HOA Website Subscriptions

My HOA has a blogsite that's been online for just over a year. We are hoping that the blogsite becomes the major communication channel between board and residents of our 275-member single-family-home community through subscriptions. The main obstacles to this are as follows:

1) our current subscriber base is only a little above 25% of the homeowners
2) there are some non-computer-literate homeowners

The blog has pointers to the covenants, local utilities & weather...plus forms to fill out to volunteer, request review of a proposed improvement and report covenant violations. We also had a recent neighborhood garage sale, with participants filling out a form so their homes could be listed on a map.

Subscriptions are 100% spam-free and provide a synopsis every day there is a posting. Postings generally occur less than once per week, so there's not a large amount of e-mail generated. We've sent out 2 mailings, one with the annual bill, the other a separate newsletter, reminding residents to subscribe.

Does anyone have suggestions for increasing our subscriber base?

Don't get your expectations too high. We have had a web site for 5+ years and most people don't look at it ... they just don't care.

We have added Board agendas, minutes and some financial data. That is an incentive for some folks who want the information first.

We also send 'blast emails' from time to time - they have the really hot info. And we only send them to members who are subscribed to the web site - another incentive.

Actually, I don’t think >25% is all that bad. Owner apathy is not all that unusual in many, perhaps most, HOA’s; in many it seems rampant. The best way to reach your members may be through their wallets/pocket books.

Does your periodic newsletter have a section called, ‘Presidents Message’ or ‘Message From Your Board’ or something similar? If so, a good place to start may be to put a message there where it tells the HO’s how their board is working for them trying to keep their HOA fees as low as possible and in this economy with the high number of foreclosures and some HO’s struggling to pay their monthly/quarterly (which ever) fees you (the board) is working hard to keep expenses down. That to help you'd like to have as many HO’s as possible to subscribe to receiving the newsletter via the web site thereby saving on stationary and postage. A small step, perhaps, but a goal that all HO’s can help with.