Blogging Platforms for Associations

Why I picked Blogger as my platform.

I picked it because it was fast, flexible, and free. I looked at Wordpress, Moveable Type, and a few others. Blogger seemed like less messing around. I was up and running with a simple blog mapped to ftp my own domain in less than 30 minutes. It was a good choice. You can turn off the Blogger navbar to give your site a more professional look. Template edits are easy from a template window with preview. I really like the easy interface. A huge plus is being able to access your Adwords, Google Analytics, Alerts, Webmaster tools, and Groups from the same dashboard as your Blogger menu.

I've used open source platforms like Geeklog in the past for community sites. Lots of great capabilities, but the constant upgrades, security fixes were a pain. Russian spam gangs finally brought that site to its knees. I recently deleted 6,000 comment spam submissions.

If you are a large association, you can probably afford money and staff to use more complex platforms. For the small association with limited resources, I think Blogger is the way to go.

Blog your way to $1 million in less than 3 months

This blog has been live for less than a week. Already, my revenues from Adwords are growing exponentially. On July 20, I made $.06 USD. On July 23, revenue from Adwords jumped to $.14 USD. At this rate of growth I will cross the $1 million dollar mark in less than 3 months. By the end of the year I will be the richest man on earth. WooHoo! Keep clicking! ;<)

Of course, this is tongue-in-cheek. However, it's not unreasonable for associations to "monetize" their blogs, websites, and other media. More about this in later posts. Keep clicking! WooHoo!

Social bookmarking for association blogs

I've been reading about social bookmarking and its value for promoting and sharing blog posts and other info across social networks. I'm exploring. I found a nice article on the Tips for New Bloggers site. Based on those recommendations, I'm using a free service called AddThis that gives you a nice little widget for your blog enabling your readers to bookmark and share. It comes with some nice analytics too.

I'm trying this out, so please, if you see a post you like, bookmark and share.

Why CRM Doesn't Work

Remember all the money your association spent on Customer Relationship Management software to segment markets and inform product development? Guess what. It doesn't work all that well. The new media has turned it around. There is still a relationship to be managed, but now it's your members/customers that want to do the managing. Forget about slicing and dicing every demographic permutation of every transaction to discern your members product needs. Just ask them. They'll tell you. They might even build the product for you. You won't get this from parsing data. You'll get it by engaging in conversations and asking them what they want. Oh, only thing is, they've already told each other and anyone else who is listening. Frederick Newell, author of some early books on CRM examines the subject of CMR--Customer Managed Relationships in his latest book.

Read the book: Why CRM Doesn't Work: How to Win by Letting Customers Manage the Relationship By Frederick Newell.

Learn from your children

If you want to understand technology-based social networks, talk to your children. They are connected to each other, all the time. The current tools are Facebook, Skype, online gaming forums, and cellphones (voice and text). They are not loyal to any specific platform. They move to where their friends are and to where the technology makes it easier for them to stay connected. Remember AOL instant messenger (AIM), Dead. LiveJournal, where they shared their deepest thoughts with 50-100 closest friends. Dead. Friendster-nope, MySpace? Only if they are in a band. Twitter, not yet, maybe never. Through Facebook and Skype they know the online status of their friends at any given moment and can contact them, chat, ask for advice, video or voice conference. Everything is free and they can self-organize their own communities of interest.

So your association wants to start using social media? How open, flexible, and free is your platform. How do your tools compare to what 20 somethings take for granted?

Release the spiders of Technorati

Technorati Profile
I've read that if you have a blog, you should take advantage of Technorati, the internet seach engine that indexes blogs and tagged bits of social media.

3 Fundamental Theories for Associations

This stuff isn't news. The ideas have been around for awhile, but anyone interested in associations and how they use the new media should be familiar with them. These "Laws of the Internet" should be the guiding principles of a digital strategy for associations.

One is Moore's Law, is a 40 year-old prediction which holds that every 24 months computing power doubles while chip prices remain constant. It’s held pretty steady over the years. You’ll see Moore’s law in action in products like USB drives and digital media (camera) cards. Some associations now provide USB drives loaded with speaker presentations for their convention attendees in lieu of paper. Who would have thought they'd get so cheap? The implication for associations is that you can plan ahead for projects that are not possibilities now.

More importantly for associations, there are two other laws: Metcalf's Law and Coase's Law.

Metcalf's Law- The value of a network.
According to Robert Metcalf (3Com), the value of a network (telephones, people, computers) increases dramatically with each additional user. Metcalf's Law values the utility of a network as the square of the number of its users. Value = N2 , where N = an individual user. The potential for unique interaction between 1000 people is 1,000,000. Consider that the value of one fax machine is 0. This holds for the value of information as well as the value of an association membership. Start thinking of your association as a social network.

Coase's Law-The nature of the firm or why organizations exist. Why associations exist.
Here’s where things get really interesting.
Ronald Coase was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his discovery of transaction cost. According to Coase, firms exist to the extent that they reduce transaction costs effectively. In our case the firm is the association. The transaction costs that an association reduces are primarily the barriers to:

• access to information


• opportunity to network with like-minded individuals

Social media, social networks, and the hyperlinked, indexed web present challenges to associations on both of these items. However, if an association recognizes their primary value is in the strength of their network (membership) and their ability to reduce the transaction costs of access to information and access to like-minded individuals, I think they can overcome these challenges. More on this in future posts.

Grow your network
Share your knowledge
Let your members have conversations
Increase your value

Why this blog?

I'm interested in how associations work, what makes associations successful, and how associations use media. This includes social media and Web 2.0 tools. Blogs are a part of the media mix that I want to learn about. What better way to learn about blogs than by starting one?

I'll write about aspects of associations and how they use new media. This is a chronicle of my exploration. I'll point towards things that I find interesting. If you find this interesting, I'd like to get to know you. If you want to share things that you find interesting, that'd be cool. Associations are all about connecting and learning from each other.