Feature Articles

Delivering the social media that your members crave is easy enough. There are a myriad of free open social sites out there ready to deliver fans… or friends... or tweeps. You know your members are using these sites, and you are eager to join them – but take a moment and be just a bit selfish. What do these social networking sites give back to you?

Administrative tasks way heavy on your organization’s time and manpower. You must dedicate resources to administration, processing and organizing. But you can streamline your organization’s backend as you provide your members what they crave most – enhanced value through collaboration, communication and networking.

There are plenty of industry specialists who will advise you to put a social media plan into effect prior to committing resources, but it’s important to look beyond just your social media strategy and think about what else you can accomplish under the same plan. It’s about optimizing resources and being smart about planning.

Delivering value to your members with social networking – while simultaneously gaining value for your organization via powerful web-based membership management solutions – can be done. Here’s how:

Make a list of what your members need. These are the things they have to have, the essentials, like the ability to connect with one another professionally and socially. Think bare minimum requirements.

Add what they want. Next, take into consideration the exciting features that make you look really good. This is the value-add component. These items will make you shine and become the foundation for your evolution into an integral part of your members’ internet experience. Recently, Universal McCann found that people polled in its “Power to the People: Social Media Tracker” study tended to want to consolidate their social media lives with sites that offered multiple functionality such as the capabilities to connect with friends and upload multi-media files. Consider that as the lives of your members get busier, multiple sites will be vying for their attention. Don’t give members a reason to go somewhere else because your site has limited functionality.

Address the "you" factor. You have ascertained what your members want and what they need. Now you need to think of yourself. Look for a solution that offers robust social media and user-friendly administrative features like:

• member management
• content management
• ability to create/assign dues and membership levels
• calendar and event management
• reporting capabilities
• fundraising/donations and dues management
• custom form creation
• bulk email and messaging capabilities
• file and media management
• store management and eCommerce
• blog and forum management
• staff and administration listings

Most of these tools are designed with a novice computer user in mind but are feature-rich enough to create and manage a community your users will enjoy exploring. One of the benefits of investing in your own private online community is the ability to retain control of your member data, site content and community functionality. Don’t surrender your important member information or compromise on reporting features. You know what’s best for your organization, and you should be in control of what tools are available and when. Plus, we all look forward to growth. Don’t select a product that hinders future growth. Instead, look into something that allows you to control functionality as your organization’s needs expand.

Solutions can be affordable. Now that you have explored the capabilities of several membership management software solutions on the market, consider their pricing structures. Since every vendor differs in their offerings make sure you have all the details when you are comparing costs. An a la carte offering may be cheaper initially but additional products and modules may increase the price exponentially. Make sure you have done your math. You’ll want to consider the limitations, methods (online vs. text, group vs. personalized consults, unlimited vs. pay per use) and costs associated with items like:

• Customer service
• Training
• Admin seats/licenses
• Per member charges
• Email limitations
• Site design and hosting
• Server space
• Enhancements and upgrades

Comparisons are only as effective as the equality of products. You can look at the bottom line price but if you’re not comparing similar services or software, you may not be taking into account all of your costs. Plus you want to make sure you are not penalized for your success. If the pricing of your membership software is based on the number of administrators or members you have, growing your community comes at a real cost. That doesn’t help you, your members or your organization’s mission.

You are investing time, energy and money in developing your organization’s social media strategy. Whether you choose to hire a social media/community leader to administer and drive your social media success or you divvy up the responsibilities among multiple administrators, you’ll want to create a community that will fit the needs of your members and your in-house administrators. The technology has advanced to the point that you no longer have to choose between satisfying your members and giving your internal team the tools they need to be more efficient.