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July 13, 2007
Why bother with a news feed?
For the last three years, the Community Associations Network has been compiling and producing at least one industry-related daily news feed. With the introduction of the latest version of the web site, we now produce nineteen (19) feeds. The National News remains the cornerstone, but we also produce separate feeds for regions, certain states, and international news.
In the past, this hasn't gained the same number of visits as the web site and somebody asked why we bothered to comb through some thirty (30) news feeds every day in order to pull out the interesting or at least, somewhat interesting, news stories about condo's and HOA's. It's actually very simple. What happens in one area of the country quickly finds its way everywhere else. About a year ago, a story appeared in an eastern newspaper regarding an autistic boy, a variation request regarding fencing, and the Fair Housing laws. In the next eight months, similar stories appeared in two other states, both with the association boards making the same mistakes as the first board, and incurring the same expenses. If anyone, the boards, managers, or attorneys had of read the first story, they might have reacted differently and possibly saved their association a lot of money. The point is, you really shouldn't be making the same screw-ups as others have before you.
The news feeds are set up so you can see the latest headlines from all of the feeds, or you can use your own RSS reader to bring them to your computer, or you can even put them on your web site, so that others can find them also.
In addition to the news, we have an "Industry News" feed for press releases or product announcements.
Each feed links back to a newspaper or magazine article available at the time of linking on the internet. Some of the papers require you to register - that's your choice, but you'll have to if you want to see the story. I can't re-print it without all sorts of copyright headaches.
And, there may not be a story for every region or state every day. In spite of what you may have heard, condo's and HOA's have been known to be quiet and not very newsworthy.
We don't link to every story about zoning and planning commission issues regarding community associations. Those that have something unique, or have noteworthy legal issues, we will post. We are finding that association's are finding enough ways to make the news without adding items that come up before they even exist. And, we will always accept links to articles you find on the internet.
For those of you who are in the industry, putting the appropriate RSS feeder(s) on your staff's desktops (with Vista and Mac, you can also use the "gadgets" or "Widgets" or whatever they are called) will go a long way towards keeping them abreast of what is going on in the world of community associations, AND, they don't have to waste your time and money searching for it.
Posted by joewest at July 13, 2007 6:38 PM