Create communities - but ONLINE

Social communities give your organization a vital method for increasing member engagement. They empower your membership by encouraging them to take a more active role in your organization and rewarding them for doing so.

Rather than using a social community to simply push out news at an audience, encourage members to provide input on the content being shared. Make it easy for them to create their own discussions about topics that are important to your organization by allowing them access to communication tools and forums. If you find that they don’t speak up organically, create some momentum by getting involved yourself, starting discussions and making posts. By addressing your members in a social community where they can easily respond and even lead the discussion, you’ll increase their sense of participation.

One way to spur conversation is to take advantage of status updates and wall posts. As an organization leader, you should be posting status updates fairly regularly. Three times a week is a good number – it shows you’re engaged with the community yourself, but it’s not overwhelming to the point of being noise. Your members’ status updates provide you with a great opportunity to start conversations. By responding to what’s on their mind, you’re showing them that someone is listening and that increases their sense of community.

Another way to increase member engagement is by being personal. One relatively harmless way to do that is to upload some photos. Photo galleries give you a perfect opportunity as an administrator to add some personality to your profile. They show that you’re a real person, not a faceless organization, and by adding your own photos, you’ll set an example for your members, who will be eager to add photos of their own to their profiles.

This kind of sharing of information is exactly what you want to engender in your membership. The more they know about each other, the stronger the sense of community. When member profiles have an activity stream, they can easily keep up with what their peers are doing. Activity streams tell a member when one of their friends has posted new content or replied to a discussion, but their potential for viral marketing is great. For instance, if one member posts information about an upcoming event and all of their connections learn about it through that member, they’ll be more likely to check out the event themselves.

It’s also important to make content shareable. Content that is interesting or fun will be shared more widely than a bland mission statement. This applies to organizations of any size or focus. Providing a list of copy-heavy pages is not going to help reach new targets because nobody is excited to share boring content. Be creative and understand that humor, visual appeal, and brevity all increase your chances of having your content move.

A short video can convey a lot of information about an organization and its culture. By creating content with sharing in mind, you’re able to extend its reach significantly and build memorable connections between members.

Finally, you want your members to have a sense of investment in the community. One way to promote this is to allow them to organize themselves into their own interest groups. You may want to start a few of these or delegate that task to someone, but once members know that they are easily able to form their own discussion groups, they’ll jump at the opportunity.

A successful social community all comes down to building meaningful relationships. With real content, genuine intent, a little personality and the right tools, your community will build itself.

If you’re involved in managing your organization’s online social presence using a tool such as Facebook or the MemberClicks Social Community, you’ve probably asked yourself questions like:

• When should we post? And how often?
• Are there certain words or content that will generate more responses?
• When are members engaging with our content?

That’s why we’ve researched the issue and compiled these tips to help your posting efforts.

1. Post Length: Short And Sweet
Research shows that there is a strong negative correlation between post length and engagement, indicating that the longer the post length, the less engaging readers find it. This supports the traditional best practice that concise copy increases readability and comprehension. Consider this – posts that are between one and eighty characters in length have, on average, a 27% higher engagement rate!

2. Don’t Use URL Shorteners
Though a necessity on a service like Twitter, URL shorteners actually lead to less engagement. Research reveals that engagement rates are three times higher for posts that use a full-length URL. Why is this? It’s because URLs often give people valuable insights into the nature of the link. For instance, the link http://www.memberclicks.com/ security will lead a reader to think that the destination site is owned by MemberClicks and it’s probably related to security, whereas http://tinyurl.com/aBcD tells them nothing. Readers find that context valuable.

3. Best Time To Post
Most posts are made during business hours – between 10 AM and 4 PM. But research indicates that if you post outside of business hours, either early in the morning or later in the afternoon and evening, you’ll have a 20% higher engagement rate. That’s because posts made during those hours appear near the top of readers’ news feeds and activity streams at times when they are more likely to be browsing. Don’t post during the day just because that’s when you’re at work – write posts beforehand and schedule a time to post them later for maximum impact.

4. Best Day To Post
Generally speaking, people are more likely to be reading your posts when they don’t want to be working. Studies indicate that posts made on Thursday and Friday lead to engagement rates that are 18% higher than other days of the week for this very reason. This varies a little by industry, but in general those two days lead to the highest level of engagement. The next best day to post is Sunday, likely due to readers picking up content first thing Monday morning. But be careful about posting on the weekend – Saturday posts lead to the lowest level of engagement. Stick to the very beginning and end of the work week, with perhaps one midweek post to keep readers engaged.

5. Tell Them What You Want
Finally, if you’re trying to increase engagement, be upfront about it. Ask people to “like” you on Facebook. Request feedback to your posts. Ask them to “post” or “comment” or “tell” you something. Research indicates that outright requests like this are the most effective means of soliciting participation. And if you are asking them to do something, be sure to ask the question at the end of the post instead of leading with it. Posts that end with a question have a 15% higher engagement rate than those that have one in the beginning or middle.

As social networks increasingly become key components for communication between organizations and their members, it’s vital that you understand what drives engagement. These tips should help you maximize your posts and increase member engagement.

Email newsletters are a great tool for distributing news and information to your members. MemberClicks has been sending out our monthly newsletter to customers since 2004, so we picked our own brains to come up with some good tips we rely on to deliver compelling content to our customers. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way towards building a base of regular readers.

1. Create Relevant Subject Lines
It’s often treated like an afterthought, but the subject line is one of the most important components of any email newsletter. It’s the first thing a reader sees when they open their inbox, and if it doesn’t grab their attention, it’s likely to cause them to delete the email or, even worse, mark it as spam. Use words that draw from or describe your content when forming your subject line. Avoid using bland, generic subject lines like “March Newsletter.” If you have branded your newsletter, you can include the newsletter name, but bolster that with a very brief description of the issue’s content. Keep in mind that some email clients will cut off long subject lines, and users may not be able to see all of them. Use active and interesting phrases or even summarize your top content in the subject line, and you’re guaranteed to grab your reader’s attention.

 
2. Balance Length With Frequency
The purpose and content of your newsletter should help you determine how often you send it out. While some newsletters go out daily, this is rare, and you should be careful not to send out your newsletter too often to keep interest high. You should use the frequency with which you send your newsletter to determine how much content to include with it. In general, the more frequent the newsletter is sent, the less content you should include. A weekly newsletter should have shorter, more concise content than a monthly newsletter. By balancing the length of content with the frequency with which it’s sent, you can keep readers interested. But no matter how often you send out a newsletter, you don’t want to send too much content. What “too much” means depends on your organization and your content to some extent, but since readers are reading your content in an email client along with their other emails, you should aim to keep it brief if you want to keep their attention.

3. Decide Between HTML And Text
While plain text newsletters are still regularly sent, you should consider whether an HTML version of your content would capture interest. Designing HTML newsletters can be tricky due to the many inconsistencies between different email programs, but it can also add a visual touch that makes your content more attractive and easier to read. If you decide to create an HTML version, always create an web page version and include a prominent link to it at the top of your newsletter. Often, email clients will have images turned off by default, so when your nicely-designed HTML newsletter reaches the reader, they’ll see nothing but your text and a lot of empty boxes. You can alleviate this issue by hosting your newsletter on a web page, so that readers can read the newsletter in their browser instead of their email client. If you have an elaborate design, the only way to display it consistently across all the
different email and webmail solutions out there may be to make the entire newsletter an image. However, this is risky, as you run into the possibility that readers won’t see your content at all if they can’t see images. Again, you can alleviate this by including a prominent link to a web page version of your content.

 
4. Make It Scannable
When it comes to your content itself, you not only want it to be brief and to-the-point, but it should be easily scannable as well. Many people will glance through an email, stopping only to read the highlighted portions of text in order to get a feel for the content. Make sure you use catchy headlines that adequately convey the content of each story. Keep paragraphs short – 5 sentences or so is a good guideline. Use bullet points and lists when applicable to segment out your content and make it easier to read. Make your text snappy and put key points in a bold or italic font. Most importantly, try to condense as much of your content as possible into a small space – you don’t want to bore your readers by going on too long or repeating yourself.

5. Optimize For The Preview Pane
Finally, keep in mind that many people use email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird that show the emails in a “preview” pane. Many people use the preview pane exclusively to read their emails, never opening them full-size. To optimize for the preview pane, you want to use a dynamic width or keep your fixed width to a small size, so it can be seen entirely within the preview pane. Use a table of contents at the top of the page to quickly summarize your content so that readers can jump to articles of interest. And place your most important, compelling content as the first story – you want to grab the reader’s attention with it as soon as the email appears.

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Technology can be intimidating. We understand that here at MemberClicks. And the less people you have on staff to manage your data, the more intimidating it can be.

But before you even start looking at vendors and developers, there’s one big question: custom solutions or software-as-a-service (SaaS).

Custom solutions involve hiring a developer (or team of developers) to put together a program or database to keep track of your information. Software-as-a-Service involves vendors or providers licensing a piece of software to your organization and often they house your data on their own servers. Many are contract-based or monthly-based.

For the sake of comparison, I’ve compiled a list of things small-staff associations should keep in mind regarding each option.

Updates

• Many SaaS vendors include updates free of charge or for a small fee. The upgrades are released to all customers, and don’t require a custom job for your organization.
• A custom software solution usually doesn’t include upgrades — and they have to be created from scratch. Getting a custom solution upgraded often entails more time and money than your organization may be willing to spend.

Compatibility

• SaaS functions “in the cloud” — that is, your organization’s data is based in the Web. If you upgrade your Windows or Mac software, you won’t have to upgrade your data management solution along with it.
• Custom solutions are often tailored for just one (or a few) versions of Windows or Macintosh. Every program has a life cycle, and when your Windows or Mac software expires, your custom program probably won’t be far behind.

Support

• Your SaaS vendor will probably be around for quite a long time — and often, support is included or very affordable.
• Who’s to say your custom developer will always be around? Technology changes, so make sure your developer is ready to keep up with your needs.

Cost

• Research, development, design — all are included with a SaaS vendor because they serve so many different organizations. The vendor will be able to give you the lowest possible quote thanks to economies of scale.
• Your organization will probably have to pay for the entire project from start to finish, including development and programming costs.

It should go without saying, but every organization’s needs are different. Having a custom solution developed for your organization may be the right option, but there are already so many SaaS vendors out there. Chances are, one of them will be the right fit for your organization.

I’m a sucker for blog posts and articles that are written in list form. I think they’re more easily digestible. Additionally, I love any tips to make my workday go more smoothly – aren’t we all?

We work with hundreds and hundreds of small-staff association executives, and we’ve heard from them how important it is to be as productive as possible, how important it is for them to be able to streamline their duties, how difficult it can be to manage their memberships with just a handful of employees.

There really just aren’t enough hours in the day!

With that in mind, here are a few tips to increase productivity and make the most of your precious hours during the day.

1. Schedule a time for e-mail. We can get sucked into answering tons of e-mails and, before we know it, we’ve lost hours of our workday. By scheduling a time for checking our e-mail — for instance, just before lunch — we can avoid the timesuck that often comes with answering important messages. If you wait until just before lunch to check it, you’ll be more anxious to get to your midday break, and, likely, get through the e-mails more quickly.

2. Don’t have a pointless meeting, and don’t let them last for hours on end. How many times have you left a two-hour long meeting only to say, “what just happened?” Meetings are often just a formality, and we could often get the same things accomplished over just e-mail. Don’t have a meeting unless it’s truly necessary.

3. Use an egg timer or online stopwatch. These tools give us tangible deadlines for important tasks, and often we stay more focused when we set a finite time for projects. Additionally, those tangible deadlines are usually the ones we actually adhere to. Whether you set it for yourself or it comes from your boss, deadlines keep us on our toes.

4. Make a to-do list. Research has shown again and again that people who create lists are happier and healthier. Plus, there’s nothing like the feeling of crossing a task off your to-do list. (Full disclosure: I sometimes retroactively add tasks to my list just so I can cross them off. Anal retentive much?) Lists help us prioritize our days, weeks and months.

5. Stop multitasking! Our shiny new iPhones may be able to effortlessly switch from task to task, but that doesn’t mean our brains can do it. Again, research continues to prove that multitasking absolutely kills our productivity. We flit from task to task without really accomplishing anything. So set a timer, get to it and then cross the item off your list.

6. Learn how to say no. Many of us have this inane idea that we have to please everyone, all the time, or we’re failures … which of course, is absolutely ridiculous. If someone asks you to do something (that doesn’t have an immediate deadline) and you just don’t have time for it that day, realize that saying no, delegating or outsourcing it is perfectly acceptable.

And remember, no matter how many or how few staff members you have, we all need time to recharge and have a life outside of work. Whether it’s grabbing a mid-week pedicure, exercising a few times a week, catching up with an old friend for dinner or curling up with the latest from your Netflix queue, don’t forget to take (at least) a few hours each week to breathe.