by Chris Micklos | Jan 12, 2016 | Online Strategy, Content, Creatives
MYTH: There are very few ways to reach, recruit, and engage association members online; and you can reach only a tiny fraction of your stakeholders that way, compared to traditional avenues like a hard-copy newsletter, snail mail, etc. FACT: The ability to reach, recruit, and engage association members online–or, in other words, through your connected online community–is becoming more efficient and effective every day, and the wide range of tools and tactics at your disposal means that you can radically improve your member engagement program. Resistance is futile. I began working with associations, advocacy groups, and member-based organizations during the very early days of the dramatic rise of Web-based marketing, advertising, and communications. And in my experience, the most painful—and most resisted!—transition that organizations like yours have gone through has been the transition from traditional member communications to digital member communications. But the bottom line is this: Traditional member communication is more expensive. And… Traditional member communication is less effective. AND… Traditional member communication is less likely to result in action. Worse still, traditional member communication appeals to yesterday’s stakeholders, activists, and leaders in your organization…and completely misses the boat when it comes to the stakeholders, activists, and leaders of tomorrow. And if you don’t start connecting with those folks soon, you may lose them. Intuitively, association leaders generally understand this, and yet time after time I have heard from clients and partners in this market space the following rejoinders to my pleas to move beyond these antiquated methods: “But ALL our members open our mail automatically when they see it’s from us.” “When our members get...
by Glenn Chung | Aug 7, 2015 | Online Strategy, Content, Creatives
My kids have no idea who Waldo is. But I sure remember him. I also remember the headache I’d get after five minutes of searching for his little red-and-white scarf and cap in a sea of tiny faces. Oftentimes, I’d give up, leaving poor Waldo lost on the page. Connecting with your members can sometimes feel like a game of Where’s Waldo. But what if I told you there were now online tools that were the equivalent of putting a big red circle around Waldo? Let’s explore that concept a bit with a question: Where are you right now and what are you doing? If you answered “In Detroit, attending a major associations conference,” you should probably look to see if there’s a gigantic red circle around you. Well, there probably isn’t (and if there is we didn’t put it there), but in the online world, that circle definitely exists. How were we able to pull this off? The ability to “draw” these circles around specific groups online comes from the melding of big data and online ad platforms. We can now do real-time, location-based online ads, and we’re already seeing very meaningful advances in how finely and how sharply we can target ads. This ability may be the exact reason you’re reading this blog entry right now. Want to have ads show up in just iOS 8 device apps within 5 miles of a specific location? How about only on Android-based Web browsers within a specific zip code? Increasingly, the answer to these and many more questions about time and location targeting is “Yes, we can do that.”...
by Chris Micklos | Jul 23, 2015 | Online Strategy, Content, Creatives
What’s that about not seeing the forest for the trees? When it comes to utilizing Web metrics for an association, advocacy group, or other member-based organization, the available options and interpretations can be confusing, intimidating, and downright overwhelming. The tangled web (no pun intended) of Web metrics readily available these days can make you think that you need a PhD in statistics or a whole team of cyber-analysts to interpret the data. In fact, that has led to a dispiriting trend. On one hand, there is a whole generation of consultants–especially social media “gurus”–who want you to believe that it is so confusing and unintelligible that you must pay them a hefty fee to interpret it and react to it for them. And on the other hand, there is a whole different breed of consultants–primarily agency types–who would have you believe that the glut of available data is so impossible to interpret and react to that you might as well ignore it…and instead take their word for it that their efforts are effective. A recent blog post at associationsnow.com only seems to perpetuate the mythology of the black forest of Web metrics: Don’t be intimated…or fooled. Your association Web metrics matter. While it can certainly be easy to get lost in the wash of available data or to get hung up on metrics that just don’t matter all that much (sex appeal and substance are NOT the same thing), the wonder of Web engagement, Web advocacy, and Web advertising is the ability to use real-time, relevant data to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of your efforts. This is not...
by Glenn Chung | Jul 23, 2015 | Online Strategy, Content, Creatives
The Martian is a major motion picture being released in October, 2015. It stars Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain, among other great actors in a stellar ensemble cast. Before that, The Martian became a New York Times best-selling novel for first-time author Andy Weir. And before that, The Martian was a self-published e-book on Amazon, listed at $0.99 because that is the lowest price Amazon allows authors to charge for their work. The funny thing is, at the same time the e-book was available on Amazon, it was also available FOR FREE on Andy Weir’s personal Web site. Free vs not free… you would think the free version would have been downloaded in bucketfuls, with the Amazon version languishing in obscurity. That’s not what happened. In actuality, the Amazon version of The Martian ended up being paid for and downloaded at a rate ten times higher than the free version of the same e-book. Why? Simple, actually: people just found it easier to get to the Amazon book. A simple search of “The Martian” and a couple of clicks led to Amazon, who in turn made it very easy to pay for and get the e-book. The value of ease of access and ease of acquisition swamped out the $0.99 cost of the e-book. This most likely would have been the case had the e-book been $1.99, or even $2.99. As I thought about this story, the lessons for membership-based organizations were not lost on me. Members, like anyone else, value their time and guard it jealously. In particular, members interact with online properties – from news organizations, shopping sites, and your...
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