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Associations Need Twyla Tharp – December 16th, 2008
posted by Rebecca Rolfes
By Rebecca Rolfes
Skimming through the newspaper the other night I saw a photo of the artists who had won the Medal of Freedom. Most of them looked very happy and honored, although Barbra Streisand reportedly had a difficult time hugging President Bush. On the edge of a chair, looking neither happy nor part of the group, sat a small woman wearing a black pant suit and brown cowboy boots, no makeup, no jewelry, no fancy hairdo. She looked rather grim, like she disapproved or would rather be somewhere else. The woman was one of my heroes, Twyla Tharp.
In a 40+-year career as a dancer and choreographer, Tharp has created some of the most beautiful, innovative, inspiring ballets (although that seems the wrong word for them) of modern times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twyla_Tharp The final sequence in The Catherine Wheel raises me out of my seat with my heart in my throat. Moving On proved that modern dance could win audiences and earn just as much money as a popular Broadway play. Millions of people saw her choreography for the movies Amadeus and Hair. But the thing Twyla Tharp did for me, for me personally, was write the book The Creative Habit. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read it. My copy is underlined and annotated and would be more dog eared if I didn’t love it so much and take such care with it.
This morning, looking for inspiration for a management meeting I have to lead next week, I opened it and found this:
“Venturing out of your comfort zone may be dangerous, yet you do it anyway because our ability to grow is directly proportional to an ability to entertain the uncomfortable.”
The wonderful thing about the book is that it throws you back on yourself. You have no choice but introspection. So, ask yourself:
- Do you know where your comfort zone is?
- Do you recognize when you’re using it as a crutch?
- Why is it dangerous to leave? What’s the worst that could happen?
- Do you leave it? Ever? When was the last time? What happened?
- Are you able to entertain the uncomfortable?
- Better question: Do you find the uncomfortable entertaining?
- Think about the major growth experiences in your life. What did they have in common?
- If she’s right that there is a direct proportion at work, has your greatest growth come from the most uncomfortable circumstances?
- How much growth do you want, i.e., how uncomfortable are you willing to be?
The questions can go on and on. And the answers are particularly pertinent in the current uncomfortable circumstances.
Registrations for conferences have fallen through the cellar. Advertising for magazines, already in trouble, has plummeted. Membership renewals, particularly for trade associations, have fallen victim to corporate cost cutting and disappearing companies. Donations at this traditionally generous time of year have slowed to a trickle. The entire global economy is on hold.
I don’t know about you but I’m pretty damned uncomfortable.
Take heart from Twyla Tharp. (A great interview about creativity in difficult circumstances.) There is more to the present circumstances than teeth gritted intestinal fortitude. Be creative. What does this allow you to do?
It allows you, first and most importantly, to be a leader. Lead your organization, your staff, your board, your members. This is probably not the time for aggressive new initiatives—unless it is precisely the time for them.
Next, it allows you the chance to exert some discipline on processes that may have become lax in more flush financial times. Efficiency, not just cost cutting.
It allows you to talk to your members about the really difficult issues—workforce, cost, fear and, again, leadership—listen to them, and then figure out ways to help them.
And from that will come growth. Maybe not growth in numbers but growth that matters, for you and your association.
I’d Rather be on Facebook – December 8th, 2008
posted by Rebecca Rolfes
I’ve been following an interesting listserv thread on the SNAP site. It began with a question about whether other associations block in-office access to MySpace and Facebook.
The most surprising part of the thread is that no one said, “Are you crazy? Of course not.”
At Imagination we’re encouraging (cajoling, assigning, ordering) employees to sign up on Facebook and LinkedIn and to use them often. Our HR department checks all potential employees on MySpace so even that isn’t off-limits. (If you’re dumb enough to put pictures of yourself doing keg stands on MySpace, you’re too dumb to work here.)
But the other two are a crucial business tools these days, and any organization that thinks otherwise is going to be left behind.
There are 132 million members on Facebook, 30 million on LinkedIn. Think objectively about what that could do for you.
- Going where your members already are, i.e., these two communities, is a lot cheaper than building your own online community.
- Cruise through Facebook; you’ll find many associations—IEEE, the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons, the American Society of Interior Design and on and on and on. They’re there because their members, perhaps more importantly their potential members, are there.
- Monitoring what’s being talked about on Facebook and LinkedIn and becoming part of that conversation increases your visibility and your SEO. Seeding content with well chosen keywords pushes you up in search rankings. The more you say, the more you link, the better you’ll do.
- The business world is an increasingly virtual place. We all routinely conduct business with people we never meet face to face. Online communities take that to a new level and add context and personality to an exchange that is otherwise just disembodied voices on the phone.
- Assuming that all members of online communities are young is a mistake; however, online communities are a way to interact with potential future members. Young people get their community in new ways, much of it online. Attracting the next generation of members is keeping most association executives I know awake nights.
At Imagination, we’ve created editorial assignments for employees that include Facebook, LinkedIn and selected blogs that relate to the business we’re in. We’re obviously not encouraging hours spent in random posts to friends on company time but the blurring of the line between professional and personal is fuzzier and fuzzier in modern life.
It’s one thing to sign up but you can’t achieve the SEO and visibility you need unless you actually use these communities. And, as Jon Stewart says, only unemployed people have time to be on there all day. So we make the internal assignments to make sure it happens. Like anything else, you have to come up with a strategy that has measurable goals and then make it happen. Our vice president of marketing’s goal is to move us up to the first page in Google searches. We’re not there yet but it’s definitely working—15 places higher this month.
For some of our association clients, we’ve discovered groups online that mimic the association’s work, repurpose its materials but pay them no dues. You can either make that happen and reap the return or let it happen without you.
The Real Issue
To my mind the real issue, the real reason associations block access to such sites is because their employees are bored. If your work isn’t very interesting, the world wide web is a huge candy box of distractions.
I’m not saying that the people who work for me never shop online or book plane tickets or read movie star gossip at the office but they also work their butts off. They turn out award-winning magazines and websites, stay scrupulously on deadline and within budget, come in on weekends if necessary, give clients their cellphone numbers. The first two are part of their job descriptions; the latter two they do voluntarily. The work is challenging, very challenging, but they are into it. The output has their name on it and that matters very much, professionally and personally, to them.
Two of my employees created a political blog during the presidential campaign. On word of mouth and some Facebook action, they had about 5,000 unique visitors, 150 to 200 hits a day. Did they do some of that at work? Sure they did. If I were running a restaurant, I probably wouldn’t have been happy but I run a custom publishing company—as do the people on the SNAP listserv. These two employees learned a lot about how online communications work, what makes them powerful—and, at the same time, they never missed a deadline.
I don’t see this as a conflict. I see it as on-the-job training or professional development. In case you hadn’t heard, print is, if not dying, in critical care. This is the way our profession is going. This is the way associations are going. Blocking access is about as effective as keeping water in a sieve. Information flows freely and today’s media is porous.
Is Your Association Ready for a Gutsy Digital Move? – November 12th, 2008
posted by Rebecca Rolfes
If you ever want to really make yourself nervous, walk into a prospective client and tell them to totally scrap what they’re doing, go with a digital-only strategy including all sorts of rich media with which they have no track record and—oh, by the way—do it in Chinese. That’s what we recommended to IPC, the association representing the electronics interconnect industry (aka circuit boards).
As IPC grew from a $2.3 million association in 1993 to $15 million today, the circuit board industry left the United States. Today only 8% of circuit boards are made here and the big growth potential for the trade association is in Asia, particularly China.
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IPC Screenshot
IPC Screenshot
A year after sweating it when I told them to 86 their print magazine, Kim Sterling, IPC’s vice president of marketing and communications, and I made a presentation to the Society of National Association Publishers (SNAP) conference in Chicago. IPC’s new website launched last January and exists in English, Mandarin Chinese and German. Results have been so good on everything from overall traffic to rich media downloads to SEO results, the presentation caught the attention of Folio magazine and will be part of its webinar next week on associations and digital publishing.
We got lots of good questions, but the best one was how we knew whether IPC was ready for such a gutsy move. There were some indications and maybe they’re the sort of thing that can help you figure out whether you’re ready—to go digital only, to go international, to compete for new members rather than suffering a slow decline.
- IPC is the leading standards-setting body in the industry. There are some smaller groups in various places in the world, but IPC’s are the globally accepted standards. So, question #1: Look at yourself critically and ask whether you are a leader. Pick whatever metric really matters but if you can answer yes, then chances are, you’re already comfortable with risk and can judge what gutsy move is right for you.
- IPC had seen significant, consistent growth even in the face of a declining domestic industry. Question #2: Are you growing—not just incrementally increasing but really growing? If so, you know what competition means and how to do it well.
- IPC invested in its future. The association had gone to the considerable trouble of opening an office in China, of hiring Chinese mother-tongue staff at its U.S. headquarters. Question #3: Are you betting money on your future or are you waiting to see what happens next? If you are forward looking rather than protecting the status quo, you probably have the intestinal fortitude to take the leap of faith that something like an all-digital strategy necessitates.
- IPC’s Sterling said something to me before the nerve-wracking presentation. She was talking about executives at another association and she said, “They wouldn’t know a new idea if it hit them between the eyes.” Question #4: Are you open to new ideas? Do you try new things, make adjustments based on strategic goals and the metrics that show whether you’re achieving them? Or do you just tweak what you’ve got and hope for the best?
In the end, gutsiness is knowing why you’re doing something and having the processes in place to make sure that it performs as you expected. Add that to the willingness to stick with something for at least long enough to give it a fair shot. And, of course, the courage to walk away from something that doesn’t pan out and learn from it rather than shutting down and never being gutsy again.
“Going with your gut” should be a very calculated move. If your association’s members are not who they used to be (and in the face of huge demographic and international change, whose are?), being able to make the gutsy play is the difference between growth and ceasing to exist.
Web-Only Publication – November 12th, 2008
posted by Sara Broderick
At the Society of National Association Publications (SNAP) conference today, Imagination’s EVP of association strategy, Rebecca Rolfes, and one of our clients, Kim Sterling, the VP of marketing for IPC, the leading trade association for the global electronics industry, presented a case study in association publishing: eliminating a printed publication in favor of web-based content.
An article from FOLIO:, “How One Association Publisher Went Web-Only,” called this a “radical step.” So far, it’s been successful.
New content includes two weekly stories that are updated each Monday, and several rich media components, including a podcast, an online slideshow, and a series of news feeds tailored to the interests and needs of the IPC membership. All content is translated into Chinese and German.
According to FOLIO:, “While that doesn’t sound like much to most publishers ramping up their Web sites, it appeals to the international crowd.”
And it seems to be working. Since April, the number of visitors to IPC.org has grown by 43 percent, and the number of individual visits has doubled. Visit duration—a key indicator of viewer engagement—is up 15 percent to more than 11 minutes per session. The site has also generated more than 10,000 rich media downloads.
Flash and Substance – October 29th, 2008
posted by Ross Foti
Get yourself a feline salesman, but you’d better have something worth selling. Saw an amusing story on CNN today about a calico cat that became a tourist attraction in a Japanese railway station, pumping $10 million into the local economy. Amazing what a tiny hat, the honorary designation “Super Stationmaster” and a promotional poster can do.
In this case, Tama the cat got me thinking about the power of a gimmick. So many rely on catchy slogans, widgets, novel functionality to attract attention, but how many actually have the substance to keep it for any period of time?
In the association world, we give a lot of weight to gaining members and retaining the ones we have, but there’s something more: Growing the relationship with those members already on the rolls. The most profitable customer is the one that not only stays, but believes in your vision and values, uses your products and services and participates in your mission. Just addressing their needs isn’t enough for growth; you have to give them what they want.
Growing the Customer Relationship
I understand that marketing isn’t often responsible for generating membership value, but marketing does have a critical stake in understanding members’ needs and wants, sharing that market intelligence, collaborating across the organization to create content that’s compelling (and not just a cat in a hat), aligning the message with the association’s brand and measuring the results of its efforts. In some instances, marketing is the most frequent touch point with members, and as such, takes center stage in the relationship. Don’t underestimate the value of content as membership value.
It’s a simplistic example, but Tama the Super Stationmaster got people to come to town, but how many actually want to stay, make a return trip, or continue spending their attention?
What’s Changed? – October 27th, 2008
posted by Ross Foti
With so much uncertainty about what the current economy means in the long term, it’s natural to think of belt tightening and scaling back as inevitable. Perhaps your projected income (and budget) have lowered—but I would argue that points to a greater problem of your members not seeing you as essential part of their career, network or business. So what’s really changed about your strategy?
* Do you still have the same mission and values?
* Have your objectives shifted?
* Is your membership, products or services value proposition different?
* Do your members expect something more from you than they have previously?
* Can you scale back on products and services while still keeping members engaged?
* Are the good ideas you had before the crisis hit still worth pursuing?
* Have your messaging needs changed?
The trend toward doing more with less, making the most of what you have and proving the value of your expenditures has not changed. Neither has the importance of frequent customer touch points—telling them about the value they are getting from membership.
But if your leadership sees marketing as expendable during a downturn, it’s time to change their minds.
Un-networking for Un-members – October 27th, 2008
posted by Rebecca Rolfes
Long ago when I worked for an association, we decided to print a time in our conference agendas that said “Networking Time.” We were quite proud of the fact that we had admitted to everyone, especially ourselves, that that was the main reason people attended, that regardless of how fascinating our sessions, how inspiring our keynote, how seamless our execution, attendees were really there to hand out business cards.
Every association makes networking part of its core value. The people you know are the people you do business with, the people you hire, the people you gather intelligence from. We all understand that that’s how things work.
So along come young professionals, the next generation of potential association members, and they find networking “smarmy,” according to an attendee at a likemind event. They don’t want the inauthentic, enforced familiarity that comes when you pay to hang out with people. They want some of the same things–to talk about what they all have in common and care about, to socialize, to connect in a disconnected world. But they don’t want to be sold on anything–on you, on your company, on your product. They might be LinkedIn and FaceBooked and YouTubed but they still want some face-to-face interaction. What they don’t want is your business card.
Likemind, founded a couple of years ago by two guys who worked at creative firms and “knew” each other via blogs, now has monthly events in 55 cities on every continent. It attracts young creative professionals to coffee shops to talk about whatever they want to talk about. There is no agenda, no speaker and no fee.
The phenomenon of the “unconference” had already removed the price tag from some events like BloggerCon in the so-called geek community. Groups like Meetup.com, for everyone from Moms looking for kids’ play dates to Red Sox fans who apparently can’t find each other in bars, and Green Drinks, which attracts those interested in environmental issues, let online communities create face-to-face un-associations.
Un-associations have no dues. They have no infrastructure. They have no agenda–not for this evening and not for the future. What they do have is members, or let’s call them un-members. And they are effortlessly global. With no barriers to entry, not even language, people just show up.
Simultaneously, you can see the great strength of associations–that like-minded people really do want to meet other like-minded people–and the great weakness–that institutionalizing that interaction creates an artificiality that gets in the way of the central purpose. A traditional association has its own self-preservation uppermost in mind. Forget the value proposition. Forget serving the members. Job #1 is staying in business, keeping our jobs, justifying our existence.
Andy Steggles, chief information officer at the Risk and Insurance Management Society, once told me that new associations, new sorts of associations without the infrastructure and the baggage of the past, would grow up to challenge the model. Ask yourself: If you had the choice to join your association or just show up someplace once a month and find people like you to talk to, would you join?
Taking Your Temperature – October 17th, 2008
posted by Ross Foti
How hot is your association? No, I’m not asking to rate your executive management team’s looks on a scale of 1-10, and this certainly isn’t the start of a personal ad (Buxom association seeks professionals for mutually rewarding relationship …). I’m talking about your winning streak in the eyes of your biggest fans: your membership.
In marketing your message to those you already serve and those you want to entice into the fold, many turn to membership retention as a gauge—that ratio of wins, or people buying into your value proposition, vs. losses, those who feel they’ve squeezed everything they can out of your relationship. ASAE offers a good description of the dashboard concept, if you aren’t already measuring trends.
These metrics are important, but, I would ask your marketing/brand management team to concentrate harder on the space in between. Do you have a system to periodically take the temperature of your members? Do they like what you’re doing with their dues? Are they even aware of the value they get from continuing their membership? Perhaps most significantly, is the value of your services aligned with what your membership really wants or needs?
Aside from the typical means of gauging satisfaction (telephone interviews, target focus groups, surveys, customer service logs and tracking resolution of those issues), I’d suggest a more immediate route: social media. Here are three ideas to take your temperature:
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Launch a network—whether on your own web page or taking advantage of existing groups—specifically around events or products. We often put so much effort into planning and executing an annual conference, for instance, that it’s easier to maintain the status quo year to year rather than accounting for shifts in your demographics or the market and changing things up. By forming a community that interacts before, during and after an event, you can gather insightful information about preferences, improvements, what went right and what didn’t in a more meaningful and direct way than a survey. Web 2.0 can be pretty powerful to gauge usability, involvement, engagement, the need for new standards and solutions.
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Start monitoring mentions of your association within social media groups. Twitter Search, Technorati, Commentful—these are good (and free!) starting places for buzz monitoring, but there are plenty of other services available that might meet more specific needs. What’s more, these mentions are quantifiable and point toward how your brand is perceived by the community at large. It’s easy to focus on your own organizational goals, your jargon, what you want to tell members, but it’s better to see their goals, their interpretation of your jargon and what they want to tell you.
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Craft a strategy to address valid issues; intelligence should be acted upon. Don’t put too much weight on what a few vocal people are saying—after all, they may represent a very small percentage of your target audience—but do take a realistic view of the spin factor: if you found their grievance on the web, rest assured others have too. And recognize that their views may, in fact, offer a glimpse of an area in the market that’s underserved, highlighting opportunities.
By taking a look at what your members (and potential members) are saying, you actually have a chance to affect their behavior before they reach the decision point to stay with you or leave.
Especially in the current lean business reality, where every practice should be measured, quantified, reported and acted upon, it’s understandable that communications leadership may be a bit more risk averse. After all, no one likes to hear bad news that members may be rethinking their investment in your association. But ignoring the people who are talking won’t make those sentiments go away. Social media is measurable, and you get feedback that allows you to be agile.
Don’t forget, engagement is hot.
I now pronounce you … – October 14th, 2008
posted by Michelle O'Hagan
From the same post by Riley Bandy on “How Do You Connect?”
The new issue of Associations Now magazine has a great article about ways to improve meetings by increasing interactivity and keeping information relevant and brief. Online meetings, often in the form of webinars struggle with long-term relevance.
“‘Probably the biggest problem with a standard webinar is that it’s a point-in-time event and then it dies,’ says Chris Brogan, vice president of strategy and technology for CrossTech Media.”
A poosible solution surfacing is to incorporate another popular communication media, Twitter, to produce a, well… Twebinar.
“A twebinar utilizes the instant-messaging capabilities of Twitter to replace the standard Q&A period, so participants can comment, or ‘tweet,’ each other about the webinar’s content before, during, and after the live webinar. Further, the 30 experts interviewed for the three debut twebinars on social media conducted this summer agreed to field questions through Twitter indefinitely, allowing participants to establish an ongoing dialogue with them.”
Auto Pilot – September 26th, 2008
posted by Rebecca Rolfes
“Association publishing activities function more or less on auto-pilot,” an association consultant told me yesterday in Washington, D.C. “If they’ve always done a magazine, they keep doing a magazine. If they’ve always done books, they’ll keep publishing books. They don’t really think about what it does for them.”
I’m startled and, yet, not. Not startled that that is the case, because that’s largely what I see too. But startled that someone admits it, albeit someone like me, outside an association—working for the industry but not in it.
Communicating with members is something associations have to do. Losing money at it is not.
According to the study the U.S. Chamber of Commerce did a few years ago on what makes associations grow, most do not have profitable publishing programs. Most probably don’t even break even. Publishing is a cost. And, given the current advertising market not to mention the economic climate in general that will certainly continue to be the case. In good times and bad, however, good markets and bad, it won’t get any better for association publishing departments.
Why is that?
First, they don’t go into it—or step back to re-examine once they’ve started—what their ROI goals are and what metrics they’re going to use to see whether they’re achieving them. Off-setting costs is obvious and, no, I’m not saying that they will totally self-liquidate costs much less make a profit. Does the magazine help recruit members? Is it the only tangible benefit many members (checkbook members) receive? Does it buttress the organization’s advocacy efforts, i.e., is it sent to government officials, industry standards bodies and the like? Or better yet, is it hand delivered to those audiences when coverage makes it appropriate? Can it be used in classrooms to help recruit the next generation of members? Is it a leave-behind when the executive director calls on CEOs and other decision makers?
Second, to put it bluntly, a lot of the magazines just aren’t very good. They’re done on a shoe string and it shows. Articles are free. Images are free. Paper is thin. Color is bad. Much of the editorial is about the association—who was elected to the board, when the next big conference will take place, what the president thinks. The editor may be a publishing department of one. And because the department functions largely in a vacuum, there is little push to the Website. The magazine does this, the Website does something else, and they don’t work together.
Third, the publications are not seen as strategic assets. They play little or no part in where the association and its membership are going nor how they will get there. Too often, the publication staff does not sit at the table when strategic planning occurs. They react, they report, they don’t lead.
The excuse that large associations can do this because they have the budget for it doesn’t hold water. Smart associations of all sizes find ways to make their publications, print and online, pay.
- They don’t do anything on auto-pilot. Competition is too tight and dollars too scarce to let programs that touch members become complacent. And doesn’t everything touch members?
- They know exactly what they need to accomplish and have both hard and soft metrics in place to keep them on track.
- They publish good products. This does not have to be expensive. Quality is not cheap, of course, but it takes more in terms of good thinking, commitment and great ideas than dollars.
- Communicating with members is always part of strategic planning because good communications is not reactive. Members need to be apprised of what’s going on but the publications need to be ahead of them. Good association publications [http://www.snaponline.org/public/articles/index.cfm?Cat=5] talk about the challenges members face and offer ideas for solutions. This is part of fulfilling the value proposition and what could be more strategic than that?
About LeaderConnect
LeaderConnect is the blog of Association Growth Partners, a division of Imagination Publishing. Here, association leaders discuss the competitive forces impacting associations—such as globalization and technology—and the importance of using custom content to increase or maintain the relevance of their associations.
