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.

This afternoon, Mike posted a clarification of his thoughts which refined what he had said originally and thereby helped advance the “conversation” further. The thrust of his most recent post was the fact that the audience should determines the approach, rather than vice versa. I couldn’t agree with him more, and my point in trying to push this discussion forward isn’t to rationalize why blogs are the end-all, be-all, in terms of communication tools, rather that they present, and represent, a pretty unique set of advantages as opposed to their more traditional counterparts.

Case in point being the discussion we are having. Had Mike published his thoughts in a journal or newspaper article there would be no way to refute or clarify what had been said. Once his position was advanced in those mediums they are pretty much committed to history as they stood the moment he wrote them. Sure he could do a clarification or retraction, but regardless what is said is said and that is pretty much the end of it. It is one directional and closed-ended.

However, because we are doing it electronically we have the opportunity to debate our individual opinions, pick out what we like and don’t like and as the discussion evolves, and collectively come to understand each others position better and hopefully strengthen our own positions. It is teaching and learning taking place simultaneously and very few other mediums offer this type of rich interaction.

This experience more than any other that I have had in the past has helped me understand why I feel so strongly about blogging in general, and perhaps why I really was able to get behind Jeff’s concern about why Assocation Executives weren’t reading them. Individually as intelligent, educated, and experienced, as we may be, we are not more intelligent than an entire group of our peers. By reading and participating in this type of discussion we are benefiting not only ourselves, but also those who happen to stop by as it unfolds.

I think my concern is moving from the more narrow “why aren’t association executives reading blogs?” to “why aren’t they taking place in the ongoing discussion?” How beneficial would the entire conversation that has taken place to date for an Association Executive who was thinking about implementing a blog as an outreach or educational tool? Based on the differing opinions that have been represented and the amount of quality information has been exchanged both formally (through posts) and informally (thorugh comments), I’d say it would have helped a great many folks. Sure some would only see the negatives and challenges (e.g. nobody reads it anyway so why bother…), but many others would see the true possibilities to engage their constituencies in an open, lively and ongoing debate. It’s communication in its truest and most basic form and it has the possibility of engaging those who previously thought they didn’t have a voice or a forum for sharing their thoughts. It also offers the AE’s the chance to teach and the chance to learn all while advocating for the profession.

Finally, to close out on one thought that Mike advanced in his original post about blogs being self-published soapboxes, I disagreed to some extent in my comments, but upon reflecting on it, have to agree that they can (and often do) serve that purpose. However, the one thing that I can say about the association bloggers that I have read (and perhaps that is a unique community) it appears to be quite the opposite. Admittedly, I write my blog with the hope that it is going to be read but I also write my blog because it forces me to demonstrate my knowledge of an area and also forces me to think through my position and be able to defend or clarify it should the need arise. I have found my blog to be a great educational tool (for me and hopefully for others) and believe many others who blog regularly do as well. An added benefit is that it allows me to reach out to and connect with a myriad of experts in the fields I write about, many of whom I probably would have never had the chance to dialogue with. My blog has allowed me to further achieve a potential that I probably wouldn’t have been able to achieve without it.

Because we really are all in this together, I really have to thank Mike for taking a risky and potentially unpopular position on a hot and controversial topic. He has caused me, and hopefully others, to challenge their own thinking and look at the subject from a different perspective, and has intelligently and eloquently defended his position. That really is what it’s all about and yet another strength blogs have in comparison to any other medium. This dialogue may not have solved any of the problems that I originally raised in my previous posts, but it has provided me a lot of good reasons why blogging is going to come into its own in the very near future.

Granted, I am a newcomer to the association world and the association blogging world, so I can enjoy some detachment as I haven’t invested nearly the time, energy or effort that folks like Ben Martin, Jamie Notter, Jeff De Cagna, and many others have put into the effort. But at the same time, I can appreciate where they are coming from because I too share their passion and concern for advancing the professionalism of associations. Needless to say, this issue is really resonating with me largely because it’s causing me to think about the many well-written blogs that exist, that do provide valuable and worthwhile information for the readers and how much time, energy and commitment those who write them put into the effort.

In my past posts I took a look at some of the possible root causes of low blog-readership among Association Executives and some action items that could/should be examined more closely as we move forward. I think one of my recurring themes throughout has been the fact that as bloggers we really need to figure out what is important to our target audience. We also need to set reasonable expecations of ourselves and our audiences if blogging is to continue to be a worthwhile activity for us to conduct. As I continued to think about the topic, I remembered an post from one of the blogs that I read regularly that was written a few years titled: “How to Increase Your Readership” by Dave Pollard. As an aside and an endorsement, I highly recommend his blog because he is a brilliant man with a lot to say on a wide variety of topics and I can say while I am not always familiar with what he writes about but I do learn a lot in the process. I guess you could say he challenges me to keep thinking…and that is a great quality.
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In the first part of this post (Blog Readership…The Challenge) I briefly discussed my conversation with Jeff De Cagna surrounding his concern about the lack of blog readership and some of my initial thoughts about why it could be happening and ventured an educated guess that part of the issue could be attributed to the lack of awareness of these great resources. As I closed out I suggested that another contributing factor could be related to education. It is worth noting at this juncture that I am not trying to solve the problem through this series of posts. Rather, I am simply attempting to stimulate a discussion, not only among the bloggers, but also with the target audience to see if some of our assumptions need to be re-examined or paradigms changed.

With that being said, I want to examine the educational side of the issue to see if any ideas bubble to the surface as I look at it more closely. I do know that there is definitely a set of expectations on both sides of this issue that for better or worse have shaped the face of blogging. On the bloggers side there is the expectation that “if we build it, they will come” suggesting that simply the act of putting up a subject or topic related blog will attract a sufficient amount of readers to sustain and grow a site over time. At least that’s the way it was when blogging emerged as a activity conducted by the technical elite and those that had nothing better to do with their time. A few years ago, you never knew what to expect when you went to a blog site on any topic and the quality was questionable at best. Generally, these blogs seemed to be well left or right of the median, and were written as personal rants or personal marketing pieces by anyone who had an opinion on anything and were largely a waste of time (for the blogger and the reader) as opposed to insightful and thoughtful discussions on germaine topics that encouraged genuine discussion written by intelligent individuals.
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