The YourMembership.com Blog

The Art of the Volley

June 5th, 2012 | Posted in Social Media and Business Trends

One of the most powerful things about social media is the amplification factor. Your member organization used to only be able to reach a select few over a couple of zip codes without investing a huge amount of money. Now you can reach anyone with an Internet connection regardless of their schedule or time zone.

The hard part of this is balancing the doing (writing the blog) and the cultivating (answering your comments). When you are fortunate enough to reach someone you need to respond. Blogging, tweeting and posting without responding is like playing tennis and then refusing to return a serve. It’s not much of a game or any fun. You and your partner get very little out of it. Be a good player.  If someone takes the time to come to your court, return the volley. You’ll both get something out of it.

Reach Out – Friday Fix

February 17th, 2012 | Posted in Social Media and Business Trends

Access your member database. Do a search on someone who has not attended an event in a while. If you have a touch-log system, find someone who has not been in touch with you or interacted with your organization over the past six months. Take a look at his/her social networking profile(s). Check for a blog. Reach out to them by commenting on something that they have done recently or tweet a blog post of theirs that you’ve enjoyed. Or if you’re feeling really zany – call the member. Think back to when this person was an active member of your organization. What did he/she do? What groups did he or she belong to? Tell him or her that the work he/she did is missed and ask why you haven’t seen him/her recently. Be direct and listen. Do not use guilt. Use compassion. Remind the member (through your attention) of why he/she originally joined the group.

Repeat this action whenever you can.

Online Communities: A Popular Misconception

February 1st, 2012 | Posted in Membership Management
A community needs care and maintenance just as surely as a car does

The most popular misconception people have about creating a private online community is the work and upkeep behind it. You simply can’t dump content and run. Implementing a private online community with a robust feature set doesn’t mean your entire member base will flock to it immediately. (Even though it was free and there was no commitment involved, I turned down three Facebook requests to join when it first came out because I didn’t understand the value, at the time, in that sort of connecting.) It takes content, fun features and care/maintenance of someone in a community manager role.

Even the most well-constructed car’s color will fade, exterior will rust and its mechanics will cease to work when left unattended for years. Care and maintenance is required. You have to drive it (or at least start it) on occasion.

Content is important to your community but so are connections. Give your members a place to connect and something to do there. Something they want to do, not something you think they should be doing. If you are not thinking about what your members want and how they want it, your community will fail.

Google+ Open for Business

November 8th, 2011 | Posted in Social Media and Business Trends

The long anticipated opening of business pages on Google+ is finally here. If you want some brief information on how to get started read Christopher S. Penn or Mashable. Both spots give quick, easily digestible information and will make creating an additional social media outpost for your organization as painless as possible.

But what does this mean for your association or member-centric organization? (Please note, it is possible that these things we point out below may be changed over the next couple of weeks as Google is encouraging user feedback and making adjustments accordingly.) As a business page: Read the rest of this entry »

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