The YourMembership.com Blog

Unclogging Your Blog

January 16th, 2012 | Posted in Social Media and Business Trends

On a recent webinar, I heard a staggering statistic. Eighty-percent of companies (who start blogs) never post more than five blog entries. They give up. Abandon ship and simply leave the blog out there as a reminder of their own lack of follow-through, manpower and/or strategy.

What is so incapacitating about a blog? Is it lack of content or ideas? Is it lack of time to generate or flesh-out these ideas or is it simply something you try once like sky diving? Blogging doesn’t have to be reminiscent of an English class assignment. There are ways to spice up the “writing” of your blog; ways to put a different part of your brain on it. Blogs don’t always have to be about the words. The only rule for a blog is to keep your audience’s needs and wants in mind — that goes for creating content as well as media.

Before growing tired of your blog consider:  Read the rest of this entry »

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Never Put Your Visitor to Work – Friday Fix

January 6th, 2012 | Posted in Social Media and Business Trends

Whether you have a Twitter page, Facebook profile, LinkedIn account or prefer conducting business on niche online communities, tell your website visitors about your other locations immediately. Don’t make them hunt all over your site looking for a particular network.

Sure, sometimes that means your visitors will spend more time on your site but this will only happen once. Some people look for a Facebook icon (for instance) and leave if they don’t see the familiar blue and white icon immediately. Never put your visitor to work. This isn’t a treasure hunt. Your most important information should be front and center.

Yes, ideally you want to funnel your traffic from social networking sites to your main website but you should never dictate how someone wants to connect with you. Facebook and Twitter have limited search features and sometimes it is easier for a new visitor to search on a search engine, find a main website and enter a social networking profile that way. Plus many social networking platform users access those sites through homepages (particularly in the case of prominent institutions or well-known organizations) so that they are secure in the knowledge that they are entering the official page and not some sham.

Keep it easy for those willing to connect with you and they might do just that.

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Be Specific – Friday Fix

December 23rd, 2011 | Posted in Social Media and Business Trends

We get a lot of spam on this blog. Akismet rounds it up neatly for me to review at my leisure. The spam is filled with comments regalling my ability as a writer, telling me how much they like our design, thanking us for providing the information they were looking for for years and years. While everyone enjoys a compliment, it becomes quite obvious after I receive the same message (verbatim) from 18 email addresses with the same noun/verb disagreement and grammatical errors, that these folks just want something from me. Every once in a while I do worry that ignoring these generic “spammers” means I may keep out a real poster.

Commenting on blogs and retweeting information is both helpful to your audience and a fantastic way to exchange ideas. But that potential connection evaporates if your comment to that person is as bland as an auto-spammer. So this week’s Friday Fix — to be applied to any of your web correspondence — be specific in your praise (or difference of opinion). If you like the post let the writer know why. If you disagree, give examples.  It will let the writer know that you appreciate her opinion (even if you disagree with it) and have thought about the content.

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The Currency of Following – Friday Fix

November 18th, 2011 | Posted in Social Media and Business Trends

We can argue until the cows come home whether it is merely “polite” to follow people who follow you on Twitter or whether it’s essential. Yes, it’s your stream and yes, you can do what you want but when I see a member organization that is extremely lop-sided in its following (like following 50, followed by 552), I wonder how much it values the input of its members.

Let’s put some qualifiers on that broad statement – don’t feel obligated to follow companies that have bikini-clad girls as their avatars (unless they sell bikinis or sunscreen); make your own decision about following people without bios or those who have “eggs” for heads but for the love of your members, follow those you recognize. Why? Because it shows you want to know what’s going on with them. If you follow them you’ll see their status updates in your stream. You can tweet their successes and connect with them outside of meetings and events on things that matter to them personally. But if you only want your tweets to be about you – and I hope you don’t — consider asking them about the things you see on Twitter when you see them in person. That connection goes a long way to making them realize how much you value them.

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