"Why would I want to read blogs and learn about what some high schooler had for breakfast?"
I've heard this too many times from professional colleagues who seem to take Andrew Keen's view in The Cult of the Amateur, that all that blathering from anyone who wants to speak isn't necessarily a good thing. And as those of us who watch social media know, organizations far and wide have responded to the scary no-one's-in-control reality first surfaced by the Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) with trepidation and concern. [Cluetrain Wakeup Message to Organizations: No organization or individual is in control of their marketing conversation anymore now that customers, employees and whackos can blather very loudly in cyberspace and can influence anyone who likes what they have to say, regardless of its veracity or tact.]
Despite their hesitation, however, anecdotal evidence in my corner of the world points to the fact that organizations are beginning to experiment with models for how to move beyond the "control paranoia" to leverage the power of social media for their stakeholders. Nowhere does the potential for social media seem as great as in the marketplace for trade and professional associations, yet association executives are generally as conservative, if not more so, than other business execs when it comes to their comfort zone on sharing the megaphone. And it's for this reason that I give ASAE & The Center for Association Leadership, credit for helping take a leadership position with their members to help them figure it out. This month's ASAE monthly magazine includes a special Social Media supplement which has some excellent articles, including a cover story article by Keen himself.
[In the rest of the article (1722 words) I discuss Keen's article and look at what Associations are doing (and not doing) in social media adoption.]
Andrew Keen seems to be making a name for himself as a Web 2.0 contrarian. While I admit that I haven't read his book, I was definitely impressed with his thesis and argument in the Association Now article for how the dangers of too much uninformed "self-authored junk" on the web could be counterbalanced by filtered, edited and well-organized expert knowledge if managed by people who know what they're doing. In the article (and his book) he points to certain publishers (The London Guardian and the New York Times) and professionally managed search engines (Mahalo.com and Doneright.com) as pioneering the balance of well-informed and less-well-informed expert information on the web.
While Keen does not say it directly, I will say that these general media venues may provide a broad base upon which to mediate electronic dialog but they will never go very deep into individual areas of expertise by virtue of the general audience they draw and the broad scope of their subject matter. As a result the potential for communities of expertise to pool at general media sites is rather limited. By contrast, Associations are where expert individuals already congregate in the real world. Their focus is narrower and this provides them the ability to surface communities of experts to provide deep and relevant information in their discipline to the rest of us, while simultaneously fostering collaboration and dialog within their disciplines. Keen recognized this potential as well in his article in Associations Now.
And, of course, Web 2.0 is actually a wonderful platform for associations. Separated from the distasteful utopian ideology of its more radical Silicon Valley boosters, the internet’s latest self-publishing technology actually offers traditional associations a rich array of publishing tools with which to arm their members. Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and videocasts are, in themselves, neutral tools (blogs don’t kill culture; bloggers kill culture). In the paws of noisily opinionated amateurs, these tools are culturally corrosive; put them in the cultivated hands of traditional experts, however, and these instruments of self-publishing can be incredibly valuable ways of articulating and disseminating credible information about science, technology, and the arts. Rather than a fort, these tools can be pedagogical and informational bridges for experts to the outside world. Better still, they can be used to create significant revenue for self-employed experts in everything from high school tutoring to online classes about massage, cooking, or home improvements.
-Andrew Keen, The Digital Emperor Has No Clothes, Associations Now (Nov '07)
But how many Associations are taking this leadership role? According to Andy Steggles in "A World of Choices" in the same issue of Associations Now, Associations are definitely putting their toes in the Web 2.0 pool. Steggles is CIO of the Risk and Insurance Management Society (RIMS) and is conducting a studious analysis of Association adoption of social media technologies. In his article he outlines some innovative uses of social media, including an apparently successful experiment by the International Society for Technology in Education in setting up a Second Life storefront. Other uses of social media he identifies include: enhanced directory (Directory 2.0), resource libraries, networking/discussion groups and innovative media distribution through podcast, wiki, RSS and video.
While these dabblings in technology follow the expected course of social media/human nature, which is to say that they are doing online what they've traditionally done offline, I saw little evidence that they are reaching for the innovative opportunities identified by Keen. This seems like a lost opportunity for Associations to position themselves on their true expertise in the general marketplace of ideas. I asked Andy about this over the phone today and he agreed with me that many Associations are not only missing an opportunity but potentially ceding this opportunity to industrious individuals who can use social media tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Ning to set up groups in cyberspace that offer many of the networking and member-to-member benefits that Associations do. He did point out that to some extent Association executives are to be forgiven because there are not very many social media technology platforms out there which have been developed to serve the specific needs of Associations, though he did make note of a new provider in this space, Higherlogic, which may soon be able to fill this need. His organization, RIMS, will be rolling out their tools soon and we'll watch to see how that goes.
Andy confirmed my own observation in this space that Associations are missing a particular opportunity when it comes to their ability to position themselves and their members as experts in their fields using smart blogging strategies. Specifically, they are missing the opportunity to use the "democratization effect" of social media to their advantage by following Keen's advice.
In World 1.0 Associations often suffer from the same dynamic that makes them so good at what they do, namely their narrow focus in a specialty area. Unless a member of the general media thinks to call on them and quote their expertise in an article, much of the specialty knowledge they have is unavailable to the general public and this can hinder their ability to reach the general public and political markets with their advocacy messages (core to many of their missions). Of course, they can and do reach these audiences with paid advertising, sponsorships and events, but all that is very expensive; and in a social media world it doesn't have to be because they have the unique and most social-media-precious asset of expertise, already resident in the minds of their membership and staff. Here's the beauty of this model, social media tools give associations as loud a voice in cyberspace as the larger media giants for purposes of positioning themselves as the true experts in their field and reaching the broader audience. All they have to do is what they already do, facilitate, serve and promote members - using the new social media tools which will narrowcast and broadcast their messages out to the entire world through search engines, blog aggregators and RSS feeds.
Of course, they have their membership mouths to feed as well, but that's another beautiful thing about social media, done right it will be a membership benefit, offering many ways to promote and support members in a way that makes it hard for the member to leave the Association (moving a blog to another platform while maintaining its content and readership is very challenging). Associations can achieve their advocacy and public education missions very effectively by promoting their own members as experts into the general dialog, providing a compelling voice for their discipline out into the void of "self-publishing junk" and general media "lite" coverage. The Associations themselves provide value by moderating this authoritative voice to the public, while supporting their members' goals for visibility based on clear content standards so that they are not accused of favoritism among members and truly provide an expert service. Internally, they can loosen up on this moderation function to facilitate a free flow of collaboration and networking within their field. It's the definition of a win-win all around. And compared to the cost of an annual meeting, a very cost effective benefit as well.
One interesting aspect of this potential strategy is that it can be accomplished by creative uses of many different (or combined) social media (e.g., blogs/blog communities; wikis; sharepoint) which can all be used to create rich internal and external dialogs. ASAE itself is again leading the way by establishing a member's wiki to help share knowledge within the industry. And with the appropriate service architecture - designed intentionally from the outset - these technologies can provide "informational bridges", as Keen calls them, between experts and non-experts.
While I was unable to turn up an Association pursuing this kind of strategy, Andy came to the rescue, but admitted he'd only found one to date, Meeting Professionals International (MPI), which is using blogs extensively to facilitate dialog between members and makes at least some of that expertise available in the public domain for us all to learn from.
I think this "experts' community" strategy is just the beginning; for Associations the social media possibilities are endless. It will be fascinating to watch how the "Membership Market" of trade and professional associations, large member-based charities and other communities of shared interest adopt social media to take advantage of these market opportunities in the future. I'll plan to follow this sector because of these opportunities and if you know of/learn of any good examples of innovative social media use by membership organizations, please let me know!
EDIT: I've put a question related to this on LinkedIn Q&A. Feel free to read responses there and/or comment there.
