Technology

September 12, 2008

A Few Random Posts I’ve Been Meaning to Expand Upon, But, Really, Who Has Time?

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Most of my little posts go in the “asides” here on the blog, and most of them are fairly inconsequential (okay, okay, I know that all my posts are inconsequential, but roll with me here).

Then there are other thoughts that I jot down on occasion in draft form because they’re small but I think they merit some fleshing out. Of course, when I’m totally honest with myself, I have to concede that most of them probably won’t get fleshed out because I just don’t have that much time to spend on this blog.

So, here are a few of them — I may revisit them in longer form at some point, but here they are anyway:

Time shifting. The DVR hasn’t just changed television, it’s changed everything. (Well, really it’s just one aspect of a larger change.) People expect their consumption of media to revolve around their own schedule. But I wonder, should this mean more than just offering recordings of live events? What does “live” mean anymore? (And speaking of DVRs, I need to remember to set mine because It’s Always Sunny is coming back next Thursday.)

There are no legacies. Call it a paradox: the nature of associations are such that they tend to attract leaders who are very interested in grand gestures, big footprints, and lasting legacies; and it is also the nature of associations and their rapidly-shifting structures that such things are often quickly forgotten.

It’s okay to have an agenda. Why do so many people pretend that they don’t have one? Partnerships, collaborations, and organizations of all stripes at all levels would work much better if everyone was just honest about what they want, in my opinion.

Meet the We Bees. Around the country, former proponents of term limits are seeking to overturn (or at least lengthen) them, in part because, according to the NYT on Wednesday, they believe they “leave too much power in the hands of civil servants.” One elected official said, “We call those folks the We Bees, as in, ‘We be here when he’s gone.’” Does that make staff the We Bees of the association world, and what are the implications of that kind of sentiment?

True “ownership.” Staff don’t and can’t “own” an association, but the associations that are the most innovative and fastest-growing are those whose staff feel like they have a personal stake in its success. They “take ownership,” so to speak. But the successful association executive learns to feel like an owner without losing sight of who the real owners are. Sometimes that means letting go of strategies or tactics that you feel very strongly about, and sometimes it means doing something that you might not personally think is the best way to go. All without letting it impact your ability to keep creating, innovating, and “owning.” It’s a hard lesson to learn but probably the most important one in association management.

There are some more, but I’ll save them for another rainy day. (Oh, earlier I’d promised some news from the Event Technology Expo this week — unfortunately, something came up and I wasn’t able to make it.)

August 29, 2008

The Biggest Myth About Online Publishing

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No, I don’t mean those myths you can debunk on snopes.com. I mean one of the most common myths that I hear, often from otherwise very smart people.

It’s this: “People aren’t willing to pay for content on the Internet.” I have no idea why this myth is still propagated when it’s so obviously untrue.

Just a few examples:

• CooksIllustrated.com has over 150,000 online subscribers at around 20 bucks a year — that’s $3 million for essentially recycled, “repurposed” magazine content.
• Consumer Reports has over 3 million online-only subscribers paying either annually or monthly.
• MarketingSherpa sells access to thousands of reports, surveys, case studies and samples for a little under $400 a year. Couldn’t find a number of subscribers but they’ve been going strong for years (with events, publications, workshops, even a certification program, they are similar to a lot of associations except slightly more useful than some).
• Speaking of MarketingSherpa, yesterday they reported that consumer review site Angieslist.com has 330,000 paid members (the site lists fees ranging from around $9/mo or $82/year plus signup fees).
• Lynda.com offers online training on a huge number of subjects, mostly related to software and technology, for fees ranging from $25/mo basic memberships to $375/year premium memberships. They claim “tens of thousands of subscribers” and have been around for 13 years.

What we’ve learned in online media during the last several years is that big “general interest” websites of any kind — those aimed at huge consumer audiences, like newspapers, networks, etc. — are not able (or at least have not been able) to charge successfully for content. But more targeted, niche websites can be very successful in charging for different types of content aimed at a specialized audience — and even small subscriber bases can be very profitable.

The good thing is that associations are the definition of niche. Are you taking advantage of that fact?

August 22, 2008

More of the Same

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The “secret session” at ASAE: a bold social media experiment about a new way of doing business and getting buzz, or just plain old-fashioned hyperbolic marketing using slightly different tools? As usual, Cindy Butts nails it.

August 13, 2008

Tools of the Trade: Central Desktop

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Just a quick review of an online app some staff teams might find useful: For the past ten months or so, my team of 9 staffers has been using Central Desktop (www.centraldesktop.com) to keep track of to-do lists, share/edit documents, and calendaring. I have to say it’s a useful and inexpensive little tool that does exactly what it says it will.

I picked it after looking at several of the other similar groupware-type websites out there, like Basecamp, and found them a little too complex for our needs. All I really wanted was for a way for the team members to assign each other tasks and keep track of them, update documents, and note calendar items, particularly out-of-office times. Central Desktop meets all these very simple needs with a very intuitive interface. It doesn’t feel like you have to learn a new way of doing things.

The document sharing/editing has been very useful; for example, we have a number of complex tracking documents that compare various sales and membership numbers, week by week and year by year. With Central Desktop, the staffers responsible for those areas keep the reports updated online, and I can access them anytime, anywhere.

While it may be nicer to have a more integrated system with our database and website, for our purposes, Central Desktop works well and other small teams may want to take a look at it. You can also set up regular email activity updates (you can set the frequency from immediately to weekly); there is also a secure RSS feed option that looks kind of interesting, but I haven’t played with it, finding the email updates good enough for me.

August 8, 2008

How to Grow in a (Shrinking?) Economy

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I’ll leave it up to the so-called “experts” on what the economy is really doing at the macro level, but it’s only stating the obvious to point out that the last year has been a hard one for certain industries. So the question is, How can an association achieve revenue growth in a year when its members are facing economic challenges?

With the recent closing of our most recent fiscal year, I finally feel comfortable addressing this question with a few tips and thoughts based on our own experience doing so.

Create new products for your core market that meet a real need. Our core products are the standards and technical manuals that lay out how our industry is supposed to do its work. One of the things we hear most often from members and non-members is that the standards are very difficult to understand and require outside training. In late 2007 I worked with an industry trainer and launched a new series of computer-based training sessions that take the concepts and explain them in plain English in bite-sized, self-directed segments. The first three packages in this series produced a brand new six-figure revenue stream. My tips:

Make sure you are listening to members and exploit what they are telling you about your products, and about potential new products.

Look at your bestselling products and create ancillary products around them. For example, if you sell books, create training programs that explain them or demonstrate how to use them, or create audio versions if they lend themselves to that sort of treatment. The key is to look at what’s working and build on it.

Now is not the time to cut back on marketing. In addition to our usual product catalog and email marketing, we upped the ante with new monthly product mailings and an even more aggressive but targeted series of promotional emails. We experimented with landing pages, fax broadcasts, telemarketing, and even Google advertising. By being smart about how we spent our money, we were able to do “more” marketing (with significantly better results) at less expense. My tips:

It’s very possible to reduce printing and mailing expenses significantly while still producing high quality product through such things as paper choice, printing technologies, layout and “fold” (for example, take advantage of the new postal regulations and avoid flats).

You must have a way to easily segment and target emails. If you send emails to everyone, or even if you send emails to certain broad channels (”newsletters” or “product specials”), then you are not getting the most out of email marketing. You must have a way to send emails, for example, to everyone who opted into receiving product specials, *AND* who also purchased a particular product, registered for an event, etc. (and just as importantly, who *DIDN’T* purchase, register, etc.)

Do not rely on one marketing channel! Hit your markets in multiple ways.

Repeat, repeat, repeat! I think it’s a waste of time, for example, to mail a promotional flyer once. It’s more effective if you mail it twice, or three times, to the same audience. I also have decided it’s a waste of time to send “building” campaigns (for example, a series of postcards that “build” on a particular theme), unless the campaign is REALLY clever. Send the same thing, repeated.

Retention is always important, but especially so when an industry is facing economic turmoil. Many associations think the key to improving retention is to remind members of the value that membership offers. However, we have found that the key to improving retention is to remind members that they owe money. With members expiring throughout the year, we begin our dues renewal process (both paper and email) five months out from expiration. Our retention rate held at around 90% this year. My tips:

The number one reason given for not renewing is “I didn’t realize I had expired.” Take away this excuse! Don’t be afraid to be persistent, almost annoying. Do not wait until the last minute to begin the renewal invoicing process.

Reach deeper into your core marketplace to find new audiences. I’ve talked ad nauseam about my belief that successful associations focus their efforts on expanding products and services for their core market, rather than take what they’re already doing and seek new markets. Part of exploiting the core market, though, is finding new decision makers within that marketplace. For example, we are launching a little two-day conference this October aimed specifically at a common lower-level management position among our members (as opposed to the owner or top-level position who is our usual audience). By early July we’d already surpassed our budgeted attendance expectations for this new conference, and added an overflow hotel; now we expect the event to completely sell out. My tips:

Look at your membership base (particularly if you are a trade association) and find new audiences within that base who may be interested in new educational or product offerings. First, you have to know what (and who) they are. This means being very familiar with typical member operations and being aggressive about collecting names and email addresses. (For example, our member “primary contacts” can login through our website at any time and add other employees to their account, giving us access to these valuable contacts and their job titles.)

Add niche events and mini-conferences to your schedule. Some associations try to bring in new people from their market by constantly adding new “tracks” to their annual meeting or coming up with alternate marketing approaches. I’ve found this to have mixed results. People in specific operational or professional segments will be drawn more to a an event that is specifically for them than they will by a new workshop series at a bigger event. And the niche event can bring in new sponsorship and exhibitor dollars at a higher price since the audience is so targeted.

Don’t stop experimenting, and take risks. Not everything will work; for example, we tried a regional one-day marketing seminar this year that was not successful enough to try again. This doesn’t stop us from innovating and experimenting. This fall we will be launching some new subscription-based online applications quite different from anything we’ve tried before. And we are building on the series of CDs mentioned above, with four new packages slated to be released in September and October. Another niche event will be launched next spring. My tips:

Stop thinking that you are in the business of doing whatever it is you happen to do now. Move in new directions.

Embrace a “guerilla” approach to media and technology for producing these new products and programs. None of the things we did this year that brought in high revenue cost us very much at all.

As you can tell by now, I believe strongly in product, product, product. Products are key to growing an association and making it possible for it to continually enhance services and advocacy for the industry it represents, no matter what the economy is doing (and none of the things we did this year were done specifically in response to the economy).

If the only things you sell are membership and meetings, then you’ve focused your model around two things that are most likely to be scrutinized, and possibly abandoned, by companies and people whose confidence in the economy is shaken.

July 28, 2008

When Did It Become Presenter vs. Attendee?

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Sue Pelletier responds to the Allen Stern post I linked to (referencing social media gone wild in a conference panel) by pointing to someone else’s idea for trying to harness this energy. Jeffrey Veen writes:

“As we were planning Start, he said, ‘We should have someone onstage the whole time to represent the audience. Like an ombudsman does for a newspaper.’ So we decided to put a desk on stage and have our friend George Oates fill that roll. She’ll be on Twitter, IM, and email listening to what people are talking about. (We’ll also have volunteers collecting index cards for those not wanting to be online during the sessions.) And she’ll synthesize questions, interrupt us if we get boring, and call bull[**] if something sounds like it.”

All of these various posts about rambunctious attendees, and phrases like “call bull[**] if something sounds like it”, make me wonder: When did conference educational sessions become us versus them? I mean, it’s one thing to use different tools to collect questions for the presenters, but what’s up with all this backchannel backbiting and complaining I’ve been reading about from various conferences?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but at most conferences (especially association conferences, which typically don’t pay workshop presenters, or at least don’t offer them much) — aren’t people who agree to give presentations or participate in panels doing the organization, the conference, and the attendees a favor?

I’m not saying attendees shouldn’t disagree with panelists, or ask provocative questions at the appropriate place — I think they most definitely should, it makes for a more interesting workshop — but what happened to common courtesy?

I believe part of what may be fueling this is an over-reliance among many organizers on using vendors and consultants at their workshops instead of practitioners from their industry and profession. Sure, it’s a lot easier to use consultants, because they’re easy to work with, they’ve usually got good presentation skills, and they tend to get higher ratings. But that doesn’t necessarily make them more useful to the audience (and the audience will not feel the same empathy toward a vendor/consultant that they will feel toward a fellow practitioner).

For example, I’ve sat through many workshops given by association executives where I may have felt that the presenter didn’t have great presentation skills, or I may have disagreed with some of the conclusions she draws, but I still felt the workshop was a worthwhile use of my time because it was an opportunity to hear actual experiences from a fellow professional. I’m rarely that charitable with vendors, consultants, or professional speakers, and I get annoyed when I have to try and pick through a series of workshops in a schedule that seems overburdened with non-association speakers. (Like I had to do in order to plan my schedule in San Diego next month.)

Ultimately, I believe organizers have a responsibility to attendees and presenters to find topics that attendees actually want to hear about, and then find the right people to talk about them (not vice versa). Presenters have a responsibility to attendees and organizers to prepare sessions with the real audience in mind and be prepared to answer questions. And, attendees have a responsibility, too — to themselves and all the other attendees — to act like professional adults and make smart choices about what sessions to attend. If you already know all about a certain topic, or if you already know that you’re not interested in what a particular person has to say about the topic, then don’t go and then complain about it. Instead, go to a different workshop. (And remember to volunteer to present on the topic you already know so well next year.)