Association Chat: Focusing on Customers and Members

Whether you call them customers or members, it is important to remember that the membership experience is a critical piece of an association professional's responsibility. We're going to spend an hour discussing how we can better serve our members and our organizations on the March 31, 2015 edition of Association Chat. How can we bring delight to our members? We will talk all about it and more during the chat.

Here are the questions I'll ask this week:

1. What is the value your org offers members? Why should they join?

2. How does the pricing of your offerings either encourage or discourage membership?

3. How does your organization solve problems for its members?

4. Has your membership changed much in the last 10 years? If so, in what ways?

5. How does the value you place on staff relate to the value placed on membership? Does it?

6. What are the biggest membership problems facing your org today?

7. What are your member recruiting strategies?

8. What are your member onboarding tactics?

9. How do you bring delight to your members?

10. How do you capture member testimonials to better share stories of success?

For a great resource on association membership, please check out The Art of Membership: How to Attract, Retain, and Cement Member Loyalty by Sheri Jacobs.

Don't forget! To participate in the weekly Association Chat, tune into Twitter on Tuesdays at 2 pm EST following the hashtag #assnchat. Want an easier chat experience? Try following along at http://nurph.com/assnchat.

Next week's chat: Promoting Your Association

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You can read Kait Solomon's Storify of the chat here:

Fierce Membership: Telling Your Fierce Members' Stories

Last week I was honored to present a webinar, “Fierce Membership: 7 Ways to Keep From Losing Your Most Engaged Members.”

What is "fierce membership" and how is it different than what associations have witnessed before?

A "fierce member"...:

• knows their benefits and probably wants all of them plus more
• wants to be involved in volunteer efforts and will leave if not given the chance to change the organization (after all, they are already educated and active in the other free ways to engage, as well)
• desperately wants to change the organization for the better from the inside-out
• isn't satisfied with annual meetings - is looking for more engagement
• can be your best advocate or worst enemy - depending on how you treat them

One of the ways to keep fierce members happy is in telling the story of powerful volunteer opportunities within an organization, sharing why and how these fierce members have been as engaged as they are. During the webinar we discussed ways to capture those stories through video recordings.

Here are some questions I like to use when collecting stories or testimonials:

• What was your first volunteer activity and how did it lead you to how you are involved with this organization today?
• What is the most meaningful project you’ve worked on with us and why?
• You have invested so much time and energy into your volunteer activities here. What do you get out of this?
• How can new volunteers get more out of their engagements?
• Do you feel that you’ve left your mark on this organization? If so, how? If not, when will you feel that you have? What will it take to feel that you’ve achieved what you want to do?

Also suggested during the webinar…

“We did exactly that - at our Leadership Forum we selected some volunteers who were interviewed as to why they volunteer and what would they say to someone who was thinking of volunteering. We will highlight one of these interviews each month on our website.”

Who are your fierce members and how do you capture their stories? Share your thoughts in the comments! 

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Upcoming webinar! I will be presenting the free webinar, "The Beauty of Buzz: The 5 Social Tools for Events Every Planner Must Have" on February 19th at 10 am ET. If you'd like to attend, just register here!

Saying Thanks to Your Members

We had a fabulous discussion about gratitude yesterday on Association Chat and if you missed it, you are probably kicking yourself. But never fear! The whole convo was captured using Storify and you can feel like you were actually there by visiting the post on "Saying Thanks to Members" -- I promise you, you'll get at least one good idea on showing your members gratitude if you take the time to look through the commentary.

If you are a reader located in the United States, have a great Thanksgiving! If you don't celebrate Thanksgiving, just know that I am thankful for your readership. This has been a great year for me and for my business, Amplified Growth, and I can't thank everyone enough for their support. Now go find someone you should thank and report back on the results!

Gobble gobble!

Does Your Association Move Like Jagger?

It has become apparent to certain persons who did not previously recognize it - critics and the like - that Mick Jagger has perhaps the single greatest talent for putting a song across of anyone in the history of the performing arts. In his movements he has somehow combined the most dramatic qualities of James Brown, Rudolf Nureyev, and Marcel Marceau. He makes all previous movers - Elvis, Sammy Davis, Janis Joplin, and even (saints protect me from sacrilege) the great James B. himself - appear to be waist deep in the grimpenmire. This tradition (of movin' and groovin') had its most modest beginning with Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club in Harlem where he would occasionally strut or slink about in front of the bandstand by way of "illustrating" a number. After each, he would take his bow, mopping his forehead, beaming up his gratitude for the applause as he reverted to his "normal" self for the next downbeat (and invariably a change of pace). The phenomenal thing Jagger has accomplished is to have projected an image so overwhelmingly intense and so incredibly comprehensive that it embraces the totality of his work - so that there is virtually no distinction between the person and the song. This is all the more remarkable when it is realized that there is also virtually no connection between the public, midnight rambler image of Jagger and the man himself...

  - Terry Southerner, writer, 1972

What can association executives take away from this?

• Mick's job was to put a song across to people and he achieved it remarkably well in unconventional ways. Know the mission - yours and your association's mission - and do the best you can to achieve it looking to whatever innovative, improvisational, unique ways you can to own it. 
• Jagger the performer and Jagger the man were different. Be able to take time away from your job to "fill the well" and find inspiration to make your life fuller. Doing that will fuel you so you can bring more to your work and not burn out.
• Jagger brought tight pants, big lips, and conviction to his performances with the Rolling Stones. Take a look at that list and see which one your association needs more of when communicating to members (hint: it's not the tight pants or big lips). Know what your members need from your association and be it, know it, own it. Work with your colleagues and board members to be audacious enough to be what your members need you to be.

Then you might get some Satisfaction.

 

Do Not Go Blindly Into That Good App

There have been a lot of posts in the association world lately about apps, and with good reason. Everyone is buzzing about apps! If you can order groceries, turn on your car, video chat with a friend in another country, and do your banking all from apps on your phone, the next obvious step would be to have your association's app available to everyone, right?

I'm with you. I could go into details about how I think it is wise to include an element of game dynamics in your app to keep people invested and coming back. I could remind everyone of the ongoing debates on whether or not associations should spend money on app development.

But before we go too far, let me warn you this is not a post about native versus web apps or whether or not your organization should be considering an app. For that, you can check out this post, this post, or this post and get your fix for that kind of discussion. This is a post for associations hoping to create an app and concerned with time.

Just like the wrong way to build a social media plan is to start by saying, "We want a Facebook," it is the wrong idea to start out your quest for an association app by saying, "Everyone else has an app, so we need one, too." Organizations should always identify the audience, goals, strategy, and the technology they will use before making a decision on whether or not they need an app.

In the very least, you need time to execute your desires once you figure out what they are. I have one really good reason why your app deserves this time for planning: crappy apps breed unhappiness. Good apps create a positive experience and way to connect.

The typical development time for a "successful" app in my *completely unscientific poll* for association executives is about 6 months, but this can vary wildly based on what the app is supposed to do. An old post on iPhone app development features a timeline of 2.5 to 3 months. If you would like to share your own organization's experience and timeline, please post in the comments. I think there are many, many people out there who would love to learn from you!

The timeline for a well-executed app has a wide range dependent upon your organization's goals. So what are your goals? Do you want to keep people up-to-date by providing an app of your blog or events calendar? Do you want to build an app for your upcoming conference? Do you want to create a game within the app for students in your organization? Do you want your members to have their database information available to them?

I asked a few people on Twitter about their app-development process and their responses confirmed what I had witnessed in the association space. It takes much more time to discover the vision for the app, gather buy-in or arrange for the budget approval, and evaluate options for implementation (in house development vs. outsourced development) than they originally thought it would. Also, the details were beastly.

1. @kikilitalien we outsourced ours and spent a month + getting the data transfer together. #assnchat

   shannonburke

   18 hours ago

   ReplyRetweet
2. “

   @kikilitalien we're now meeting to see what else it can do. #assnchat

   shannonburke

   18 hours ago

   ReplyRetweet
3. “

   @shannonburke Thanks for sharing! What was the toughest part of the process for your crew? #assnchat

   KiKi L'Italien

   18 hours ago

   ReplyRetweet
4. “

   @kikilitalien #assnchat Most Difficult - The level of precision data must retain. It really lives up to "you get back what you put in"

   shannonburke

   18 hours ago

   ReplyRetweet

Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation has a list of questions he suggests association executives look at while considering an app and Joshua Paul from Socious shares a helpful list, as well. You might just want to take a little more time to develop your app so you can make sure you do right by your members and be sure you've taken a look at the right questions before announcing you have a new app to the staff or members.

Deposite: 2 cents. ;-)