Today’s post is a guest post by Deirdre Reid, CAE, a writer, speaker and consultant for associations at Reid All About It.

Admit it, you like reading this blog, don’t you? You subscribe by email or RSS feed and valuable and interesting content shows up on your computer every few days. How convenient! You get tips and advice, read about hot issues and learn about resources to help you do your job or get ahead in your profession. Wouldn’t your members like that?

Blogs provide news, information and thought-provoking ideas – a professional development trifecta. They are the ultimate content marketing tool – engaging your readers with valuable information that holds their attention and strengthens their loyalty. A blog also educates policy-makers, journalists and other influencers about your legislative and regulatory issues. A good blog establishes your association as a thought-leader in your industry.

Google loves blogs and their keyword-rich pages. Because of their dynamic fresh content, blogs rank high in Google indexing. Blog posts are sharable. They’re sent to colleagues via email, or shared on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Your association’s reach and influence expand via Google and social media platforms.

Blogs are social. Your members participate in the conversation you start by commenting back to you and each other. Blogs have more personality than websites. You can play it straight by providing serious information, but also be entertaining with lighter posts and videos.

Can you manage a blog?

Even a small staff association can manage a blog by publishing repurposed and curated content in addition to original content.

You can get content in several ways:

• Create original content. Don’t worry, you have access to more easy content ideas than you’d expect. Trust me, the more you write, the easier it gets.
• Repurpose existing magazine, newsletter, educational session, blast email and political alert content.
• Ask members to contribute a monthly post. Look for bright members who want visibility. If they don’t write well, edit their work or outsource the editing. If their writing is hopeless, film them.
• Find industry bloggers who will contribute monthly guest posts.
• Outsource content creation to freelance writers.
• Do a mix of all of the above.

Content can also be collected from other sources, reviewed and curated (filtered) to find the most valuable and interesting posts for your members.

• Subscribe to industry blogs using a RSS feed. Review the feed daily to find the best of your industry’s blogosphere.
• Follow industry thought-leaders and others on Twitter. Review the posts that they’re sharing.
• Publish posts that share the week’s best reads.

How do you begin?

Start by reading industry blogs regularly to get a feel for the community and issues. Read social media blogs to learn more about managing and marketing a blog.

Form a staff team, or a team of members and/or industry thought-leaders overseen by staff, to develop an editorial strategy. Review your communication, marketing, professional development, membership, advocacy and public relations goals. How can your blog help achieve those goals? Don’t operate your blog in a silo. It must be an integral part of all those association programs.

Discuss how you will handle negative or critical comments. Censoring is only an option for extreme cases – spam, libel or vulgarity.

Create an editorial calendar so your posts enhance other association efforts. Always have a full pipeline of posts so you can at least publish weekly.

Blogs need daily attention. Even if you don’t post daily, someone must review (moderate) comments and reply back, share your posts (and posts from other sources) on social media platforms and, ideally, comment on other industry blogs. Like content creation, this can be done by staff or outsourced.

If staff sets the blog’s strategy and calendar, content can be created and collected using a combination of talents. The effort required to oversee this educational, community-building and marketing tool will be well worth it.

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