Association Chat to feature authors of "Leading Engagement from the Outside-In" on July 14th

Associations have always been “about” engagement, and in the past several years, we’ve had a renewed focus on engaging our members and other audiences. The thing is, most of us aren’t really doing it well. Could that be because we’ve been thinking about engagement all wrong, focusing on what we want members to do and how we define value?

Join Anna Caraveli (The Demand Networks) and Elizabeth Weaver Engel (Spark Consulting) on Tuesday, July 14 at 2 pm ET on Twitter (follow the hashtag #assnchat) to chat about their new whitepaper, Leading Engagement from the Outside-In, which describes a radical shift in our understanding of engagement, one based on an approach that encourages us to view the world from our audiences’ perspective, focus on the outcomes they want to achieve, build authentic relationships, and harness the power of collaboration to co-create the value our organizations provide.

Download the whitepaper at http://bit.ly/1GPNUM6 and come ready to share your thoughts on developing an outside-in perspective on your interactions and relationships with your members and other audiences. 

Anna Caraveli is CEO of the Demand Networks, LLC, author of the new book, The Demand Perspective: Leading from the Outside-In, published by ASAE, and of numerous articles. She has over 20 years of experience in non-profit membership organizations, helping them resonate and connect with new generations of members, build new value propositions, and increase engagement and revenue. The Demand Networks and her research are focused on understanding what it takes to engage today, executing new models of member relationships and helping to build engaging organizations, at the pulse of their markets. When she is not saving the world, Anna walks her dog and cheers for the Washington Capitals.

Elizabeth is CEO and Chief Strategist at Spark Consulting LLC. She has more than seventeen years of experience helping associations grow, in membership, marketing, communications, public presence, and especially revenue, which is what Spark is all about. Elizabeth speaks and writes frequently on a variety of topics in association management. When she's not helping associations grow, she loves to dance, listen to live music, cook, and blog about the Philadelphia Eagles.

The 5 Best Resources to Improve Your Social Media Influence By 35%

We've all heard the statistics about driving engagement on social media by using pictures, but questions abound about how to use this information to really move the needle on social media outcomes. 

Every morning I walk my seven-year-old daughter to her bus stop. We talk about nature, comment on the things we see along the way, and look both ways before crossing the street. On one of these morning journeys I noticed the carpet cleaning van parked on the corner of the street. As I read past the name and busy design work on the van, I noticed four little words plastered across its back right panel: "Follow us on Twitter."

The benefit to thinking through your content strategy along with your social media plan, making sure to measure engagement along the way, will allow you to implement a clear, concise strategy. Organizations who do this will find better engagement and brand recognition than others who don’t have a coordinated plan in place.

Truth is, I didn't look up that carpet cleaning business on Twitter. It may be an expert resource on cleaning carpets with high engagement with its followers, but if it's like many businesses I see on social media, it is likely a social media parking lot for the occasional promotional post. A social media plan should be comprised of so much more than a quick, primarily reactive channel for promotion. It should combine everything you know about your audience, your objectives, your strategies for achieving those objectives, and the tools you plan to use. Add to that your content strategy and you have a strong social media plan that will help you achieve your goals while you gain valuable insights from your audience along the way.

Why is content strategy necessary for your social media plan? Because you need to have a keen understanding of your audience, the types of conversations they are interested in having, and an idea about where, online, they want to have those conversations. In addition, you need to measure those conversations and be able to translate the metrics into insights. Your content strategy will inform your decisions on what to post where. 

Images and video drive more engagement than text-only posts in social media and if you have analyzed your audience, you should be able to identify the online outposts that would maximize your use of images for your audience. Using images, visual pictures, videos, and graphs, for better information sharing has been proven to improve social media influence by 35%. Here are 5 great resources to help you up your social media game by 35%*:

1. Blogger Beware: You CAN Get Sued For Using Photos You Don't Own on Your Blog by Roni Loren (January 12, 2015) http://www.blogher.com/bloggers-beware-you-can-get-sued-using-photos-your-blog-my-story?page=full
2. Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner reminds us that, “as humans, we connect emotionally to images more than video, audio or text. People make decisions and take action quicker when promoted by images.”
3. From a user’s perspective, photos are also the most engaging type of content on Facebook, with a whopping 87% interaction rate from fans! No other post type received more than a 4% interaction rate. (http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/photos-generate-engagement-research/)
4. 12 Clever Ways to Use More Visuals on Social Media (Dec 2014) http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/visual-content-social-media-tips
5. Unsplash - This is my favorite new site. 10 new photos every 10 days. They're beautiful. And you can use this little tool to instantly add your quotes and upload to social media in seconds.

You have to try a few of these resources out and see how they impact your social media strategy. Email me with your results at kiki@amplifiedgrowth.net - I'd love to hear about what you're doing!

*Source: Adding a photo to your tweet can boost retweets by an impressive 35% (https://blog.twitter.com/2014/what-fuels-a-tweets-engagement) - March 2014

Association Chat: Thanking Volunteers

Thank You Charm by Beth on Flickr
https://flic.kr/p/7vybea

How do we show our volunteers that we appreciate them throughout the year? Certainly there are the reminders on our calendars. In April we celebrate National Volunteer Month (with National Volunteer Week taking the spotlight) and in November we celebrate Thanksgiving, which is a natural time to show our gratitude for all sorts of things including volunteers.

Some associations have created dynamic volunteer programs that do a good job of making the volunteer feel appreciated on a regular basis, but how do they do that? What kind of acknowledgement are volunteers really expecting from their associations? Why is it important that associations put thought into their volunteer programs?

We'll be discussing the importance of thanking volunteers throughout the year during this Association Chat.


Questions I'll ask:

1. What key features must a healthy volunteer program possess?
2. Why is thanking volunteers so important for organizations?
3. What kind of recognition do volunteers expect from an organization?
4. In what creative ways have you seen organizations thanking their volunteers?
5. How often should organizations thank their volunteers? 
6. How can organizations recognize different levels of volunteerism?
7. What would delight you as a volunteer?
8. How can you thank a volunteer today?
9. In what ways can you help your organization better thank volunteers in the future?

How to participate in Association Chat:
If you'd like to check out Association Chat, just remember to jump onto Twitter on Tuesdays at 2 pm EST using the hashtag #assnchat.

If you'd like an easy and relaxing experience with the chat, I like to use Nurph for easily following along. The Nurph link to use for Association Chat is http://nurph.com/assnchat.

Next Week's Chat Topic: Mentoring and Your Personal Growth (in honor of national "Thank a Teacher Day!")

Association Chat: Associations and Globalization

https://flic.kr/p/4rXRZh

As the world seems to get smaller with the aid of technology, many associations have already expanded internationally or are looking to grow overseas in the future. But what makes an association a "global" organization versus a national organization with international ties? How do associations balance growth in their home countries while investing in growth internationally? What considerations do associations need to take when going global?

These are some of the issues we'll be discussing in this week's Association Chat. 

Questions for this week's chat:

1. When should an association consider globalization?
2. What might be some red flags for organizations looking at globalization indicating they shouldn't proceed?
3. What are some considerations that need to be taken for leadership opportunities within an association attempting to go global?
4. How would globalization potentially impact an association's delivery of services and benefits?
5. What are some approaches that global associations use to make sure dues are fair for all members, no matter their location?
6. How would marketing and communication plans be affected by an association becoming global?
7. How might you develop strategic partnerships in other countries to support your organization's expansion?
8. What are the keys to long term success with globalization efforts?

How to participate in Association Chat:
If you'd like to check out Association Chat, just remember to jump onto Twitter on Tuesdays at 2 pm EST using the hashtag #assnchat.

If you'd like an easy and relaxing experience with the chat, I like to use Nurph for easily following along. The Nurph link to use for Association Chat is http://nurph.com/assnchat. 

Next Week's Chat Topic: Thanking Your Volunteers Year Round

Association Chat: Mobile Apps for Your Association Events

This week, I'll be moderating a panel of experts on the subject of event apps for the Potomac Chapter of Meeting Professionals International (PMPI). To go along with that theme, event apps will be the focus of this week's Association Chat...and there's a lot to talk about!

Julius Solaris, author of the eBook, The Event App Bible, shares some staggering statistics from his research that indicate a wide, but narrowing, gap between what meeting planners want from an event app and what the mobile app developers are providing.

Did you know?: '59 percent of event professionals do not currently have a mobile event app, although 53 percent of those "are looking to get one" in the near future.'

This week's Association Chat will center around identifying the questions that most association executives have about event apps, working with event app vendors, and knowing how to measure success.

Here are some of the questions I plan on asking during the chat:

1. What are your biggest concerns about adopting an event app?
2. What are the must-have features that you need in an event app?
3. What are some questions that every event planner must ask before settling on an event app as a solution?
4. Who in your organization must be a part of the decision-making team when it comes to selecting an event app?
5. How do you measure whether or not an event app is successful?
6. How do you make certain your event app will meet with success?
7. What kind of measurements/tracking do you want to get from your event app?
8. How do maintain a healthy relationship with your event app vendor?
9. How often should you evaluate your event app?

How to participate in Association Chat:
If you'd like to check out Association Chat, just remember to jump onto Twitter on Tuesdays at 2 pm EST using the hashtag #assnchat.

If you'd like an easy and relaxing experience with the chat, I like to use Nurph for easily following along. The Nurph link to use for Association Chat is http://nurph.com/assnchat. 

Next Week's Chat Topic: The Association and Globalization

Association Chat: Promoting Your Association

Cutting through the noise is one of the greatest challenges facing associations today. While social media provides tools helpful for getting messages out in creative new ways, the additional outlets for communication can also be overwhelming. Where does that leave nonprofits looking for the best way to communicate to their audiences?

This week's Association Chat will focus on asking questions that will help to dig down to the nitty gritty of promoting your organization's brand.

Here are the questions I'll ask this week:

1. What messaging do you want people to repeat about your organization?
2. Does your org target the right messages for the right people at the right time with the right communication tool? How?
3. Does your communication reflect the association's values? How do you ensure this is the case?
4. How do you find out what the most important issues are for your fans, members, and customers?
5. What times during the year do your customer and members groups think most about your organization?
6. What should be on your marketing "kill list" to weed out needless communications?
7. When is a time your org was deliberately controversial or counterintuitive?
8. How does your organization use social media listening to see trends and patterns?
9. How can you break down the silos in orgs that prevent being nimble in communication?
10. How could your org use an influencer strategy to maximize your messages?

How to participate in Association Chat:

If you'd like to check out Association Chat, just remember to jump onto Twitter on Tuesdays at 2 pm EST using the hashtag #assnchat.

If you'd like an easy and relaxing experience with the chat, I like to use Nurph for easily following along. The Nurph link to use for Association Chat is http://nurph.com/assnchat.

Resources for this week's Association Chat:

I just read the fabulous book by PR smarty Adele Cehrs, titled SPIKE Your Brand ROI: How to Maximize Reputation and Get Results. Her book inspired me to focus on promotion for this chat - I cannot recommend the book highly enough.

Storify of the chat (graciously provided by Kait Solomon)!

Next Week's Chat Topic: All About Meeting Apps for Associations

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:

Association Chat: The Digital Organization

I've been reading an excellent book by Jamie Notter and Maddie Grant, When Millennials Take Over, that identifies four capacities for the future of business: Digital, Clear, Fluid, and Fast. The March 24, 2015 edition of Association Chat will focus on The Digital Organization - inspired by this great book. Is your association a digital organization? We'll discuss during today's chat.

Here are the questions I'll be asking this week:

1. How has technology allowed your org to provide a more personalized focus on the customer or member?
2. How has technology opened up new opportunities for more effective marketing, customer service, and even management?
3. Does your organization focus on always improving? How does your org support innovation?
4. Does your organization use technology to better communicate internally? How? What tools do you use, both analog & digital?
5. How does your org use social media to improve customer service? If it doesn't, why not?
6. How does your org's focus on the customer compare to its focus on the employee? How is it similar? How is it not?
7. In your role, how would you choose to next invest in technology for your organization?
8. Do employees have room to experiment in your organization? If so, please share how. If not, how might it work for your org?
9. What role does collaboration play in a digital organization?
10. What role does HR play for organizational reinvention based on a digital mindset?

Everyone is welcome to participate in Association Chat on Tuesdays at 2 pm ET/11 am PT. An easy way to follow along is to check out http://nurph.com/assnchat which automatically follows #assnchat for you. 

Next week's chat: Focusing on Customers and Members

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UPDATE: For a recap of Association Chat: The Digital Organization, check out Kait Solomon's Storify capturing tweets from the chat.

Challenges with Member Experience Facing Associations

What questions do you wish you could answer over again?

Today I had the pleasure of talking with Todd Greer of Synervision - The Leadership Foundation for their weekly interview series. As usual, as soon as the interview wrapped, I immediately felt remorse for what was left unsaid. I have no right to claim that my brain is failing me, but sometimes I swear I am failing my brain.

One of the big questions Todd asked me was about the challenges facing organizations today; especially as it pertains to experience for their customers or members. I can't even remember what over-excited words spilled from my lips, but I know I felt like I had somehow missed out on sharing what I wanted to say. Here's what I'd say if I had the chance all over again.

What Challenges Are Facing Associations As It Pertains to Customer Experience?

1. Understanding Data

I think one big challenge organizations face in building the right member experience is in figuring out how to use the data associations already have.  Most organizations are obese with data, but there is often a disconnect in how to use that information to improve the experience of the member.

2. Missing Critical Touchpoints 

Associations might say, "We know our audiences…we have professionals, students, and institutions. We've got this covered." But how are those organizations creating meaningful experiences that create demand when someone, perhaps a non-member, does something like buying a book from them? Is a relationship created, or is it merely a financial exchange? What does that experience feel like to the customer? 

One association I talked with recently is looking at changing their membership model. They have a nice diagram and explanation for the different audiences they are looking to engage with, but the most important part – creating the onramps to the organization for these audiences – the connection and interaction points, the touchpoints, for how to better engage them all need to be identified and then built upon. My hope is that that organization will put as much time and effort into getting those experiences right as they have their business diagrams.

3. Cultural Shifts 

Look at the way our society has changed with technology advances over the past 10 years. I could focus on social media only, but that is a small part of the bigger picture. It's a digital society that has brought with it new shifts in the way we look at simple things like ownership. We now live with the realities of a sharing economy and collaborative consumption. People now have the ability to share their own possessions and activities– their homes, their cars, their books, their drives, their clothes, even their pets – with strangers in exchange for money or as a bartering type of experience and this is creating a new economy that tax laws and the government haven’t caught up with yet. 

In the interview I actually went a little crazy talking about the sharing economy (couldn't help it), but I asked how associations are looking at this kind of thing. What if a member could trade their membership with someone from a similar or competitive association? Why couldn’t they? Why shouldn’t they? I think people are afraid of uncertainty. To me, asking questions like that should be a requirement for association professionals. That's right. I'm for hire.

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What kind of questions do you wish you could have a second shot at answering? How do you feel about the challenges I listed? What other challenges can you think of?

Do I Still Belong In The Association Space?

What does the future hold in store for me? The picture isn't clear.

I never anticipated becoming an association executive.

I still remember moving to Bethesda, Maryland, from Joplin, Missouri, starting my first job in associations - working for the Parenteral Drug Association. What was an association and how could I explain it to my family? These were the questions that plagued me whenever I wasn't worried about how to make my next strategic move to make more money and move up in position.

What I learned was that working for associations was unlike working for a business in the corporate world. There were a few similarities, but the focus on membership and mission and the way that played out during board meetings was still different than what I'd seen from non-association businesses.

Time passed. I became a regular volunteer for the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). Associations became my home and I found myself dreaming of winning awards for being a Rising Star in Associations or getting my picture on the cover of Associations Now.  I worked for the American Red Cross National Headquarters and then the Optical Society of America. I was focused in membership (specifically chapter development) and then took on the evolution of social media for the association, leading me to start presenting on it at ASAE events. Somewhere along the way I became a go-to person for social media and I joined DelCor as a senior consultant. My role? Digital strategy and social media. I was excited.

While there I created the DelCor Social Media Sweet Spot, a weekly web show for the association world that took place on Fridays. I also inherited the weekly Association Chat (#assnchat) on Twitter, becoming the moderator for the chat every Tuesday. Information and connections were mine to be had and I loved it.

Then things changed. I decided to create my own consulting firm, Amplified Growth, and about a year after the feast and famine roller-coaster that is entrepreneurialism, joined Aptify as a senior consultant in social media, creating a new line of business for them. I left Aptify by the end of September this year and I am currently working on some consulting projects for clients, primarily doing social media maintenance for several brands.

I am talking to a couple people about some ways my consulting work could work in collaboration with their products and services...thinking about how to better service associations in their membership offerings and also with their event planning. Exciting! There is part of me that also wonders if I shouldn't go back to being an association executive - working directly for an association, being part of their ongoing mission.

In the meantime, my husband keeps forwarding job opportunities to work as a social media manager for agencies that have nothing to do with associations.

The path isn't clear. At least, it isn't clear to me. Last week I received my dues renewal notice from ASAE and I wonder if I still belong. I still devour my Associations Now magazine every month when I get it. I still want to prove myself worthy as a meaningful contributor to the association realm. But is life taking me a different direction? I'm almost afraid to mention the possibility, but life is kind of crazy that way and who am I to ignore it?

Do I still belong in the association space? I think so. I suppose we'll find out together.