The Blogoclump

The conversation is too narrow.

Read & discuss at jeffpi1@gmail.com (Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation LLC, the association community's leading voice for innovation!)'s blog.

Three months ago, I concluded my second, and final, term as President of my high school PTA. I sent a short note to the state chapter, explaining the problems in school-PTA relations and suggesting ways to improve parental involvement in educational advocacy.

I never received a response - not even a simple thank you for sending the note. In fact, during my two terms I was only contacted by the state association once - when our dues payment was not received on time.

Member feedback does not appear to be very important to the PTA.

Read & discuss at AEM's blog.

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Read & discuss at admin's blog.

Read & discuss at Jamie Notter's blog.

Silly in-joke among association bloggers and Twitterers? Or global viral social media experiment?

Only time will tell. : )

Story here. T-shirt here!

Read & discuss at Maddie Grant's blog.

 So I thought I’d help Mom by writing in her blog today.
Raindrop here.
First of all, thank you to everyone who emailed asking how I’m doing.

I’m fine.
I did some mystery eating.
It didn’t stay down.

Mom hates my mystery eating.

She doesn’t understand.
It’s my thing.
It’s like I get blinders on when I see something that might be tasty.

I don’t like […]

Read & discuss at Raindrop's blog.

I recently had need to call Carefirst (my health insurance company) because they had made a billing error. I had paid my premium, the check was cashed (online proof from my bank) yet my account had not been credited.
I dutifully called the “Questions about your invoice?” number on my statement, and was on hold for […]

Read & discuss at Wes Trochlil's blog.

Maddie Grant and Jeff De Cagna helped us wrap up what we all learned in 3 days in San Diego in a highly interactive session Tuesday afternoon that was based on the Pecha Kucha model.What\’s Your Learning Story? (ASAE & The Center 2008 San Diego)View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: discovery insights)My Pecha […]

Read & discuss at Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE's blog.

Beautiful Qui Diaz tagged me in her Changeblogging meme on the Buzz Bin.

I’ll be honest, I read her post and thought to myself, what can I do? I mean, I care about certain issues, sure. I care about the environment. I care about LBGT rights. I care about supporting the arts, I care about urban renewal. But I don’t know that I care enough to expend a lot of energy into raising money for any one cause. I am very lucky to not have had anyone in my family touched by any huge and awful diseases - though most of my friends have. I care in little ways, but not in big ways. I’m not one of those people who give so much of themselves to help others. I’m too selfish, and I worry too much about just getting my next paycheck so I can pay the mortgage. I’m squarely middle class, with a nice standard of living, but, like many, I don’t have a dime to spare and my credit card companies love me.

But then I read this in her post:

The unofficial and growing network of Changebloggers is another testament to the trend toward good. Changebloggers, as defined by Britt Bravo, are “people who are using their blog, podcast or vlog to raise awareness, build community, and/or facilitate readers/listeners/viewers’ taking action to make the world a better place.” These actions occur across nonprofits, government, corporations and the general civic sector.

Here’s the great news: Social media platforms give anyone with a little reach and commitment the ability to influence, if not outright persuade. You needn’t be solely focused on societal impact to afford changeblogger tendencies. It’s a question of what are you influencing and to what end?

And I thought to myself, there ARE things I can do, even if they are small.

I can help spread the word for friends who have causes they care about.

I can blog about non-profits doing great things like Idealist.org and change.org; I can post examples of non-profits successfully using social media; I can promote creative sites like Remarkd.

I can link to other resources to help non-profits engage audiences in this space.

I can create spaces where people can talk about issues they care about; I know at least one YAPstar who volunteers relentlessly and whom we’d love to help with her causes.

I can make sure my children understand about taking care of the world they live in.

Qui’s meme goes like this:

* What is one change - big or small, local or global - you want to see in your lifetime?

I’ll start small and local - I love my city, Washington DC, and I want to see it have a truly great public school system, worthy of the nation’s capital, instead of possibly the worst in the country.

* Who is already working this issue that you think others should support?

Our new DCPS Chancellor, Michelle Rhee, is an inspiration. I read a great article about her in Fast Company which tells a story about how her daughter’s friends were complaining about the fact that DC didn’t get a snow day that year. “Rhee explained that every snow day is a day when many poor kids won’t get breakfast and maybe lunch.” She puts kids’ wellbeing and education first, in the face of plenty of criticism, and she is truly awesome.

* How are you going to use your Web/tech/marcom skills to further this cause? (Or, what are you already doing that works?)

I answered this question above more generally, but now, I plan to find out more about how I can really do more for DCPS. I already set up the community listserve last year for my kids’ public school, maybe there’s more avenues to explore through that. The DC Government is already exploring social media, wouldn’t it be great to get involved somehow!

It’s now my turn to tag some folks, and I thought I’d choose a few who either already strive to make life better and who probably also never thought of themselves as changebloggers, and/or people whose opinions I listen to and value, and therefore I am curious about what their pet causes might be.

Chris Bailey
Patti Digh
Elizabeth Weaver Engel
Ira Koretsky
Jeff De Cagna
Matt Baehr
Dennis McDonald

Thank you, Qui, for tagging me, and making me stop for a minute and think about all this stuff, and helping me realize I can do something - we all can.

Read & discuss at Maddie Grant's blog.

There’s a little trick that many of the top bloggers use to increase their visitors. They keep an eye on Google Trends and other services that help them keep track of the day’s most queried search terms and then stuff their posts with those terms. The theory is that if you’re posting about stuff that’s currently being searched, your blog will appear in the results and you’ll get some of that search traffic. On the face of it, this seems like a good idea. Who wouldn’t want more visitors?

There are at least two reasons why this ain’t a good idea:

1. Search algorithms are based on many things, but one of them is inbound links. As a lowly magic middle blogger, you probably don’t have enough inbound links to compete with the other bloggers who are employing this tactic. Their posts will show up above yours, and the vast majority of clicks on search engine go to the top three to five search results.
2. Even if someone does happen to land on your page based on the search results, what makes you think they’re going to stick around for more than a few seconds? Your content is likely to be irrelevant to them, especially if you’re simply stuffing the words Obama, DNC, and Michael Phelps into posts about, say, membership marketing. The net result will be an increase in your bounce rate and a decrease in time spent on site.

There must be others.

Bottom line: You need to own your keywords. If you’re going to take an SEO slant towards your blog, pick five to 10 terms (or as many as you can manage) that you’re going to use over and over, and start to move up the charts for those terms. Your visitors will thank you, and so will your stats.

That’s the opinion of one Certified Association Executive.

Tagged: Association Management; Associations; CAE; Certified Association Executive

Read & discuss at Ben Martin's blog.