January 7, 2008
View from the Ivory Tower, Part 1 Subpart A
Posted by Kevin | Print This Article
Before I post the next part of this (slowly evolving) series of posts, I wanted to respond to a good question Ben asked and clarify something in the earlier post. He asked:
“Where do you stand on the whole debate that looking at web and email data skews your thinking towards the wired members, and not the average members? Couldn’t you wind up believing what you think members need is actually what the geeks need?”
First, as always, I take a trade association perspective, because that’s my area of expertise, and I have always been very uncertain as to how much trade associations and professional societies really have in common. Of course, whether our members are “companies” or “individuals,” we all deal with “people,” but the reasons for their participation seem very different to me. (In case anyone from ASAE is reading — yes, I am afraid that I found “Decision to Join” worthless. I’m sure it was much more interesting to individual membership organizations.)
In my post, talking about click-thru and online traffic data, I was talking specifically about “content” even if I may not have been as specific about that as I should have been. For example, if you are an association and you have various content pieces on your site about marketing, safety, legislation, and financial management, and you find that all of your marketing and legislation content gets huge traffic but no one seems to care about safety or financial management, then you’ve learned something very important.
The question is: Should we assume that the members who come to our website (who are more “wired”) are appreciably different from the rest of the membership in terms of what their “hot buttons” are? I don’t really think so — and based on my experience of working with a trade association who focuses primarily on the web for content, I haven’t seen that to be the case, either.
For competitive reasons I can’t get too much into the specifics of what we’ve learned about our members, but I can say that when we’ve taken what we’ve learned about member interests from our website, and applied them to other things (such as seminar topics, workshops, publications for sale), the results have consistently held up. The content areas that get member interest in online content also get member interest (and higher sales) in other avenues. This is not exactly rocket science.
These days, I’m not sure that there is all that much of a difference between the members who surf association websites and those who don’t (the “wired” versus the non-wired). People are used to going to websites for content, and if you provide a steady stream of valuable information on your website (and send good newsletters out), they are going to come to your site looking for it.
But again, this is talking about content and what it can teach us. Associations for years have been somewhat isolated from their membership (hence “the ivory tower”) and depended on boards and committees to tell them what’s “important,” but of course that only tells you what the people who serve on these boards and committees think are “important.” Perhaps the rest of your members feel the same way, perhaps they don’t. (Question: If you start paying special attention to your members who “blog” are you just listening to another self-identified group who may or may not be representative of the rest of your membership?)
Online behavior data pulls from a larger number of your members, and is likely to be more representative of what your membership is actually interested in. I’m not saying any of this is necessarily scientific. I’m just saying that now that you have access to data about the actual behavior of a large percentage of your members, if you collect it and use it, you can move beyond those ivory tower limitations and start discovering what truly matters to your membership. And once you know that, you can begin to define what it is they “need” in a more meaningful way.
But, when we move beyond content and start talking about — I don’t know what to call them, features? applications? interactivity? social media? In my opinion, there is an appreciable difference (right now) between the people who are interested in such things and the people who are not. But five or six years ago, there would have probably been more of a difference between people who read articles on your website and people who wait for a magazine.
The question is, how far does an association “lead” into such things now? I have some opinions (of course!) but no answers (of course!) to share later.
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A follow-up question/observation…
You say that in your opinion there is not much difference between what members who go to your website find important and those that do not.
I tend to agree with you in that I think that is less of a concern. What troubles me is saying that because topic XX gets traffic on the website and topic YY does not, the membership cares more about XX than YY. It could just mean that members want information XX online, but they’d rather get YY in some other way. Or it could mean that you have really good XX content while your YY content is, well, crappy. Finally, it could mean that they come to you for XX and go someplace for YY, so then you have to decide if it’s worth it to try to get them to come to you for YY, too.
It could be that your committees are out of touch. But to take isolated data and say its so is just as limiting. Take the conflicting information and try to establish why — and then decide what you’re going to do about it.
(PS - Decision to Join’s implications to trade… what about the parts that talk about importance of participation? I’d think that would be important for any association.)
Hi Scott,
First, swiping at “Decision to Join” like that without any further elaboration was a bit of a cheap shot. I do find it worthless from a trade association perspective, but my friends at ASAE deserve a more thoughtful comment than that. I will take some time and explain my thoughts on it further in a future post.
Now, in response to your very good question, let me start by repeating two sentences from my original post:
“This is not exactly rocket science.”
and
“I’m not saying any of this is necessarily scientific.”
You raise some interesting questions: “Are people drawn to what we say about XX but don’t care about YY because everything we say about YY is total s***? Are people drawn to what we say about XX but simply don’t see us as the source for information about YY? Are people drawn to what we say online about XX but would rather read about YY in a magazine?” (Actually, that third question doesn’t make any sense to me, so we’ll focus on the first two.)
I have two responses to those questions, one aimed toward the substance and one aimed toward the questioner.
The first response:
There’s a very real possibility that, as you describe, an association has “crappy” info on a particular content area, or is viewed as a secondary or non-credible source about it. So — great! Now that you know your members are drawn to you about XX but think you have nothing to offer them about YY, then for god’s sake stop wasting your time talking about YY. It’s the people who insist that associations must be the source of things all XX *and* YY (and AA and BB and god knows what else) who condemn associations to consistent mediocrity.
The second response:
Since we know from many of your previous posts that you are “anti-data,” are you really questioning the use of online behavior data, or are you questioning the use of data in general? Would *your* answer to the questions you pose be to gather more data about member interests before basing decisions on online behavior? Or are you simply looking for ways to pose “buts” and “what-abouts” about any and all data in general?
Thanks for the comment!
Kevin - I agree about DTJ from the trade perspective. Scott is right that there are nuggets that apply to everyone, but I would love to see a separate study on trades.
Sorry for responding so late…
I wouldn’t describe myself as anti-data at all. I love data. I think it’s sorely misused, because people think it provides answers. It doesn’t. It can and should be used as one input in decision making. But in your example, you throw out the “ivory tower” committee input. Big mistake. That too should factor into any decisions.
I advocate taking a variety of inputs–data, expert opinion, nonexpert opinion, advice from whatever sources seem salient–and mixing it all together with your own experience and thought to make a decision. It’s more risky, because if it fails you don’t have the crutch to say “but the data showed…” or “but the committee recommended…” — you own the decision. You live by it. You try to make it work, you adjust based on environment and input and then you try to make that work, etc.