Tag: Web and Social Media

From Purgatory to Pioneers: Rebooting Associations

For many years now, Mitch Joel, president of marketing agency Twist Image, has been manning the lookout post for the rest of us. His blog, Six Pixels of Separation, is a constant in my RSS feed and his podcast is a regular on my phone. Mitch dedicates each podcast to a conversation with someone interesting from marketing, media or another connected world. If you speak at conferences, you’ll like his recent shows with Nick Morgan and Nancy Duarte.

Mitch was a keynote speaker at the recent digitalNow conference in Nashville. In his keynote, as in his book, Ctrl Alt Delete: Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends On It, he described five massive movements that have changed how we interact with organizations. Unfortunately, many organizations, including associations, haven’t done much to change how they interact with us.

The power of direct relationships

The battle for direct relationships with your members involves everyone else who offers value to them, including your vendor members, media, consumer brands, thought-leaders and others on their screens. Mitch introduced us to someone who might change how we think about connecting with members. Bethany Mota is a teenage video star who shares her shopping “hauls” with 2-3 million fans every day. She’s successful because she knows her community and gives them what they want. Traditional media can’t even compete.

Do you have a Bethany Mota? Partner with people who know how to connect and communicate with your audience — people who can create direct relationships with them and give them what they want. These people may be on your staff or in your membership, but most likely they’re not. You’ll have to create new relationships (and new budget lines) to get them on your team. But you want them on your team.

disruptions facing associations
Mitch Joel at digitalNow 2014 in Nashville
(photo by Bill Sheridan)

Sex with data

Don’t be standoffish. Get cozy and intimate with your data. You can now capture two types of data:

  • Linear data – transactions, searches, email open rates and clicks.
  • Circular data – the social data we willingly put online that paints a picture of our behavior, interests and needs.

The magic begins when you put both types of data together for a deeper understanding of your members and a more personalized experience for them.

Amazon is the personalization king with their website recommendations and their PriceCheck app which tells you how much the product you’re looking at in a store will cost on Amazon. In the process, they’re learning more about you – your location, interests and shopping habits. In return for your data, they provide a better shopping experience. Check out what the Project Management Institute is doing for their members and website visitors. You don’t need an Amazon budget to do that.

Utility or death

Mitch said today’s prime real estate is the smartphone screen. “What are you doing that makes you valuable enough to be on your member’s home screen?” Members don’t really care about you and your promotions, but the old “what’s in it for me” is one marketing cliché that remains relevant today.

Successful for-profit online communities like Doximity for doctors and ResearchGate for scientists focus first on creating utility – tools and services that help their members do their jobs more effectively. That’s why these hugely successful communities have attracted millions in venture capital and millions of members.

Passive vs. active

Know when to make the distinction between passive and active media, and when a member is passive or active online. Press releases don’t belong on Facebook. Members don’t want to be hounded to like or +1 everything they read on your website.

But members do want the opportunity to be active when they’re online in a way that provides value to them. Give them regular opportunities to provide feedback, share an opinion or idea, help make a decision, or participate in a discussion.

One-screen world

No wonder we’re all distracted. Think about how many screens we have going at times: our phone, tablet, laptop and TV. And the Internet of things may bring even more. Yet, we can only watch one thing at a time. The screen in front of us is the only screen that matters. And soon perhaps all these screens will integrate into one screen.

He closed his keynote with a hopeful message: associations are pioneers who will decide how the future of associations will look. Will your association have a cozy relationship with your member in the one-screen world? Come on out of purgatory and into the light where you’ll find plenty of opportunity for those who can keep up and move onward.

disruptions to associations - fade away or become a pioneer
Emigrants Crossing the Plains (or The Oregon Trail), Albert Bierstadt, 1869, courtesy of the Butler Institute of American Art

 

 

Think Responsive for Your Association Website

Have you ever pulled up a website on your phone and been frustrated by the tiny text and tabs? Unless I’m desperate to do something there, I usually give up. In either case, I’m frustrated by the awful user experience. Don’t they care about their customers?

When’s the last time you looked at your association website on a mobile phone? Hopefully, it was a good experience because, according to technology research firm Gartner, by 2013 more people will access websites with mobile phones than with desktop computers.

You’ll see evidence of this trend if you look at your website’s analytics and note the different browsers, operating systems, and screen resolutions used by visitors. Bear in mind, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, the numbers may reflect the cold reality that your mobile users have tried and given up on your site.

Members increasingly want your association in their pocket. When they’re not at a desktop computer, they want to find and read what they need, look up other members’ contact info, register for events, attend webinars, and participate in online community discussions.

If your website is difficult to navigate on mobile phones, if images or pages don’t load, or if users have to scroll or zoom excessively to view content, you have a big problem. It looks like you don’t care.

Read more about responsive design websites at the Avectra blog.

Is Your Association the Online Hub for Ideas?

Museums and associations, they’re more alike than you think.

  • Nonprofit mission-driven membership institutions governed by member boards
  • Engaging audiences through education
  • Traditional and hierarchic cultures
  • Professional staff siloed in departments
  • Risk-averse and slow-moving
  • Striving to remain meaningful to a growing younger market

While volunteering in two different museums, I overheard many staff conversations: they worry about the same things we do. When I read the blogs of museum professionals, I’m struck by how much we’re wrestling with some of the same issues.

Many museums are experimenting with new ways to engage with visitors and the public — fun short-term initiatives, like the New Museum’s visitor tweet reviews, and bold long-term steps, like the Walker Art Center’s new website.
 
The online museum community has been raving about the Walker’s new site, calling it “a game-changer” and “a potential paradigm shift for institutional websites.” What’s the big deal? And what can associations borrow from their approach?

Engagement catalyst

Like most museums, the Walker’s website was focused primarily on providing information about their collections, exhibits and membership. It was all about the Walker. Now the site is, in their words, “an online hub for ideas about contemporary art and culture, both inside the Walker and beyond.” They busted through their physical walls to start a conversation in the online world, where they engage not only those who might visit the museum in Minneapolis, but anyone interested in contemporary art and culture.

Please read the rest of this post about websites as industry hubs at the Avectra blog.

A Day at the Tour: Social Media Failure, Outrage & Frustration

If you’re one of my Facebook or Twitter friends, you know I love the Tour de France. You probably also noticed how angry I am about ESPN’s Michael Smith laughing online and during his show, Around the Horn, about two cyclists being hit hard by a car on Sunday during stage 9 of the Tour. You can see how hard in the video shown on Dutch TV. No Dutch is required to know what the commentators are saying.

My friend Danielle Hatfield noticed my anger. She also recognized Smith’s behavior as a social media failure for ESPN. Michael Smith tweets as an ESPN reporter. Whether he knows it or not, he represents ESPN online. Danielle’s post, ESPN: When Your Brand Representatives Become a Liability, dives into this further.

How it all began

Here are the tweets Smith sent out to the world on Monday. They have been deleted from his Twitter account. My earlier screen captures can be seen on Danielle’s blog:

  • “For real, am I wrong for laughing at that Tour de France crash? Can’t get over the driver speeding off as if he didn’t know he hit someone!”
  • “I’m sorry that crash is hilarious. Every. Time.”
  • “It had been far too long since I’d angered an entire community. Today I’ve managed offend cyclists everywhere. Guess what? It’s still funny.”

That is how a man with 95,713 followers on Twitter replies publicly when he sees a car at high speed hitting two cyclists, one of whom, Johnny Hoogerland, flew through the air, landed in a barb wire fence and got 33 stitches later that night.

Eben Oliver Weiss at Bicycling magazine summed up the situation: “The true courageous athletes are picking themselves up off the pavement after hitting the road at 25 to 35 miles per hour and finishing a 140 mile ride. Not for high paying endorsements or lucrative contracts, but a true love of a sport and the desire to be there for their team mates.”

Why oh why

You’d think ESPN would love those kinds of heroics. How could Smith be so insensitive? His derision is easily explained. Cycling doesn’t “rate” as a sport in his mind and in the mind of many Americans.

  • Cycling is too European, despite American success. American teams and cyclists are some of the best in the world. Over the last several years the Tour of California has become one of cycling’s premier events attracting the world’s best teams.
  • Cycling is boring. Lots of guys ride in a pack all day and then sprint the last 100 yards to the finish. I used to think baseball was boring, until I understood all its nuances. There’s a lot more to cycling than a novice eye picks up: strategy, history, traditions, unwritten rules, points competitions, specialties, personalities, teamwork, athleticism, grit, courage, heroes and villains.

Maybe Smith doesn’t like cyclists in their spandex outfits on expensive bikes taking up the road. Every community has its share of rude holier-than-thou jerks, including cycling. However, most cyclists are drivers too and they are doing their best to safely share the little road they have.

Backlash

Like any community already feeling maligned and misunderstood, the cycling community responded with shock, then anger. Nancy Toby was the first to rally the troops via her blog and Twitter. The story and anger spread. But the Twitter cycling community is small and currently distracted by the Tour. We’re already spending several hours a day watching and reading about the Tour. How much time is left to fight Michael Smith and his bosses at ESPN?

At first Smith lashed out at his critics saying it wasn’t that serious — they should lighten up or go play in traffic. He proceeded to tweet all day, bantering with his followers about the angry losers. A lot of those tweets seemed to have disappeared too. Many of those “losers” were people who had lost loved ones to cycling accidents or been hit by cars themselves.

Eventually at 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, an apology was issued: “I apologize for my insensitive remarks re: the TdF crash. I recognize my comments were inappropriate given the serious nature of the crash.”

ESPN has muzzled him. But does he really understand the callousness of his remarks and the influence they might have on his followers? Many in the cycling community continue to ask for his removal. He seems sure that won’t happen.

WilliamsR24: “All of these people attempting to ruin ur life and ur the jerk? It was a joke. Just like these people attacking u. A joke.”

MrMichael_Smith: “thanks man. believe me i’m good. not gonna succeed.”

Lessons

So what’s the moral of this story besides “don’t be a turd?”

Train your ambassadors. Your ambassadors are anyone on staff who blogs, tweets, comments or communicates on a public platform. People assume your organization condones their behavior. Show them how to communicate, especially to critics; don’t assume they already know.

Be constantly vigilant. If ESPN’s PR staff had monitored Smith’s tweet stream, you can be sure they would have stepped in and said, hey, buddy, cool it. But Smith kept going down the ugly path, egged on by his fans.

Examine your personal brand. Maybe ESPN approves of Smith’s style? Maybe, like Anheuser-Busch and Miller/Coors, ESPN thinks their entire market is 22 year-old men who are obsessed with boobs and balls (the athletic kind, of course) — a market that likes Smith’s brand of humor. But what happens when your personal brand finds it way far beyond your loyal fans? How will it play in the mainstream press? What would your mother think?

Funny how? I like dry humor, dark humor and making fun of people as much as the next person, but I know when it’s gone too far. Even Dennis Miller who skewers people with a scary yet brilliant kind of smug satisfaction knows you must think about the consequences of your humor. When you laugh at a potentially tragic and personal event, like cancer or car accidents, isn’t that crossing a line? I think so, especially when you’re a role model of sorts and your behavior might influence others to have the same cavalier attitude toward life and limb.

Respond sincerely. No one believes Smith’s apology. No one thinks he’s changed his attitude. No one believes ESPN cares. I never had an opinion about ESPN; it was just another sports channel I watched. I was neutral. Now, I’ve lost respect.

Campaigns need many voices or big influence. Does the Twitter cycling community have any real voice or power? I fear it doesn’t unless mainstream journalists or celebrities take up the cause. Lance would have been perfect for this, but he’s compromised and has enough of his own problems. ESPN is betting that after a few days, the passion will die down, the pesky Twitter cyclists will go away and all will be forgotten. That’s a shame. I bet the scorn and distaste for cyclists won’t be forgotten by Smith’s 95,713 followers on Twitter. That’s scary.

Another lost opportunity. Wouldn’t it be something if an influencer did get ESPN’s attention, educated their staff and turned an ugly episode into a positive campaign about road safety or cycling as an affordable and fun way to get and stay fit? Paging Chris Horner!

Update: If you’d like to tell ESPN what you think about Michael Smith’s behavior, go to http://espn.go.com/espn/contact. Thanks!

How to Write for Online Monkey Minds

Does this sound familiar? You settle in to read something online. You first scan the screen, and then begin reading a long paragraph of text. Soon you realize you’re no longer reading; instead you’re thinking about dinner or your draft picks. Click, close tab.

We all do this. Reading on the web is informal, interactive and interruptive.

  • Informal – our family and friends are here, anything goes.
  • Interactive – we are used to ‘talking’ back via comments or feedback buttons.
  • Interruptive – we are easily distracted by email alerts, links, instant messaging, social networks and open tabs.

If we write our online content the same way we write for the printed page, we’ll lose our readers, except for our mothers and a few diehard fans.

Write for scanners, not readers.

We read differently online. I think we all know this intuitively, but it’s also been proven in studies. We scan. In eye-tracking tests 79 percent of users scan any new page they come across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.

We scan in an F-shape: first, horizontally across the top, then horizontally a little lower, and finally vertically down the left side. The photo below shows results of web usability eye-tracking tests. The redder portions are the ‘hot spots’ where most eyeballs land.

Why is this important? If you want to hold your reader’s attention, format your text and write in a way that will do that.

Hook them with headlines.

Headline writing is a skill coveted by print and online writers. Do a Google search on “writing headlines” and you’ll see how much advice is out there on writing headlines for blog posts, articles and marketing copy.

Amidst all the online noise and distractions, we want our headline to hook the reader and draw them into our content. A good headline needs to give a sense of what the reader will get for their time. It provides an ‘information scent.’ It also helps if it’s clever, controversial or promising. If you want to improve your headlines, Copyblogger has oodles of posts on the subject.

Break up your text.

Readers like lists and bullets. They break up the visual monotony of one paragraph after another and make the content more alluring to read.

Lists posts are by far the most popular posts on many blogs. Check out the titles of the most popular articles on Copyblogger’s home page:

  • 8 Bad Habits that Crush Your Creativity
  • Do You Make These 7 Mistakes When You Write?
  • 10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers.

List posts like these promise takeaways in an easy to read package. An uncommitted visitor can scan and digest before deciding to settle in and read.

Readers also like bold subheadings. Subheadings tell the reader what to expect within the text and visually break up the page.

Use short paragraphs and sentences.

Aim for paragraphs that are five lines maximum. It might not always happen, but it’s an ideal to keep in mind.

Keep your sentences short. Use limited punctuation. Parentheses, especially, can cause a break in reader attention.

And my favorite: sentence fragments are okay.

Does it sound like we’re dumbing down writing? Possibly, but what we’re trying to do is appeal to the distracted web reader by making the text visually appealing and conversational – an enjoyable online reading experience.

A few more formatting tips

Left justify your text. Don’t use indented paragraphs.

All of you who grew up with typewriters, stop using two spaces after a period. A period is followed by only one space. Using two spaces is a dead give-away that you’re older and perhaps haven’t kept up with the times. And before you accuse me of ageism, just know that I too had a college prep typing class in my senior year of high school. I adjusted, you can too.

If you have a few lines of quoted text, set them off from the rest of text in block quotes. If you want to add more visual relief, italicize the block quote.

Break up your text with photos or graphics but only where it won’t interrupt the reading flow. Graphics sometimes take longer to load so don’t overdo it or your reader will leave before they even arrive.

Next time, I’ll share guidance on voice, links, trolls, copyright and more.

Do you have any other tips to add?

Writing for the Web series

Fear of Being Stupid and Missing Out

Have you noticed a lot of talk lately about the fear of missing out or the fear of missing, well, everything?

Linda Holmes at NPR’s Monkeysee blog wrote about “the sad, beautiful fact that we’re all going to miss almost everything.” We won’t be as well-read as we wish. We won’t read every blog post in our Reader. We won’t see all the major critics’ top ten films of the year. We won’t get to every art museum or art-filled church on our bucket list. It just won’t happen. Can we cope?

I once had that acquisitive consuming desire to read all the classics. It was an ever expanding list fueled by books about reading that each had their own list. Even though I had a great education, I thought I had too many gaping holes in the classical period, so I embarked on my own education program. Yes, if it’s a Greek or Roman classic, I’ve likely read it. But I petered out on that plan after extending it into the medieval age. Looking back I’m glad I did it but it might explain why I was single for so long.

And then there was my presidential biography period. Inspired by C-SPAN2’s Book TV series (oh be quiet, I hear your snickering), I started with George and made it all the way to Millard before losing interest. Honestly, I’d do that one again, but in a more leisurely random manner. And, since I know you’re dying to ask me, George (#1) is my favorite president.

I’m sure I had other reading binges, but I’ve blocked them from my short-term memory, thankfully. I no longer have manias like these, even though I still have that itch to learn, I’m just not as obsessive about it.

Another aspect of this syndrome was described last month by Caterina Fake. She wrote about the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) she saw in the tweets of those at SXSW: what if I’m in the wrong place and missing a good party, session or cool person? “Social media has made us even more aware of the things we are missing out on.” How true that is! Yes, we can read the hashtag archive, but that only makes us hungrier to go next year, and what if we can’t? Oh, cursed fates.

Caterina added this fascinating bit, fascinating to me because I practice yoga and we think about these kind of woowoo things: “To be always filled with craving and desire (also called defilement, affliction) is one of the Three Poisons of Buddhism, called kilesa, and it makes you a slave.” Ouch. I read this and thought about Julie of the Julie/Julia project who cooked her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. When I read Julie’s book, Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, (how freaking obsessive is that?) I kept thinking, is that really (still) enjoyable?

People who are new to Twitter are often overwhelmed and turned off by its fire hose of information. I say, dip into the stream for a bit, float around, chat, share some stories and get out. Come back later in the day if you want another dip. Yeah, treasures and trash floated down the river while you were elsewhere. Relax, or as we say in yoga, chillax, there’s plenty more of it upstream. Enjoy your float.

Even a Small Staff Can Blog

Admit it, you like reading blogs, don’t you? You subscribe by email or RSS feed and you get valuable and interesting content delivered daily to your computer. How convenient! You receive tips and advice, read about hot issues and learn about resources that help you do your job or get ahead in your profession. Wouldn’t your members like that?

A blog provides news, information and thought-provoking ideas – a professional development trifecta. It’s the ultimate content marketing tool – engaging your readers with valuable information that holds their attention and strengthens their loyalty. A blog educates policy-makers, journalists and other influencers about your legislative and regulatory issues. A good blog establishes your association as a thought-leader in your industry.

Google loves blogs and their keyword-rich pages. Because of their dynamic fresh content, blogs rank high in Google indexing. Blog posts are sharable. They’re sent to colleagues via email, or shared on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. Your association’s reach and influence expand via Google and social media platforms.

Blogs are social. Your members participate in the conversation you start by commenting back to you and each other. Blogs have more personality than websites. They have a real person’s voice, or many people’s voices. You can play it straight by providing serious information, and also be entertaining with lighter posts and videos.

Can you manage a blog?

Even a small staff association can manage a blog by publishing repurposed and curated content in addition to original content.

You can get content in several ways:

  • Create original content. Don’t worry, you have access to more content ideas than you’d expect. Trust me, the more you write, the easier it gets.
  • Repurpose existing magazine, newsletter, educational session, blast email and political alert content.
  • Ask members to contribute a monthly post. Look for bright members who want visibility. If they don’t write well, edit their work or outsource the editing. If their writing is hopeless, film them.
  • Ask industry bloggers to contribute monthly guest posts.
  • Outsource content creation to freelance writers.
  • Do a mix of all of the above.

Content can also be collected from other sources, reviewed and curated (filtered) to find the most valuable and interesting posts for your members.

How do you begin?

Start by regularly reading industry blogs to get a feel for the community and issues. Also read social media blogs to learn more about managing and marketing a blog.

Put together a staff team, or a team of members and/or industry thought-leaders overseen by staff, to develop an editorial strategy. Review your communication, marketing, professional development, membership, advocacy and public relations goals. How can your blog help achieve those goals? Don’t operate your blog in a silo. It must be an integral part of all those association programs.

Discuss how you will handle negative or critical comments. Censoring is only an option for extreme cases – spam, libel or vulgarity. Socialfish recently shared an excellent social media response triage flowchart.

Create an editorial calendar so your posts enhance other association efforts.

Always have a full pipeline of posts so you can at least publish weekly.

However, blogs need daily attention. Even if you don’t post daily, someone must review comments and reply back, share your posts and posts from other sources on social media platforms and, ideally, comment on other industry blogs. Like content creation, this can be done by staff or outsourced.

If staff sets the blog’s strategy and calendar, content can be created and collected using a combination of talents. The effort required to oversee this educational, community-building and marketing tool will be well worth it.

(A version of this post was originally published on Splash: Refreshment for Your Small Staff Organization)

 

Open Community Q&A with Lindy and Maddie

open community associations social media onlineI’m taking part in the virtual book tour Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer are doing to explore concepts from Open Community: a little book of big ideas for associations navigating the social web. In this post, Maddie and Lindy answer a few questions I had after reading the book.

So for my readers who haven’t seen the other posts about Open Community, give us a little background.

Lindy: No problem. Let’s start with the definition. Your Open Community is your people who are bonded by what your organization represents and care enough to talk to each other (hopefully about you!) online. Connecting with and supporting your Open Community is really important, because if you don’t, someone else will.

Maddie: We decided to write Open Community as a way to address the frustrations association executives have been sharing with us, and to redirect their thinking about using social tools to build community online. There’s a lot of talk about how social media changes things outside the organization. This book is about how it changes things INSIDE the organization.

What can associations learn from listening (social media monitoring) that will help them build their online community?

Maddie: Great first question. “If you do nothing else, listen and respond.” That’s a title of one of the sections in the book, and it’s really the essence of using social media.

Lindy: Listening helps you see where people are gathering online to talk about your organization or your industry. You’ll get a sense for how your stakeholders feel comfortable engaging with one another. You’ll see who’s joining, who’s contributing, who’s especially outspoken, who’s wearing the leadership mantle. You can also pay attention to the topics that are resonating with your open community. In our experience, your open community can be a great sounding board for emerging issues–you can really get ahead of the curve when you’re paying attention to the thought leaders in online social spaces.

Let’s pretend. I’m a CEO and I’m trying to figure out who on staff is the best person to drive the building and nurturing of an online community. What are some of the characteristics I should look for? Oh, rest assured, I won’t just add this to the staffer’s plate, we’ll do some reshuffling of responsibilities.

Maddie: What an association needs is what we describe as “skill sets for a social organization” – listening, curation, conversation, social etiquette, facilitating and mediating, and collaboration.  (We talk in the book about the specifics of these). For some orgs, a great individual community manager will have all of these abilities. For others, a team might work just as well, and for yet others, every single person in the organization will do the work of community building and management.

Lindy: We also talk in the book about the role a community manager needs to play in the organization. You need someone who is willing to be down in the trenches doing a lot of daily grunt work. Listening isn’t glamorous. Tracking Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and other outposts isn’t glamorous. Doing editorial calendars and posting short-form content isn’t glamorous. But the person also needs to be respected and supported by senior staff, because as community manager, they will be helping senior executives make meaning out of the open community on a strategic level as well.

What do you think about unleashing staff personalities, if they’re willing? Showing a face and personality to the world, rather than just an institutional logo?

Lindy: “People interact with people, not organizations.” That’s another section title in the book.

Maddie: It’s so true. How weird is it to tweet with a company logo? There’s a dominant culture online, and that culture celebrates the individual. Also, it’s harder to criticize (and easier to praise) an organization when you’re Twitter pals with half the staff.

Lindy: Right. Would you wear a logo over your face at your Annual Meeting? LOL. I’m enjoying that mental picture.

But seriously, associations need to strike the right balance between celebrating the individual and being clear about the brand. And there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. It all comes down to making good hiring choices, and then trusting your staff to work towards the goals of the organization.

How can blogs help build community? Why do you think so many associations are hesitant to start a blog?

Maddie: In the online ecosystem, we talk about the organization having a homebase and outposts. A homebase has some defining characteristics, including frequent updates, openness, and shareability. Blogs make a great homebase.

I think there are a lot of obstacles to blogging that associations find difficult to overcome. Resources are one–blogging is a big, ongoing commitment, and if you can’t commit the resources to build a dynamic blogging site, then you’ll fail.

Lindy: Yep. Resources is what we hear the most. But to be honest, I think that’s just a convenient excuse. If I don’t really understand the benefits of blogging as a web publishing model for my association, then I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. And I’m busy, so that must mean there’s not time for blogging. Here’s the thing though. Most association websites are built to sell. There may be a news component, but selling products, events, and membership are the focus. That kind of website is great for someone who doesn’t know you well, but for your open community, you need something different. Something more. You need a real homebase.

I used to work with builders and contractors, many of whom spent most of the day on a construction site, not in front of a computer. There are probably many professions like this where the office might be the front seat during the day and the kitchen table at night. Are these members ready for online communities?

Maddie: Don’t ask us. Ask the members. And listen. Like we said before, the work of social media monitoring will give you a good idea of whether your members are interacting online.

Lindy: And these days, when access to the mobile web is so prevalent, you might be surprised by what you find. But it has to be worth accessing on-the-go. In the book, we ask “What’s your association’s social object?” If you have a social object–content that inspires social interaction–that your members need at the construction site or at the kitchen table in the evening, than you should be able to build community around those social objects.

I liked your idea that citizens (non-members) have much to give to a community and shouldn’t be left out. Many associations think “members-only” is a benefit to brag about. What are the advantages of building an open community rather than a members-only community, for example, closed LinkedIn and Facebook groups or private communities.

Maddie: I’m a big believer in the power of the periphery. The fourth chapter of the book is titled “Open Community Means Empowering the Periphery” which is all about paying attention to new voices.  Organizations are used to knowing where the power is–namely within traditional staff hierarchies or volunteer committee structures–but in the age of the social web, some influencers might be operating completely outside those structures.

Lindy: Right. And part of that chapter is “Who belongs? It’s your open community’s call.” That can go both ways. We’ve seen member-only communities thrive, precisely because they are limited to a group of people who prefer to speak amongst themselves. But we feel it’s imperative that organizations engage outside of those member-only communities. Engaging the periphery means engaging with future members, sure, but also with thought leaders from outside your industry who might just share an idea that changes your members’ lives forever.

Huh. Such a big idea for such a little book. A note for my readers — I’ll be helping Maddie and Lindy gather stories that illustrate open community in action at associations. If you have stories to share, please let me know so I can write about it and make you and your organization look really smart and fabulous.