Thoughts on Mike’s post on Communicatio
March 8th, 2007
Yesterday, Mike over at Communicatio posted on the question of why association executives don’t read blogs. I’m sorry to say that I just couldn’t stop shaking my head as I read what he wrote, so here are three thoughts in response:
1. It goes without saying that everyone has different interests and needs for information and insight. With all due respect to Mike, that is not the point. By not actively reading association-related blogs, CEOs and all professionals working in our community are missing out on association-specific content created by experienced advisors and practitioners who spend a considerable amount of their time thinking about the key issues facing our organizations. To not want to take advantage of a wellspring of relevant ideas and knowledge that is available for free strikes me as a very strange choice.
2. Mike writes, “…the point I want to make is that we shouldn’t get hung up on ‘Why aren’t association executives reading blogs?’ A blog is just a format for information.” It is hard for me to put into words how much I disagree with this view. Blogs are specifically intended to be running conversations co-created by authors and readers. This is one of the things that makes blogging interesting and fun, and it is also a fundamental source of my frustration. I want to engage my community in a vital discourse around innovation, social media and related topics, but only a precious few people are paying any attention to it. I find that reality rather discouraging, and I’d like to do something to change it for all bloggers in our community and beyond.
3. It is true that bloggers self-publish their own first person views on the ideas and issues about which they write, and that is the whole point. In our posts, we convey the passion, energy and excitement we feel toward our subject matter. We stand on our soapboxes to be sure, but we are also generative and authentic and I, for one, will make no apologies. After all, what would be the value of blogging if we didn’t write in this way?
Mike, however, sees this unvalidated form of self-expression as a potential stumbling block for some association executives who ostensibly believe it is more important to stick with the in-crowd’s traditional “we’ve always done it that way” reading list. I see it as an unmistakable validation of the belief that we must have more diverse voices and more divergent views if we’re going to inspire a genuine and lasting shift in the way our community’s leaders think about the future of their organizations. (And, just for the record, the Wall Street Journal has it’s fair share of soapbox material as well!)
My purpose here is not to pick on Mike, whose post embodies all of the ideas I’ve written about here. Rather, it is to push back on the notion that it is somehow wrong for us to question why our colleagues are not actively reading and engaging with the material we develop for them. More than five years after I became a full-time consultant, I still think of myself as an association executive, and if I were on staff somewhere today, I would be reading and savoring every word of my fellow bloggers’ writings. My goal is to challenge my association professional colleagues to add association-related blogs to their reading material, to advance their own success, as well as the success of their organizations. If they do, I believe all of us will reap the benefits.
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4 Comments Add your own
1. Mike Mason | March 8th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Hey! I’m famous!
Okay, in my defense, perhaps I didn’t fully express myself. What I meant to do was give my own explanation as to why association executives aren’t reading blogs — but I didn’t intend to defend their excuses. They should read, but they don’t.
Jeff in particular and other bloggers shouldn’t apologize for expressing their views — far from it; we’ll always need more good ideas. But the point I was trying to make was that association executives, in my experience, value the kind of third-party validation that comes from (for lack of a better word) traditional media. More than that, they want to be up on what everyone else is talking about. In that regard, it’s kind of a chicken-and-egg argument: Association blogs would have more readers if they were more influential, and if they were more influential they’d have more readers.
Although the techie-bloggers seem to think that blogs have “jumped the shark,” I think the heyday of association blogs is yet to come. Keep up the good work, Jeff!
2. Nomadic Learning - »&hellip | March 8th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
[…] Late yesterday, Mike Mason weighed in on the ongoing discussion about why Association Executives don’t read blogs. While I didn’t agree with everything he said, he did articulate a number of very relevant and salient points that stimulated more discussion. I responded to his post by leaving a comment on his blog, figuring that I would be able to loop back and organize and refine my thoughts and post it myself, but by early this morning Jeff De Cagna had already weighed-in with a discourse similar to the tact that I was going to use to address Mike’s post. Since I am a firm believer that redundancy adds no value, I abandoned my idea of posting in response to Mike. […]
3. Lisa Junker | March 9th, 2007 at 10:28 am
I’ve been so interested to see this discussion develop across so many blogs!
I had two comments on your post, Jeff:
You say that you’re pushing back “on the notion that it is somehow wrong for us to question why our colleagues are not actively reading and engaging with the material we develop for them.” To be honest, I don’t think this is what Mike (or any of the other thoughtful bloggers discussing this subject) are doing. I think they’re trying to find answers to the question you’re asking. Why aren’t more association executives reading blogs? If we can diagnose (as much as it’s possible in a collective sense) the problem, it’s much easier to find an effective solution.
Second, you vigorously defend the “soapboxy” nature of blogs–and I think you’re right to do so. But perhaps association blogs, which are generally passionate in a positive way, are being incorrectly grouped with blogs that are vitriolic in a negative way.
I remember when I first proposed a blog at my last association, another manager turned to me and said, “Aren’t blogs those things that aren’t fact-checked and just publish all kinds of crazy untrue stuff?”
Perhaps one thing we need to do is educate the association leaders who aren’t reading blogs, to help them see the difference between a passionate blog and a vitriolic one–to let them know it’s safe to come in the water.
4. Greg Melia, CAE | March 9th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Jeff writes: “Blogs are specifically intended to be running conversations co-created by authors and readers.”
As a newbie still trying to get all my techno-terms down correctly, this comment sent me surfing over to Wikipedia to see the community definition of “blog”. Accordingly to the highly credentialed folks there, I think you you’ve introduced a value-specific qualification about what blogs are, and perhaps in fact are talking a bit more specifically about open invite collaborative blogs. I bring this up because I agree with you that there are HUGE differences between the potential value of a message delivered via an open invite collaborative blog and other forms of information distribution, including other types of blogs.
But perhaps we’re tackling the wrong question anyway. If we are to achieve the goal you mention of engaging the community in discourse, I think the question is not why association executives don’t READ blogs, but rather why association don’t executives RESPOND to blogs.
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