Membership associations can find a great resource for blogging within their own membership. Do you have individual members who are actively engaged, innovative thinkers within your industry or profession? Then why not invite them to develop a blog that is "sponsored" by your organization?

You may even have members who are already blogging (if you’re a national professional society, there’s a very good chance of this, in fact). Find out who they are. You may find one or two who would be happy to participate in an association-sponsored blog because the association’s brand and audience can provide a larger readership than an individual blog built from the ground up.

Alternatively, if you find several members (or potential members) who are blogging or considering it, consider gathering their links together for a "Community of Blogs" section on your website. Depending on how lively blogs are in your sector, perhaps you can write a "Best of the Blogs" feature for your web or print publications featuring excerpts from the most interesting posts.

Food for thought along those lines: a few weeks ago I stumbled across the website of a company called 21publish.com , which apparently provides "blog portals" for organizations. According to its website, it helps organizations create their own blogging communities for members with the use of a simple online tool a la Blogger.com, etc. It’s easy to imagine a professional society finding great community-building value in a resource like this. (But please note, I don’t know anything about this company other than what’s on its website, so this isn’t any kind of an endorsement. I just found the concept intriguing.)

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