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.

What Birthdays Mean at 38-Years-Old

I woke up this morning at 3 a.m. with a surge of energy and a house full of sleeping family members. I thought about trying to go back to sleep, but after a few minutes decided the effort was futile and headed upstairs to brew some coffee and read. It is my birthday today and I am now 38-years-old.

Lately I've been investigating spirituality and trying to be open to what the universe is trying to tell me. Sometimes that means I realize great insights about myself and where I belong. Most often it finds me reaching rather than being, struggling while I would be better off letting go. There are many lessons I have yet to learn.

Family means more to me now than ever. Margaux lost another tooth this weekend and while she sleeps upstairs with her winnings tucked securely in her stuffed crocodile, my mother who is visiting from Missouri, is sleeping next to her...two of my favorite people in the world asleep in the same bed. This makes me happy.

I have no grand trip planned for my birthday. No parties. No sexy dinners scheduled with my husband. My Instagram feed shows me the possibilities. Pictures of the exotic locations my friends are visiting or extravagant food and drinks that beg to be consumed populate the app on my phone. But these quiet minutes before the entire house wakes up seem almost magical, like the world gave me extra time that no one else knows about. This is my secret bonus to use as I see fit, the luxury of time for self-reflection. This is the gift I've been waiting for without even realizing it. Thank you. Thank you.

What birthdays mean to me at 38-years-old is different than what they meant to me at 28. My desires sound so simple. But the fact that my birthday sits so close to Thanksgiving, a holiday focused on gratitude, doesn't mean that I desire nothing but altruistic dreams for a better tomorrow. No. Rather, I find myself imagining new dishes for the cupboard (all artistically complementing every dish, all matching) and for the upstairs guest bathroom to be fixed (a dismantled toilet seems to be taking forever to be repaired). With desires like these, it seems almost comical and wasteful to want a fabulous new suit or a long deep-tissue massage.

What I want to say is that I'm thankful to be here. I'm thankful for this life that I have full of friends and family and bathrooms that need to be repaired. I'm grateful for my desires, whatever they might be, sexy or not. I'm happy I have all kinds of possibilities, new paths to take in the future. Happy Birthday to another year of growth and opportunity. Happy Birthday to new dreams and old. Happy Birthday to this crazy body of mine. Happy Birthday to me.

Love,

KiKi

Where I'll Be Speaking In 2015

This year has been incredible for speaking engagements! I have to admit that though it can be tough to do so much traveling, I do enjoy meeting new people and having the opportunity to explore new ideas with them.

In 2014, I transitioned from primarily talking about social media and branding to talking about other big ideas, like how to be more productive ("How I Get Stuff Done") and creative topics like how to find your voice. While I'll still be talking about all things social media in 2015, I have been working on a new keynote (and book, God help me) about overcoming three primary fears that everyone shares to reach greater success. I'm working on this because it is something I care very deeply about and while it may seem a little "woo woo" of a topic, there is plenty of science to back up how these fears can impact our lives. 

My mentors for speaking have always included the brilliant Jeffrey Cufaude and Jeff Hurt and this year was no different. Highlights from my interactions with them have included Cufaude's insights on Association Chat (the chat happens on Twitter at hashtag #assnchat every Tuesday at 2 pm ET) and a long, fascinating discussion about brain science and learning with Hurt at the American Society for Association Executives' Annual Meeting. I can never get enough of these guys and I thank my lucky stars that they are a part of my life.

Speaking in 2015

So far, next year I am scheduled to speak at a few events that sound incredible. Those that I can share, include:

ASAE's Online Conference for Small Staff Associations (February 2015 - Online) - This is the second time I'll be speaking at this event. I'll be part of a panel of speakers discussing, "Solutions for Small Staff Membership Challenges."

ASAE's Great Ideas Conference (March 2015 - Orlando, FL) - For this conference I will be moderating a discussion between some fascinating individuals for "Next Generation Learning: EdTech Partnerships That Work" - Great Ideas is one of my favorite conferences of all-time and I am excited to be a part of it again for 2015!

PMPI's April Educational Experience: The Latest on Mobile Apps (April 2015) - I'll be presenting and then moderating a panel focused on the trends and best practices for organizations adopting and using mobile apps for their events.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's Health Care and Business Institute (July 2015 - Phoenix, AZ) - I'll be leading two sessions about social media at this conference and I've heard that other speakers will include the lovely and super smart Adele Cehrs, so I'm pumped.

National Association of Home Builders's Association Leadership Institute (July 2015 - Pittsburgh, PA) - I'll be leading training on social media for representatives looking to enhance their skills.

American Society for Association Executives Annual Meeting (August 2015 - Detroit, MI) - Did you know I'm in love with productivity methods and learning about ways to get more done with the time I have? Well, Scott Oser of Scott Oser Associates, Inc., and I will be leading a crazy fun session about the tools you need for better productivity.

WebLink Summit (October 1, 2015 - Las Vegas, NV) - I'm sharing lessons learned and talking about cultural shifts and technology changes in "From Slam Poetry to Social Media Success"at the WebLink Summit.

 Looking for a speaker?

If you are looking for a keynote or breakout speaker in 2015, I am open to adding a limited amount of speaking engagements for the year. 

You can visit my page about speaking and an example of my speaking style may be seen here or here and you can contact me at dckiki@gmail.com.