Archive for January, 2008
January 9, 2008
Enough Already
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I don’t usually point to comments I make on other blogs. But Jeffrey Cufaude disappointed me. My comment here explains why.
January 9, 2008
The Biggest Association Blog?
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I noticed last week that someone from the US Chamber’s domain spent a lot of time on my blog, having come here via a link from the NAM’s blog (where they still call me “Association Blog”). Perhaps they were surveying the lay of the land.
January 7, 2008
View from the Ivory Tower, Part 1 Subpart A
Posted by Kevin | (5) Comments | 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.
January 4, 2008
The Now and the Not Yet
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While she’s talking particularly about tradeshows in this comment, Sue Pelletier sums up the biggest challenge faced by associations in general, quite nicely, in one turn of phrase: “Caught between the ideal and the real.”
January 1, 2008
The Blogoclump Grows Up
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Ben supports Maddie Grant as “best new association blogger” for 2007, and he is right, Maddie shines in a field of very interesting new voices. I will point to Cindy Butts as my pick for newbie to watch this year; her posts are refreshingly pragmatic and frequently insightful. All in all, watching the Blogoclump more than double in size in 2007 was gratifying, mostly because all of the new bloggers have brought their own perspectives, conversations, and topics to the table. The association world is big and diverse; it is nice to see the Blogoclump maturing into a reflection of that.