When I was the editor at my college newspaper, I got tons of hate mail. (OK, most of it wasn’t directed at me personally, but at a particular news story or — more often — an opinion column or editorial.) I sometimes had to write retractions or corrections, and they appeared in both the print version of the newspaper and online.

When I was the opinions editor at the same newspaper, I received even more “hate” mail. The Opinions section was one of the most widely read sections (second to Sports) and it was also a pretty polarizing one. My university was home to 35,000 students with diverse opinions and backgrounds, and often a column or editorial would stir up the masses. It was always my goal to publish columns on both sides of an issue, and I loved having point-counterpoint columns on the Opinions page.

Opinions columns are similar to blog posts; they share the author’s opinion with facts to back it up, but not every reader has to agree with every word.

Because of this background, I was extremely interested in Tuesday’s Association Chat (#assnchat on Twitter), which discussed the Acronym blog’s decision to remove a post from last week titled “Consultant Wasteland.” (Check out the transcript here.)

Just like you can’t delete something from a newspaper once it’s been put into print, you can never truly delete something from the Internet once it’s been posted. You can, however, publish an official apology, a column (or blog post) reflecting a different viewpoint or letters to the editor (blog comments) disagreeing with the original post.

I always made an effort to publish letters disagreeing with columns (yes, even columns I had written), or columns responding to previous ones. It creates a dialogue in the community, pure and simple. It lets people know their opinions are appreciated and their contributions are welcome.

Of course, at the top of every opinions page, there was a disclaimer: “The views expressed here do not represent the views of the newspaper.” Although not all readers understood that and I often got letters asking how I could publish certain columns and if the newspaper had any standards, there was nothing I loved more than starting a good healthy discussion on a controversial topic.

However, the Internet allows everyone to be a columnist and espouse views on whatever they’d like. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to allow a dialogue and conversation to take place. By deleting the post about consultants, ASAE unintentionally conveyed that it is not willing to stand by what it publishes. Will people think twice now before submitting a comment or blog post? Perhaps.

I hate to use ASAE as an example because I truly think the Acronym blog is a wonderful resource for everyone in the association community. And I don’t know the conversations that took place in its offices or all of the complaints they received about the posts. But I do know that now, after the post has been deleted, even more people are talking about it, and not in a good way. I’m willing to bet that wasn’t the intent when the post was deleted.

Like the true journalism geek that I am, I have a bumper sticker from the Newseum (located in Washington, D.C.) on my car that reads, “Talk is cheap. Free speech isn’t.” Some may say that’s just the idealistic journalist in me, but I don’t want to live in a world where we can’t speak out freely and (politely) disagree with others in an intelligent conversation.

What do you think? How would you handle criticism of a blog post? Or, how have you handled criticism in the past?

Splash has only been around for a little more than eight months now, and I’m so thankful to be a part of this community. I know there are a lot of readers out there who never comment, and though I wish everyone would (at least once!), I’m still glad you — yes, you! — take the time to read.

So, in an effort to expand the community and keep learning more from one another, we want to open this blog up to guest posts. Whether you’re a MemberClicks customer, a consultant, a vendor, an association professional or executive, member or board member, we want to hear from you. Any and all ideas and posts are welcome, as long as they fit the mission of the blog, which is to provide refreshment for small-staff organizations (not sales pitches).

If you have an association issue you want to write about, particularly pertaining to small-staffs, please feel free to e-mail me at shannon@memberclicks.com.

Has your organization found the social media sweet spot? If not, don’t worry — there are obviously tons of resources out there and lots of great examples of other associations who are making waves in the social space.

For some ideas and examples, tune in to Delcor’s Social Media Sweet Spot show each week at 12:30 p.m. ET. Senior Technology Consultant KiKi L’Italien hosts the show each week and it’s dedicated to discussing the latest news regarding social media and associations. At the end of each show, KiKi gives the Social Media Sweet Spot Award to an association or association professional and gives some awesome reasons why they rock at social media.

(Full disclosure: I had the honor of receiving the Sweet Spot Award on March 12. It was a wonderful surprise, especially given that MemberClicks is not an association!)

Other awesome winners of the Sweet Spot Award:

- The Association of Residential Cleaning Services International (ARCSI): They have an integrated online dues collection, online university, store, CMS and private social network (Ernie Hartong, the organization’s ED, was recognized for embracing social media at ARCSI).

- Shop.org and Josh Greene, who has his own blog (joshgreene.com): Shop.org is a division of the National Retail Federation, a trade association whose focus is to provide a forum for retail executives to share information, new perspectives and intelligence about online and multichannel retailing.

- The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) has a very successful YouTube initiative that engaged their members. They created a video contest with the theme, “Helping People Communicate.” All video entries had to convey with hearing or speech (or both) meant to them.

These are just a few examples of past winners. I definitely recommend checking out the archived episodes and tuning in each Friday if you have the time. (If not, each episode is recorded so you’ll be able to watch them at your convenience.)

All archived episodes are available here. If you have a free half-hour on Fridays, tune in and watch the show live and chat with fellow association professionals.

How many times have you sat yawning in a two-hour meeting, only to go back to your office or cube and think, What just happened?

In any office environment, meetings are a fundamental necessity to keep different departments and people up-to-date on various goings-on. But without proper planning, a meeting can take a turn for the worse as participants struggle to stay awake or leave feeling as if they accomplished nothing.

First, decide if you even need to have a meeting. Some issues can be solved through a few simple e-mails. Meetings aren’t the only way to convey information to multiple people.

To ensure your association’s meetings are effective and purposeful, begin with the end in mind. Set a measurable objective and goal, and make sure all attendees are aware of it.

Don't make your employees feel like "The Office's" Dwight after a meeting

It’s also helpful to have an agenda, as disciplined and annoying as it might sound. Make sure all participants are aware of it beforehand — they should also know what information they will be responsible for contributing. And if any materials (such as documents or PowerPoint presentations) are going to be used in the meeting, give them to attendees beforehand, as well.

During your meetings, stay focused. Assign actionable duties and responsibilities to people so follow-up will be easy. (This will also make it easy to determine how successful your meeting was.)

Everyone should leave a meeting with new tasks on their to-do list, or at least a sense that they’re headed in the right direction concerning tasks they’re working on.

Meetings don’t have to last hours and hours to be effective. I’m sure many small-staff organizations could have quick 30-minute catch-up sessions and be good to go.

Whatever you do, don’t just meet for the sake of meeting. Everyone should have something new to contribute and leave with new takeaways. If you ever leave a meeting and think, “Well that was useless,” definitely take some time to consider if it was worth it. Meetings take up employees’ valuable time — staffers at smaller associations in particular have no time to waste as they juggle their varied day-to-day tasks.

How often do your association’s staffers touch base? Do you have formal meetings with agendas, or does a more casual style work for your organization?

Happy Friday! It was a fun week in the association world, and I want to again thank everyone who attended the CRP Virtual Lunch call on Wednesday.

There were also some great posts this week, and amazing discussions in some of the comments, which were all great to read. Here are some of my recommended reads.

1. Cindy Butts wrote a fantastic post with 13 tips for a board of directors meeting via webinar. The ability to hold a meeting via phone or webinar is fantastic, but there are important considerations when dealing with sometimes-fickle technology. From turning off your IM to doing a practice run-through with the president, all bases are covered here.

2. An Acronym post by Scott Briscoe — Consultant wasteland — has a great conversation going in the comments. Scott discussed why associations hire consultants and if it’s truly necessary for them to validate decisions. Of course, the comments got especially interesting, so I encourage everyone to check them out — as well as the post, of course.

Does the crowd always know what’s best?

3. Another great post with fantastic, insightful comments over at Jeff Hurt’s Midcourse Corrections: Two Reasons Why Crowdsourcing Your Conference Content Won’t Work. What attendees want and what they need can be very different things, and attendees don’t know what they don’t know. Might sound obvious, but definitely read the post and the comments. Everyone had such thoughtful things to say!

4. At the SocialFish blog, Maddie Grant wrote an open letter to association CEOs about social media and organizational culture. Inviting all CEOs who read it to respond, she got a few great comments — trust me, you want to read them (especially the last few)!

5. Erik Schonher had a funny anecdote about one of his client’s e-mail marketing campaign — a technology glitch prompted tons of responses! Maybe an unexpected e-mail or message will prompt your members to follow up with the organization.

Thanks for all of the great posts this week! Each one offered some amazing food for thought, and I’m so happy to see so many awesome comments out there. If you’ve never commented on a post before, don’t be afraid to chime in on the discussion.

Hope everyone has a fun and productive weekend!