Principled Innovation LLC

Why don’t more association execs read blogs?

February 28th, 2007

It’s a question that has been on my mind since Zach first raised it last summer, and even more so in recent days since Feedburner began to include Google Reader stats in its feed counts. While the inclusion of the Google data did bump up the total count of my subscription feeds, the new figure remains pathetically weak by any standard. Based on my conversations with other bloggers, I’m confident I’m not alone in experiencing this phenomenon. And so my question once again:

Why don’t more association execs read/subscribe to blogs?

FYI: I’m including “subscribe” in with “read” here, because while they are technically different, they are the same thing in practice. To put it another way, if you’re not subscribing, you’re not reading.

I have some thoughts on the topic, but first I’d prefer to hear what those of you who read this and perhaps other blogs think about this question. It also would be great to know your ideas on what we, i.e., bloggers and readers of blogs, can do to help non-blog reading association executives increase their comfort with this medium, as well as its underlying technologies. I look forward to this important conversation!

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Entry Filed under: Principled Innovation Blog, What's New?, Social Media, Innovation, Associations, Extreme Makeover, The Association Innovator, Simplicity, We Have Always Done It That Way, Google

9 Comments Add your own

1. Ben Martin | February 28th, 2007 at 10:45 pm

I see the difference between read and subscribe as very significant. You can read blogs without subscribing to them. So perhaps readership is higher than the subscriptions indicate.

I think assn execs are reading blogs, but they’re not reading ours! I see four reasons for this:
1. They don’t know there are blogs about associations.
2. They see reading blogs as a trivial pursuit.
3. They don’t have enough time to read blogs (Poor excuse: subscribing radically reduces the time needed to read blogs).
4. They don’t want to read association blogs, but would rather spend time doing what they’re paid to do (i.e. service members, write reports, etc.) so they can get home and pursue their personal interests.
2. Matt White | February 28th, 2007 at 11:33 pm

I agree with Ben’s remark about people who would rather be doing there own work instead of surfing blogs. I rely on Feedburner and Google Analytics to track our stats but I think our success has come from syndicating our feed to the main page of our association’s site. A majority of our readers come from our main site via clicking on the blog titles. This should be taken advantage of by other associations.

I’m interested as to why people don’t comment as much on association blogs as they do in others (sports, news, etc.). I’d imagine that in our case we use our blog as a “press release” vehicle versus a “social commentary” vehicle.

Association blogging is definitely becoming more mainstream and it’ll only continue to grow with time.
3. Frank Fortin | March 1st, 2007 at 9:24 am

Compared to technology and media professionals, I agree the percentage is lower. Compared to other professionals, maybe not.
I work with and for physicians, and only the early adopters are into blogs.
My wife is a self-employed consultant in digital printing, and while she’s heard of the buzzwordsm, she only knows about it because I’ve been working on it for my association.
Bottom line: We’re still in the early adoption phase, so reading/subscribing will still be spotty.
4. Lisa Junker | March 1st, 2007 at 12:00 pm

Actually, I read quite a few blogs every day, and I don’t subscribe to any. (I may be unique, but I doubt it.) This is because my experience with trying to subscribe to a blog has gone somewhat like this:

- I see a button that says “Subscribe to this Blog.”
- I think “Cool! Subscribing should save me time, right?”
- I click on the button and see a page of confusing code.
- I think, “Huh? What am I supposed to do? I don’t know anything about code.”
- I decide not to worry about it and just add the blog to my browser’s bookmarks, which seems to work just as well.

After a few repetitions of this, I stopped clicking on subscribe buttons and just added blogs to my bookmarks as I found blogs/writers I wanted to visit regularly. It’s entirely possible it’s easier to subscribe to a blog now, but I haven’t taken the time to check in a while.

With regard to your real question, I think association blogs don’t have more readers because our audience is restricted in a couple of ways. We’re reaching people who must a) think of association management as a profession that might have blogs dedicated to it; b) consider themselves to be in the association management profession (or closely related enough to it that they have an interest in its issues); c) are interested in reading blogs in the first place; and d) want to devote time to blog reading in addition to their other work, as Ben points out.

Criteria A and B alone eliminate a lot of folks, when compared to, say, people interested in football or politics. And Criteria D may eliminate a lot of our very overworked colleagues who already put in long hours and just don’t want to think about work any more when they could be spending time with their families or on private hobbies or what have you.

But, I do think those criteria point to ways we can expand the audience for association blogs, with time and communication … by increasing the number of people falling under these criteria, we could potentially increase the audience visiting blogs like yours, and (with luck) increase the number of people commenting and participating in these discussions!
5. Frank Fortin | March 1st, 2007 at 4:43 pm

Compared technologists and writers, almost any professional group will be lower on the blog reading and writing scale.
Lisa’s right– ease of use is one important issue.
The other is the concern over the time it involves. The doctors I work with know about blogs, but are worried they’re a huge time sink. My wife, who works for herself and has to budget her time carefully, is worried too.
And let’s be honest — we all know blogs can be a HUGE time sink.
Just like any tool, it’s not the tool that will attract the masses, but what the allows you to do. If it’s faster, cheaper or better, it’s a winner. If not, it’s a footnote.
6. Brian Lepacek | March 1st, 2007 at 7:30 pm

The issues raised by this questions are manifold, but I will second some of the comments already maden and add a couple more:

1. Since there are so many choices in blogs, findling the ones that apply to you and your interests- I was lucky enough to have one of my previous mentors suggest Principled Innovation as one worthy my time;
2. Many of them are difficult to read visually on the screen if they are not posted in HTML, especially if they come with a daily diary that is not formatted well;
3. Many workplaces restrict blog access with server blockers;
4. Executives get into working in silos and forget that there is wisdom available from their peers.
And lastly (I am glad to say that in my experience it is NOT an issue on this blog)… it can be a HUGE time sink to wade through all of the mindless chatter from people who clog blogs with information that is better reserved for a session with their therapist!

Thanks for all you do in raising the right questions!
7. Principled Innovation LLC&hellip | March 2nd, 2007 at 8:07 am

[…] Thanks to everyone who has commented so far on my post asking why more association executives don’t read blogs. I very much appreciate the candor in your views. I’m heading out of town for the weekend, so I don’t have time to post a detailed response. But my immediate reaction is one of profound skepticism, i.e., I’m not convinced, and here’s why: […]
8. Nomadic Learning - »&hellip | March 5th, 2007 at 9:10 pm

[…] However, the common thread that brought us together for our discussion this afternoon was technology, and more specifically blogging. Jeff has made no secret of the fact that he is perplexed by the lack of blog readership and participation among association executives (Why don’t more association execs read blogs?). While I haven’t know Jeff that long, he doesn’t come across to me as a “glass-half-full” kind of guy. Based on reading his blog, attending a panel discussion he participated in at the ASAE Technology Conference in February, and our conversation today, I’d have to say that he is a passionate realist. Perhaps the term “evangelist” may be more appropriate, but regardless, the man understands the possibility and reality of not only technology but also the association-world, so when he raises a concern many people listen. Naturally, the question on his mind today was regarding blog readership and the challenges faced by bloggers trying to get people actively engaged in the running dialogue (after all isn’t that what Web 2.0 / the read-write web is all about?). From Jeff’s perspective he couldn’t understand why readership, which he defines as actually reading a post or subscribes to the posts feed, was so low among association executives (his target audience) as compared to the readership of blogs outside of the association space. I found myself doing much more listening than talking as I want (a) to hear what he had to say and (b) to see if he had become blinded by his own passion and therefore lost some of his objectivity. I can say that he not only understands the medium as well as his audience and his logic (at least from my perspective) was pretty rock solid. […]
9. Blog Readership…The&hellip | April 1st, 2007 at 9:26 pm

[…] However, the common thread that brought us together for our discussion this afternoon was technology, and more specifically blogging. Jeff has made no secret of the fact that he is perplexed by the lack of blog readership and participation among association executives (Why don’t more association execs read blogs?). While I haven’t know Jeff that long, he doesn’t come across to me as a “glass-half-full” kind of guy. Based on reading his blog, attending a panel discussion he participated in at the ASAE Technology Conference in February, and our conversation today, I’d have to say that he is a passionate realist. Perhaps the term “evangelist” may be more appropriate, but regardless, the man understands the possibility and reality of not only technology but also the association-world, so when he raises a concern many people listen. Naturally, the question on his mind today was regarding blog readership and the challenges faced by bloggers trying to get people actively engaged in the running dialogue (after all isn’t that what Web 2.0 / the read-write web is all about?). From Jeff’s perspective he couldn’t understand why readership, which he defines as actually reading a post or subscribes to the posts feed, was so low among association executives (his target audience) as compared to the readership of blogs outside of the association space. I found myself doing much more listening than talking as I want (a) to hear what he had to say and (b) to see if he had become blinded by his own passion and therefore lost some of his objectivity. I can say that he not only understands the medium as well as his audience and his logic (at least from my perspective) was pretty rock solid. […]

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