Tag: Lynn Morton

Plays Well With Others: Tips

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

Layla, Lynn, and Elizabeth’s ninja tips for engaging your audiences:

General

  • Don’t auto-post everything to everywhere, but do learn how to selectively auto-post in your chosen platforms.
  • Check out the administrative interface of every platform you use – you’d be surprised at how much information is available on things like which links got clicked, who likes you, what they’re doing, etc.
  • Use URL shorteners and your regular web analytics tool to track how effective your posts are. (Are people clicking on what you want them to click on?)
  • When people contact you (@ replies, direct messages, posts to your FB page’s wall), respond.
  • Don’t forget about direct mail, which is still the most effective way to reach people, and email, which is still the most effective online way to reach people.
  • Figure out ways to reward your most ardent supporters, and make sure they’re ways that are meaningful to them.
  • Don’t ask LESS of social media in regards to ROI than your other communications channels…but don’t ask MORE, either.
  • Make sure more than one person in your organization knows something about your chosen tools – you don’t want everything to come to a screeching halt if s/he chooses to leave.
  • Dial back your efforts on the platforms that aren’t helping you meet you goals, so you can dial up your efforts on those that are.
  • Regularly revisit your goals to ensure your tools and efforts are still meeting your needs.
  • Follow thought leaders to keep up on the newest tools and new features your existing tools may have added.
  • Promote your top social media outlets in your e-mail signatures and business cards to drive visits and use.
  • Tag your items using searchable keywords and include those in descriptions whenever possible. That’s how people will find your stuff online.

Twitter

  • Understand Twitter’s #hashtag power – they spread your words far beyond your followers – and use a tool to track how far your tweets spread.
  • Use general hashtags (#nonprofit, #marketing) to help your tweets get more exposure.
  • BUT don’t use more than 2-3 hashtags per tweet.
  • Use a real picture of yourself for a personal account and a logo for a branded account.
  • If it’s taken you a while to respond, RT the original tweet in your response. It will help give the person you are responding to context.
  • Check the trending topics every time you log into to Twitter to see if there are any ties you can make to the association’s content.
  • Thank those from your target market (i.e. potential or current members) for following you.
  • Create a general hashtag for the profession or trade and use it religiously when you have any content that relates to the profession. Avoid weird spellings or shortenings if possible to make it easier for them to appear in Twitter searches.
  • Identify in the Twitter bio which employee(s) monitor the Twitter account to give others a sense of who they are talking with.
  • Don’t forget to brand your Twitter background. Use it as an opportunity to inform other Twitter users about your other channels or as a place to promote upcoming events.

 

WOM meme: Consulting

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

I’ve recently been tagged by the geniuses behind SocialFish to participate the Word of Mouth meme on the topic of consulting.

So here’s the meme: Please do a short blog post with an example of how you’ve seen WOM used in your work. Then tag a couple of [association/non-profit] people to do the same.

To quote one of my colleagues at Beaconfire: “If it’s memorable, people will pass it on.”

Consulting – or anything you want to market in the association space for that matter – is all about WOM.

This is coming at a particularly interesting time, because Beaconfire is in the midst of re-examining our strategy for engagement with associations. We’ve always been happy to work with associations, when they’ve come to us. But we recruit staff based on: “Work for a company that’s helping organizations that save the cute, furry animals!” No offense (I worked there for years and loved it), but saving the political scientists? Not as exciting.

But a funny thing happened on the way to saving the cute, furry animals. We realized that, in some ways, associations are much lower drama clients to work with. And while we still want – and need – to do a certain amount of cute, furry animal saving, we’d also like to work with more no drama clients to keep everyone out of the Betty Ford clinic.

So, how does a consulting firm increase the work it does with associations?

You already know the answer: word of mouth.

Getting association business is ALL about relationship and reputation. Those things are built by being in the community, being known to the community, and doing such a fantastic job for members of the community that, when their friends call them up to ask, “Hey, we’re trying to get more strategic about our website and how we use the Internet to reach our members and other constituents. You know anyone good who can help us?” your company’s name is the first thing that pops into their heads.

The tough thing about charitable organizations is that they’re all after the same audience – people who are willing and able to give money to causes – and the same dollars. Because of that, not a whole lot of working together and information sharing. But in the association world, the market for the Association of Accountants does not overlap with the market for the Association of Podiatrists. Hence, collaboration. Information sharing. Community. Word of mouth.

Edited Wednesday, Feb 18 to add: JNott reminds me that I’m also supposed to talk about how consulting is:

Easy: as Vinay reminded me at lunch today, consultants need a niche. Consultants who are successful do something that can be easily summed up in a few words. Consultants who try to be generalists? Generally not so successful.

Sharable: establishing the reputation I talked about above involves sharing your expertise with the association community so that people come to view you as a trusted adviser (thanks for the term, George) rather than “just another vendor trying to sell me something.”

Interesting: well, hell, if you’re not doing good work that produces good results, no one will think what you’re doing is interesting enough to pass your name along when one of their friends calls them up to ask, “Do you know anybody who can do…?”