The Blogoclump

The association profession is full of qualified, dynamic individuals with lots of opinions and insight on how associations (and their staff and members) should confront the future. Perhaps you’re one of them. If so, consider a dive into the deep end — become a blogger and join the conversation!

Are you considering becoming a blogger and lending your voice to the association community? Here are some tips for doing it right.

Get to know the lay of the land. As of this writing there are 30 or so bloggers talking about associations, and growing. They cover a wide variety of specialties and interests, and include association staff and consultants alike. Some write frequently, some less frequently; some write about a broad variety of topics, some focus on a particular niche. Get to know the active bloggers by reading their posts, which you can track here at the Blogoclump, through an RSS reader such as Bloglines or Google Reader, or the old fashioned way by bookmarking their sites.

The technical aspects are easier than you think. Want to start a blog? Go to blogger.com or wordpress.com and you’ll have one up and running in 30 seconds. You can also join TypePad for a few bucks a month (though the free WordPress.com is catching up to TypePad’s functionality). If you know how to type, cut and paste, you can blog. And if you really like to tinker, you can also host the free WordPress blog software platform on a server space you own or rent.

The writing part is probably harder than you think. Blogging is like screenwriting — everyone thinks, “Hey, I can do that!” Blogs are easy to set up and hard to keep up. It’s best to go in with realistic expectations — don’t feel like you have to post several times a day, or even every day. The most interesting blogs are “natural” — write what you feel comfortable writing, using your own natural language.

Your blog will be as unique as you are. Some people write lengthy essay-type posts, some people write frequent newsy type posts, some people write both, some people post images and videos and audio and god knows what else. The great thing about blogging is that you can feel free to experiment, and don’t be afraid to do so. Your blog will change over time — many of the blogs in the Blogoclump are very different from what they used to be.

Be part of the conversation. Linking is the currency of the blogosphere (and the blogoclump). Putting up a blog without linking to related blogs is a surefire way to be ignored — for one thing, it makes it less likely that your blog will be found by other bloggers who may comment on your posts (and drive traffic to it). In addition, pay attention to what other bloggers are saying (be they association blogs, or other kinds of interest to you). Writing posts in response to other bloggers’ posts (or leaving comments on their blogs) is what turns the Blogoclump into a conversation of diverse voices — and it’s that conversation that drives us all forward, and helps us discover new ideas and new ways of looking at what we do.

Remember that this is all public and, thanks to Google, easy to find — and permanent. Never write a blog post that you wouldn’t feel comfortable passing out to your Board and your members. Assume that some of them will eventually find it anyway.

Join the Clump. The best way to get noticed is to join the Blogoclump. The Blogoclump is a simple site that’s been around for a couple years making it easy for association professionals to find relevant blogs. It is not a “group blog” but rather a blog aggregator that pulls post excerpts from RSS feeds from contributor sites. The Blogoclump is designed solely to drive readers to contributor blogs and help build the audience for association blogs.

Kevin Holland hosts and maintains the site on a voluntary basis. With the advent of the new Blogoclump site in August 2007, I am only adding bloggers who specifically request for their blog to be added. To join the clump, simply go to blogoclump.com/join and complete the contact form. We are fairly egalitarian and will add pretty much any bona fide association people who make the request, except we will not link to anonymous blogs, we prefer individual/independent blogs over organizational blogs, and the blog should actually exist (ie, there should be posts, not just an empty url and good intentions). Usually your blog will be added within a few hours.

For more tips (and a good explanation on why linking to other association bloggers is important), read Ben Martin’s post “7 Simple Tips for New Bloggers.”

Any clumpers have other tips to share? Feel free to leave them in the comments below.