Archive for December, 2005
December 9, 2005
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Yahoo launches Yahoo Answers, their … well, answer, to Google Answers. At Google, you bid for expert advice; at Yahoo, anyone can speak up. Remember when people joined associations to get answers to their questions?
December 6, 2005
Word Up
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Does word-of-mouth (WOM) work for associations? Ben Martin says he doesn’t think it does, at least very well, but I disagree. Here’s why.
1) We shouldn’t confuse “membership marketing” with “membership acquisition.” WOM has a huge role to play in membership RETENTION. You don’t think members believe anything we say, do you? They listen to each other. Passionate members reinforce each other’s opinions and bolster those of the less-passionate ones. That means they have to have something to talk about.
2) In a comments discussion to his post, Ben mentions a member who felt uncomfortable forwarding a text email to non-member colleagues encouraging them to join. That’s not WOM, IMO. WOM isn’t about “member-get-a-member” (which I don’t think very highly of in any event). It’s about getting members to talk about you, not for you — and that’s not a canned “hey, I like XYZA, why don’t you join them?”
Think about it, when you find a great store, you don’t walk up to people and say, “I like to shop at this store, you should, too.” You say, “Look at this thing I got, isn’t it great?”
On another note, there are some real differences here, I think, between professional societies and trade associations (but sometimes I wonder how much we have in common at all). Ben and Chris make the point that a lot of professional society members network only with other members. (And we wonder why associations are insular.) In industries served by trade associations, this is rarely the case.
December 5, 2005
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Don’t usually post about Google, but this caught my eye today at B2Blog: “In our current issue, John Battelle … talks about Google’s Golden Rule of employees spending 70% of their time on the core search business, 20% on adjacent businesses, and 10% on totally new businesses.” Wonder what would happen if every employee in every association spent 10% of their time developing new businesses?
December 4, 2005
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Pandora’s Boom Box: Thanks to RichW for tipping me off to Pandora, an amazing little radio thingy that finds songs based on — oh, just go try it already. Tres cool.
December 4, 2005
Why Do People Form Associations?
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Following up on an earlier post about new associations being formed by technology companies and a couple of comments left therein:
Why do people form associations? Almost always it’s a defensive gesture — they are interested primarily in protecting what they have. They want to differentiate themselves from competitors, make it more difficult for potential competitors to enter the field, or implement some sort of self-regulation in an attempt to head off more formal regulation. Reading between the lines of OLGA and the potentially sensitive nature of what they do, it’s easy to guess why they decided they need an association.
Understanding this, the best thing to do to “bake” innovation in an organization, as Jeff put it, is to start out small and flexible. I’ve watched lots of start-ups waste all their time laying out detailed bylaws, debating committee structures, arguing over the finer points of complicated dues formulas, and trying to immediately wade into big picture arenas that they can’t support with their infrastructure.
Starting out small and flexible means very short governing documents that leave a lot of room for play, picking one or two services that they can implement immediately with a maximum impact, and then hitting the ground running. Don’t get caught up into thinking that you have to do what “all associations do,” just do what you and your fellow members need/want (and is feasible to do well right now). Then you build up your credibility and infrastructure so the association can expand its ability to serve your industry.
Credibility is the currency of associations. More than anything else, an association needs credibility with its members, its potential members, and other affected/influential audiences, in that order. Credibility is based on an organization’s ability to fulfill its promises. That means you need to watch what you promise at the outset.
December 4, 2005
Posted by Kevin | (1) Comments | Print This Article
You Knew It Was Going to Happen: Between this guy getting slandered by his biography, and former veejay Adam Curry editing entries to make himself look more important, Wikipedia’s totally-open editing process is losing credibility fast.