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I recently was honored to moderate a panel on “Blogging: The What, the Why, and the How” for the Society of National Association Publications. The panelists were Kevin Holland, Jeff De Cagna, and Ben Martin—three long-time bloggers with a great understanding of how the medium can work for associations. Each one of them gave an informal presentation, and then the event’s attendees kept things going for nearly an hour (and then longer after the panel officially ended) with questions.

I jotted down some ideas from Ben, Kevin, and Jeff that I found insightful, and I wanted to share them with you. (Note that Ben and Jeff have also posted about the event, if you’d like their takes on it.)

- Association magazines should stop being something members read and start being something they engage with.

- One measure of success for a blog is the number of converts you make—individuals who were actively disengaged from your association who now are engaging with it in a positive manner.

- “Social media” has both a social aspect and a media aspect, and you need to understand both. Just understanding how to write for and post to a blog won’t have much value if you don’t also learn how to engage with your readers.

- When working with blogs, you need to balance the amount of time you spend reading and the amount of time you spend writing. Ben recommends spending about three times as much time on reading as on writing.

- Communications isn’t just about writing anymore. Communicators should also be the technologists and the futurists at their associations.

If anyone from the SNAP event drops by, and you have a question that wasn’t answered during the event itself, feel free to leave that question in a comment to this post. I’ll do my best to get you a helpful answer.