It seems the biggest challenges to associations are, unsurprisingly, the need for social media integration. Engaging, recruiting and building your membership means offering value, making it easy and competing with other distractions in the market place.
Who’s the Audience?
Every association has different organizational goals. Defining the goals will direct your social media strategy. Is it advocacy-related goals (reaching the general public) or providing a collaborative work space for members – most associations has a combination of these goals.
What is your on-line Visibility?
In order to be a full participant in the community you need to be, not only present but, engaging, adding value and building authority and trust. What may be obvious to some is not to others. The biggest tool out there now is LinkedIn and its groups for business related associations. But, one size doesn’t fit all. You have to be aware of what works best for those involved. Other sites include:
- Facebook – Fan Pages and Business Pages
- Twitter – Creating Lists and building followers to help the association membership
- A branded YouTube channel with testimonials and quick Q&As with members (or Vimeo, Daily Motion or self-hosted videos)
- Check-in sites like Foursquare, Facebook Places and Google Places should be claimed or developed – optimized and content true.
- The new Pinterest social site
- Tumblr, WordPress
- Bookmarking sites like Digg and reddit where members can share information
- Mobile friendly websites
- Slideshare, Scribd or Issuu.com to share digital publications
Where is your content coming from?
The fact that associations are “niche” by definition is an asset. Creating shareable content that is SEO friendly and compelling means that your specific content should rise up in Google and Bing searches. Like anything else consistent and carefully planned schedules work best here. For example, people should expect:
- Their Monday morning email from your organization every week at the same time
- Relevant links to that week’s news (using sources like AMEX Open Forum is fine)
- Links to your own strong online content
- Announcements to upcoming meetings, seminars, webinars, etc.
- RSS Feeds from industry pages to your homepage
- Your own RSS feeds
- Video blogs, podcasts and blogs (with multiple member authors)
How are you measuring success?
So you have your social sites and your content. What does it mean and how can you use the results from it? You must be able to track and understand your user’s interaction with your group. When you do that you can continue to evolve your association into a stronger organization.
- track what your members care about
- check what links are clicked on
- what events and workshops have more activity
- what is being discussed on-line
We are all social creatures – some more than others. We all know that one of the primary reasons for companies to join a business association is to network, have access to resources and to grow their business. Make it easy for them.
