should lie. Stop worrying about talking yourself up and start worrying about how to spark conversation in others. Then sit back, be quiet and listen."

Quote of the year (so far!)

"Innovation often takes place at the junction of inconvenience and inspiration."

- Sabol, in this post

Here's a really cool idea...

You know how I love tag clouds? (See mine at the bottom of this page, if you are reading this on my blog). I have tried a few different tag cloud sites, and just switched from Zoomclouds (which suddenly stopped working, but was great before, with lots of customizable colors) to TagCrowd.

TagCrowd's website (which is incredibly simple to use) has a bunch of cool ideas for how you could use tag clouds:

* as topic summaries for speeches and written works
* for visual analysis of survey data
* as brand clouds that let companies see how they are perceived by the world
* for data mining a text corpus
* for helping writers and students reflect on their work
* as name tags for conferences, cocktail parties or wherever new collaborations start
* as resumes in a single glance
* as visual poetry

The really cool idea that aught my eye is this one: you can use tag clouds as name tags for conference attendees. Here's an example.

The author of the post says, "I created a name tag for each professor by dropping their research statements and resumes into TagCrowd to create a cloud visualization of their interests, projects, collaborators and activities. It was a hit. The primary goal of these personal visualizations was to facilitate the formation of new collaborative research teams on the basis of shared interest. By making interests mutually visible when people meet each other for the first time, these “name tag clouds” can identify areas of overlap, complementary expertise, and opportunities for potential collaboration — all in a brief glance. They also serve as conversational props that ease the introduction process: the clouds present conversants a rich set of topics for inquiry. Looking around the room at any given time I witnessed circles of intellectual elites huddled intimately together, pointing playfully at one another’s clouds." Cool or what!! Here's his own tag cloud name tag.

Now, obviously, you would need enough information to drop into TagCrowd to actually create the cloud with, so this would work better for some associations than others, but I think this idea rocks. You could also do it for participants of online courses, too, for example, which might enable those participants to get to know one another much more easily than trying to remember (or completely ignoring) the three lines of bio that they include in their course profiles.

Give me ten minutes, I bet I could come up with a whole bunch of other ideas for tag clouds...!

Yes but.... more on "blogs and associations"

Thanks Ben, Lisa and Matt, for your comments on my last post about blogs and associations. I agree that "keeping all your bloggy eggs in one basket" might be a good idea.

But, I remembered this post where Acronym (since we're taking that as the über-example) requested feedback from its readers about its form and content, and got lots of that feedback (30 comments' worth!), plus this post from David Gammel. There were several comments in which people thought there should be more posts about its associated (natch) association, ASAE and the Center, and also, perhaps, a separate ASAE blog (given the general consensus that Acronym seemed very tied in to the Associations Now magazine, not least because of Scott Briscoe and Lisa Junker being major contributors/editors etc to both).

A few excerpts (my emphasis):

Here's Scott Briscoe: "Ben - I'm having a hard time reconciling some of your suggestions with one of the goals of Acronym, which is that it be about the association management profession, not about ASAE & The Center. We've been fortunate in that it has been rare that the blog has strayed in that direction. The PR and GR seem especially close to slippery slope material. I've wondered recently if ASAE & The Center should have a blog focused on organizational activities, providing a formal place for those dialogs to happen... but I'd want that separate and apart from Acronym."

And Ben's response: "Scott, ASAE & The Center is an inseparable part of the association management profession. In many ways it is like a proxy for the association management profession. What y'all do profoundly affects all of us, and despite ASAE's recent best efforts, there are still transparency issues to overcome. ... I don't disagree with the suggestion that that conversation could be separated from this one..."

And Virgil Carter: "Scott, I think you are very right to suggest that it is important to have clear and distinguishing editorial policies for all of ASAE & the Center's (or anyone's) publications, including Acronym. That is certainly what most of us do with our own association publications. I like the thought that Acronym is about the profession (OK, include the theory and practice, if that helps) of association management. It's not about the policies and operations of an organization called ASAE & the Center (in my judgement). If ASAE wants (or needs) a publication or blog on its aspirations and performance concerning business and governance operations, that's a fine idea. But brand it and locate it so that there's a clear (transparent) purpose for one and all to understand about the publication.

And here's Matt's comment: "I like the idea of a separate blog about ASAE as an organization. At the same time, I still wouldn't mind seeing posts by ASAE staff (like you Scott and Lisa) talking about what they do and their opinions on association stuff in general. ASAE is afterall an association too."

Sorry to play devil's advocate here!

But - it seems to me that a decent segment of Acronym's readership wants more content about ASAE. However, several people think that should be a separate association blog. So I think we have no consensus on this issue yet! Which means, that even though you could say it depends on the particular association you are talking about, even in this one obvious example the camps are divided and the issues are not entirely clear.

Blogs and associations

I'm really tired today, and feeling a bit sick, so I hope I am not missing the point(s) entirely, but I was reading bmart's post about blogs tied to association magazines, and Dennis McDonald's response, and I am not sure I get it.

Per Ben's post:

1. If an association publishes a magazine less than twice per month, it will probably run out of blog content in the interim if it is only repurposing magazine articles for the blog.

You think so? Why would a magazine have a blog if it wasn't to generate deeper conversation about the articles? In fact, if a magazine is published only every few months, wouldn't you hope the blog content to be much wider, and the magazine would condense that conversation and push it out periodically to a larger (read non-blog-reading) audience?

2. Additional content, like extended stories, member-generated articles that didn't make the editorial cut, and source audio from live interviews, can be gleaned from the publishing process to supplement association magazine blog content.

No argument there.

3. Should an association magazine have its own blog, or should it be rolled into an association's "organizational" or "master" blog? The latter: Magazine content should be rolled into the organizational blog. There are easy ways to segment the content into categories, and it will help you attract more readers via the long tail.

Not sure I agree with this. I think you can quite happily have an "official" blog, a magazine blog, and any number of user/member blogs coexisting happily and linking to each other. I think (and I know may be wrong on this) that an official blog will normally have less subscribers than the others, simply because people are not so interested in the company line.

4. Associations have the ability to overtake dominant blogs in their industry or profession because they have large membership lists to whom they can send email promoting their blog. It's not too late to dominate. Yet.

Not sure about this either!! I think in this paradigm shift, people tend to be suspicious of promotional material in general! I think what associations need to do is, like for-profit companies, learn how to generate word of mouth marketing and nurture their member evangelists through their engagement, not market to them via email blasts.

So if I then go back to Dennis' response, I think he's bringing up similar points, which are, basically, that you need to be aware of all the different ways your association's members communicate with the association and between each other, and while you can consolidate your messages across different communication channels, to some extent, you don't want to abuse any of them and turn people off. And this goes back to the myth of control - I think we as associations need to learn to let go, on the one hand, and nurture, on the other, so that things like blogs (whether member-created or association-created) can really bring in value.

Twitter-fabulous!

A few people have asked me about this thing I just set up. Twitterfeed enables you to set up your blog so it automatically tweets every time you have a new blog post.

While I'm on the subject, you can also get a twitter badge for your blog, which lists the last few tweets on your sidebar (or wherever you want to put it).

There's also loads of cool stuff to be found on the Twitter Fan Wiki, a collection of third party apps by (you guessed it) Twitter fans.

Finally, for Mac users only, there's a cool download called Twitterific which sets up a little desktop application where you can see everyone's tweets scrolling on by and you can post yours directly too, without going to the twitter website (when you are not mobile tweeting, that is, obviously).

Twitter-fabulous!

For LinkedIn junkies...

... or just dabblers like me...

LinkedIn go mobile. Awesome!

And check this out - You can set up a LinkedIn Outlook toolbar which makes it easy to "grab" contacts out of your email inbox. Review on SMT here.

Blog as Newsroom

Just posted a new entry on PITV. Check it out.

Listen up and pay attention. Please!

Got home last night after several hours yesterday discussing personnel issues with my staff and ED, and by a crazy coincidence, saw this article as the main headline in the Washington Posts' Metro Section. (My bold).

Crunch Predicted in Nonprofit Sector
Groups Are Not Nurturing and Retaining Tomorrow's Leaders, Study Says

"The nonprofit sector is facing what experts call an unprecedented crisis in leadership, with organizations in the Washington region and across the country struggling to recruit and retain talented staff.

• Crunch Predicted in Nonprofit Sector
• Transcript: Nonprofits in Trouble

Even as baby boomers retire, nonprofit groups stand to lose ambitious young employees who feel underpaid, overwhelmed by long hours and demanding responsibilities, and frustrated by a lack of career progression, according to a major study to be released today.

The sobering report, "Ready to Lead? Next Generation Leaders Speak Out," could shake up the nonprofit sector, which has been successful at recruiting recent college graduates but not always at keeping them. Many leave for jobs at private companies and in the federal government that often offer better pay and more comfortable lifestyles.

[...]

The report, which uses data from a survey last fall of about 6,000 nonprofit employees, is the largest national study to date of emerging nonprofit leaders. It was conducted by the Casey Foundation, the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services and the online job site Idealist.org.

The study found that 69 percent of respondents feel underpaid. About two-thirds reported they had financial concerns about committing to a career in the sector, and nearly half of that group said they would not make enough money to retire comfortably.

One in three respondents aspires to become the head of a nonprofit organization, but only 4 percent said they were being groomed for top leadership positions.

The study's authors recommend that nonprofit groups provide mentors and help employees meet leaders of similar organizations. They also suggest that nonprofit groups offer better salaries and benefits when possible and restructure organizations to give younger staff members more responsibility and create a more evident career track."

I love this industry and want to stay. But it's really hard when I have a family to provide for, an au pair (the cheapest form of childcare we could find), three cats, three cars (not out of choice), a big mortgage... and everyone around me thinks I'm being exploited. Many of my friends in the private sector continuously wonder why I stay.

And I tell them, I stay because I feel like I am growing professionally. (I also try and continuously show my younger staff that there are these great possibilities for them too. But keeping them interested is harder because they aren't personally invested yet.) I stay because I feel loyalty and responsibility to my association, and quite honestly no-one else knows how to do all the stuff that I do here. I stay because I want to get my CAE and step up the ladder, and that goal is not far away. I stay because I have this blog, which I can no longer live without, and it keeps my brain synapses firing all the time. I stay because I get invited to video blog on PITV, guest blog for Acronym, review lots of things, try lots of things, join discussion groups on topics that I love. I stay because I have made amazing friendships and met incredible people that I learn from every day - and continue to make more of those extremely valuable connections.

I stay because I see a whole world of career possibilities out there... but hear me now. I am not going to wait very long to get there, life is too short, my bills are too high, and it's hard to have to justify and defend my choices all the time.

I am well aware of the financial difficulties facing associations - but I am your future and you need to keep me happy.

"If the sector continues struggling to retain talent, it could have a dramatic effect on social services in Washington and around the country, said Paul C. Light, an expert on nonprofit groups and a professor at New York University's Wagner School of Public Service.

"It's really a significant problem and one that is just so important to the future of the sector," he said. "Nonprofits are so focused on meeting their mission in the present tense that they don't think of succession planning for executive directors, they don't think of recruitment for future employees. It's just not on the agenda because they're under such pressure to deliver, especially during economic downturns like this."

Now, Light said, "they're waking up to say, 'Where's the next generation of workers?' And they're saying, 'We just don't know.' "