Case
Study: why the Air Conditioning Contractors of America's blog is not, er, cool
By
Debbie Weil
It's
tempting to say the Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) has a cool
blog. But it wouldn't be true. What
ACCA, the trade association for 4,000 heating,
ventilating and air conditioning companies, has created is a highly efficient
way of communicating with its members. Since
VP for Member Services & Communications Kevin Holland launched ACCA's
blog, dubbed ACCAbuzz, in January 2004, he
and his staff have posted hundreds of entries to the Weblog or blog page on ACCA’s
site. The
postings range from quick notices about local chapters' annual golf outings, bar-b-ques
and horse races to dozens of entries about ACCA's annual blow-out conference &
expo in New Orleans in February.
The conference entries include photos
and a cleverly written "conference journal" by a first-time attendee. Using
the Web-based interface behind the blog, Kevin and his communications staff easily
“post” this information to ACCAbuzz in minutes. No tech staff or Web
designers are involved. And
in the case of this year’s annual expo, the new entries were posted from
whatever computer Kevin had access to at their hotel. Real-time reporting, as
it were. Why
a blog? ACCA,
an active national trade association, runs a content-rich Web site and publishes
two weekly e-newsletters (one public and one for members only) as well as a quarterly
print magazine. But
there was no venue to distribute the many snippets of news about the 60 state
and local chapter members of ACCA. Kevin considered a daily e-newsletter but felt
it would be too much trouble to produce. He decided to launch a blog “as
an experiment” and “a place to distribute content we weren’t getting
across to our readership.” To
create the blog, he used TypePad (see
useful links below), a popular and inexpensive blog-hosting service. By tweaking
one of TypePad's templates and putting links in the left and right-hand columns
leading back to ACCA’s main site, he made ACCAbuzz look like just another
page on the association’s site.
(Yes, Kevin is a bit of a techie
in addition to being a marketer. He says it took him a couple of hours to set
up and customize the blog.) How
Kevin introduced it to his readers Many
of them are not particularly Web savvy. They don’t know what a blog is and
probably don’t care. So Kevin initially described it to members as a “daily
newsletter on steroids.” He
posted the following to the ACCA site to introduce ACCAbuzz: | ”ACCAbuzz
is a new way we will be communicating with our members and the entire HVACR industry.
It gives us an easy way to post quick news items, commentary, and links to articles
of interest. As time goes on, ACCAbuzz will become the real nerve center of our
website, because it's here that our staff and members can keep everyone in the
loop, ask questions, and get real-time feedback. In announcing this new site to
our members, we called it a "daily newsletter on steroids," because
it just keeps growing, all day long!” |
Where
he gets ideas for content In
addition to using the blog as the “hub of communications” for ACCA’s
annual conference and posting news submitted by local chapters, Kevin reads Google’s
“HVAC” news every morning. He passes on industry articles and links
to staff member Lucia Lodata. She types up a brief synopsis (what Kevin
calls "a bite") with a link to the full article. She hits "publish"
and the blog is instantly updated. The most recent post is always at the top.
He has
also encouraged other staff members to post occasionally (see the category called
"From the desk of... " with a nifty accompanying graphic). He plans
to invite industry experts, on sales and marketing, for example, to contribute
as guest bloggers. "The informal commentary is what makes a blog work,"
Kevin says. "That's the difference between a blog and regular Web site content." Importance
of "categories" One
of the neat things about most blogging software is that it enables you to create
categories of information and assign each post you make to a “category.”
ACCA’s blog has over a dozen categories (see useful links below). This way,
Kevin says, members can visit the blog anytime and search for information useful
to them. Comments
policy
Most blogs allow readers to post “comments” to any
given entry. In theory this makes for a wonderfully interactive communications
vehicle. In practice, spammers have discovered the “comments” function…
and are adding “unrelated” or self-promotional commentary. Kevin
ran the potential problem of allowing Comments by ACCA’s lawyers and came
up with the following policy, posted to his site: | ”ACCA
allows for the posting of comments on news items to foster communication between
HVACR community members. We reserve the right to delete comments at any time and
ask that comments be constructive and civil. Advertisements are prohibited and
will be deleted. In addition, ACCA operates in strict compliance with federal
antitrust laws. To start, enter or view a discussion, just click on the "Comments"
link below each news item.” |
He
finds that most ACCA members don’t post Comments to the blog; instead they
email him individually. How
he’s measuring the effectiveness of ACCA’s blog
Kevin
describes ACCAbuzz as “not a primary communications vehicle yet. It’s
more of a secondary channel.” But it’s a key part of his overall marketing
and communications strategy. 15% of the 40,000 visitors per month to ACCA’s
site click through to the blog page.
He’s taking development of the
blog step by step. In addition to guest bloggers, he will eventually explain to
his members how to subscribe to the blog via an RSS feed. For now, “they
understand the writing and the usefulness of the blog. But I don’t want to
bother them with the technology.” His
goal: to cross promote and re-purpose all the content he’s creating for the
site, for his e-newsletters and for the quarterly print magazine. Advice
if you’re launching a business blog
Ask yourself what you’re
trying to achieve, Kevin advises. “If you’re looking for a way to provide
regularly updated information to your membership there’s no easier way to
do it,” he says. ”In
a minimal amount of time you can create a very simple Web publishing system that
non-techies can use.” But,
he cautions, don’t start a blog “if you’re going to leave it up
there festering. You have to have a plan to keep it going. You have to know what
you’re going to use it for.”
Useful
Links
ACCA's
main site
ACCAbuzz
Sample
categories within ACCA's blog
Conference
News
Conference
Countdown
Chapter
News
From
the desk of...
Government
Affairs
HVAC
Industry News
"Comments
Policy"
Other Association-related blogs ACCA's Kevin
Holland recommends
www.associationforum.org
www.associationinnovation.com
www.highcontext.com
www.technoprophet.org
Blogging
Tools & Software
TypePad
Movable
Type (TypePad
is a "junior," hosted version of MT)
Good
explanation of RSS and newsreaders
About
RSS
This article was originally published in the June 24, 2004
issue of WordBiz Report.
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