Acronym

What helps me is envisioning an audience of lurkers. You may not ever have an exchange of dialogue with a majority of your readers. There are many blogs I read (silently, as in not commenting). Picturing these lurkers helps me realize the writing is not about the commenting. I've written posts I've loved to no response and ones I thought no one would identify with get a number of comments. Make the posting about helping (your audience) not about the reaction you hear about.

But the other part of my "audience" (and don't hate me for stating the obvious and mentioning what so many of us "writers" hate to talk about)are search engines. SEO may seem like a dirty word but it drives traffic so that we can reach our intended, human audience. Blogging and key words are important to any social media strategy.

Couple of other tips I use:
If writing/posting every day becomes mundane, try a different schedule. You do not have to post every day just select a consistent schedule.

Don't be afraid to post something completely irrelevant to your organization's mission (on occasion). Use examples from your personal life -- how personal, depends on your audience and preference.

It's a great question Joe, and I wonder if teachers might not be a source of a good answer. I have strong memories of my days on the college campus when in any given fall term I would do the same time management workshop 15-20 times for different student organizations.

Though I always looking for some new story to tell or example to use that would help keep me out of speaking on autopilot, what really kept me fresh were the people hearing the message. They asked different questions, needed the message connected to their personal experiences, etc. And on a purely philosophical basis? They deserved a message being delivered as if it was created just for them and had never been delivered to any others.

I think the way you've framed the idea of "blog fatigue" is interestingly (since you're an editor!) very much like you might talk about a magazine - a source of content that you want to push out to an audience. For me, my blog is rarely about what I have to say (despite the fact that I post daily). It's everything to do with checking out what others are doing, asking questions of readers, interviewing people, sharing cool stuff that I come across, riffing off others' posts across the blogosphere and relating those (often corporate) ideas to an association readership. It's about providing through the voices of our group of monthly guest bloggers a hopefully much fuller picture of our chosen topic area than we could do just by ourselves.

I think the people who run organizational association blogs would equally find that work much easier and more generative if it's not about pushing out association content but instead about providing a space for members to speak. Listening, more than talking.

I never, ever get bored of blogging. There's just too much great stuff to share out there. You should see my list of "pending blog post ideas"... :)

Thanks for the comments, everyone. Really great ideas in each.

Christina: I think the "envisioning" the audience part is really important. For any communicator, the message has to be crafted for the audience, and focusing on their benefit can be a motivator, which alludes to Jeff's points, as well.

Jeff, your comment reminded me of my time as a campus tour guide when I was in college. For some reason, I never got tired of that. I can't pinpoint why, but part of it was probably that I liked my school so much that I was excited to tell people about it, and another part might be that, since it was a new audience every time, the same message was always fresh for them. And, as in your case, they always had interesting and unique questions. Your philosophy about an audience deserving something that feels fresh is a great motto for any speaker to follow.

Maddie, great points about curating and diversifying voices. You do an excellent job of gathering and showcasing a variety of new and different material, and that's something every association should do as well. We have to challenge ourselves to constantly seek out new voices and ideas from out there in the world. The one caveat I'd offer is this: some topics are easier to find new ideas on than others. For what it's worth, technology, publishing, and social media are examples of topics that are evolving so quickly that discussion is robust; but, if you try to go find brand new ideas on association governance, for instance, let me tell you, it can be tough. I'd bet every association has topics that fit both of these molds.

Hehe - good point :)