Principled Innovation LLC

Quick response on assn execs reading blogs

March 2nd, 2007

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:

1. Reading blogs is not “a time sink” by definition. I believe many association leaders see blogs in this way because they don’t fully understand them, or they are overly influenced by popular yet mistaken perceptions of what blogs are about. In my experience, once people take a closer and unbiased look at what blogs actually offer them, their minds change. Do people write blogs about irrelevant stuff? Sure. Is anyone asking association professionals to read those blogs? Absolutely not. Any activity viewed through a skewed lens or conducted with insufficient knowledge can take on the look and feel of a time waster. But if association professionals are willing to devote just 30 minutes (and probably less) to the initial set-up of a blog feed reader, they would be able to easily access the most relevant blog content on associations without excessive disruption to their schedules. No time sink involved.

2. Related to my first point, Lisa mentions the issue of complexity in subscribing to blogs. While I agree that this was once a major obstacle, it is no longer a significant consideration, largely because of Google Reader. Everyone is familiar with Google, and the company’s blog feed reader application is excellent and very easy to use. In fact, I posted a detailed explanation of how to use Google Reader back in October and I’m confident that anyone following those directions will find it very easy to set up their blog subscriptions.

3. I understand that association executives are quite busy, but I also know that professionals in a variety of fields and industries (including those beyond technology and media) who are far busier have managed to integrate blogs and other social media content into the information flow to which they pay attention. The key issue for me is that associations are knowledge-based enterprises that depend on ideas for their success. The bloggers who write about the association community are all committed to providing fresh ideas and thinking that can help our staff and volunteer colleagues be more successful. And, by the way, all of the content we create for our blogs is free! So what I don’t understand is why what we do isn’t a more attractive wellspring of great information and knowledge for leaders in our community. In other words, how do we get association leaders to take the closer look I mention above?

To everyone who has commented to this point, let me thank you once again. Please understand that I’m pushing back in order to advance our conversation. I hope you and others will continue the discussion in the coming days. Thanks!

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a Google shareholder.)

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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

3 Comments Add your own

1. Frank Fortin | March 2nd, 2007 at 12:09 pm

Fair point — the perceptions we’ve noted can be refuted.
Ultimately this may be just an adoption curve issue.
It’s still early — maybe earlier than we, who use this stuff, think.
Remember how long it took for the typical old-industry CEO to use the web? Or get an e-mail address?
2. Jamie Notter | March 3rd, 2007 at 5:30 pm

I think it’s a cost/benefit thing in terms of attention, not time (although the two are obviously related). This is all speculation, of course, but imagine the Exec. She’s been doing this job for ten years and she is full to the brim with information. She was overloaded BEFORE blogs came along. The early information she gets about blogs is sketchy, and the description of “online diary” isn’t particularly appealing. So initially it doesn’t seem to be worth her attention, which is already stretched thin.

But she’s got a staff person pestering her about blogs so she does some searches and reads some blogs by blogoclumpers. But by only taking a snapshot of all the blogs, she ends up with a very diffuse set of content. Sure, there were some good posts that made her think. But some of it just isn’t interesting or relevant to her at that moment. And let’s face it, not ALL of our posts are content-rich. So on any given day, she gets this broad mix, and she leaves with her original conclusion reinforced: this isn’t worth my valuable attention. She’s not convinced, because there doesn’t appear to be an immediate payback for her. That’s the problem. You don’t get payback by reading a blog once.

It took me significant time to really get the value of blogs. Not lots of time in terms of actual hours spent reading blogs. But time in terms of the few weeks it takes to get a feel for the rhythm of a blog, time in terms of figuring out which blogs had stuff I wanted to read and which didn’t. The payoff isn’t instant. Now that I’m in the flow, the payoff is unbelievable. I have access to so much wisdom and information. It’s great. But if you’re not in the flow, I think it’s hard to understand why people like us are so enthusiastic about it.

It’s like when someone says, “Oh my GOD, you HAVE to read this book!!!!” There is an element of “you are incomplete unless you read this book (and I’m smarter than you for reading it first)” in that statement, and that can be a real turn-off. If we are telling people they are deficient by not reading blogs, we will not get more readers.

I took the leap with blogs because I had trusted friends who encouraged me. Maybe we bloggers need more friends?
3. Greg | March 4th, 2007 at 7:14 am

Thanks Jeff for the link back to the Google reader instructions. Not sure if I missed them, or just wasn’t ready then, but on board now. And since you’re a shareholder, I’ll be sure to be in touch if I need help. And thanks for the 17 feed links … really did simplify things.

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