July 13, 2005
Post & Cover
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
ACCA’s blog was featured in the latest issue of Ragan’s Nonprofit Communicators Update, along with Pat Cleary’s blog at NAM.
I can’t find a link to the article on the web so here’s the pertinent lede:
“Blogger Ana Marie Cox, aka The Wonkette, recently told an audience of communicators that an organizational blog might be a contradiction in terms, implying that that much of what passes for business communication is bland, boring, sanitized … Cox tossed out her remarks during Ragan’s Corporate Communicators Conference, June 8–10 in Las Vegas. Perhaps she’d change her mind if she sampled the blogs of the National Association of Manufacturers and the Air Conditioning Contractors of America.”
While I appreciate the kind words about our blog (”its strong headlines and enticing leads pull readers in”), the most interesting part of the article, I thought, was this description of the inner workings of NAM’s blog:
“Cleary calls himself ‘blogger in chief’ and writes his posts while sitting in his study each night with his dog lying on the floor next to him. Staffer David Kraylik (aka ‘blogger apprentice’) sees to the technical details and also comes up with content.
‘It could be garbage, it could be brilliantâ€â€you never know,’ Cleary says. ‘We plug our ears, close our eyes tight, post it and dive under our desks.’
Here is perhaps the key ingredient to the blog’s success: Cleary and Kraylik post all the content without review or approval from the higher-ups at NAM.
Cleary says, ‘Anything written by committee will get watered down. It’s got to be entertaining, hip and punchy enough that people will read it. Nobody wants to read anything that’s canned.’”
Of course, the same could be said about anything put out by associations. Down with committee-speak!
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