If your association wants to be considered a thought leader in your field, a blog can be a great place to start. While it may seem intimidating at first, blogging has real benefits for your members and your association’s brand. Here’s how to get started.
How to do it
Set Goals
It’s tempting to dive right in and start writing. Before you do though, it’s important to consider what you want to accomplish with a blog. Who is your audience? How many times do you want to post per month? What topics do you want to address? These simple conversations will help shape the blog and guide content for the future.
Create a Schedule
Planning is key. Trying to come up with a topic and blog post from week to week simply isn’t sustainable. Eventually, more pressing issues will come up in a week and the blog will take a backseat on the priority list. So how do you counteract this? Create a schedule. Gather ideas for upcoming blogs and organize them in an Excel Spreadsheet with due dates and posting dates. This keeps the blog organized and done ahead of time for weeks with more pressing issues.
The Technical Stuff
To start a blog, simply create a blog page on your existing website. Most major website builders have a built-in blog template you can add to your site. Once you create a designated place for the blog to live, you are ready to start creating content.
Reach Out to Trusted Volunteers and Staff
Along with creating a schedule, you can also contact staff or volunteers to come up with topics they want to write about. Having staff and volunteer authors helps keep content fresh and keeps the pressure of creating blog content off the shoulders of one person. It also allows others to shine and share their expertise on topics pertaining to the association.
Benefits
Leader in Your Industry
A good blog can transform your association into a leader in its industry. By consistently posting reliable and informative content, people will turn to your association for tips and trends.
Keep People Engaged with the Association
It’s important to keep members engaged with the association. A good blog can become a benefit to members. A blog is an active way to keep communication and messaging going out to members. For participants contributing to blog content, it will keep them committed to the association and motivate them to continually learn and share.
Social Media Content
A blog adds content to your association’s social media calendar. Once a blog is posted, it’s important to have ways to share it. Regular social media posts can raise the amount of impressions each post gets. Blogs will not only add content to share, but they can also have a positive effect on your other social media content as well.
Blogs require work. However, if they are done well they can offer real benefits to the association. Weigh the cost and benefits to determine if a blog is right for your association.