Question: With regard to your association, what’s keeping you up at night?
Answer 1: Not gaining new members.
Answer 2: Figuring out how and where to acquire new members.
These aren’t hypothetical examples. They are direct quotes from Marketing General’s 2017 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, which lists new member acquisition as one of the top three priorities for associations.
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Topics:
Millennials,
Marketing,
Associations,
Member Experience,
Online Community
Mentors are a vital part of any industry. Through mentoring, employees get the chance to learn vital skills and increase competency in ways that boost morale and job satisfaction – something that’s improving with technology.
Online mentoring programs have taken the traditional brick-and-mortal experience to a new level, providing anytime, anywhere access to expertise, insights, and perspective that enhance job performance and outcomes. Associations, which are widely-recognized experts in their industries, are stepping up to offer such programs. Many times, mentoring programs even evolve into a key member benefit for professional associations.
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Topics:
Millennials,
Member Communities,
Associations,
Online Community
Some companies naturally attract millennials. They’re the cool ones with foosball tables in their break rooms. But for the rest of the businesses out there, convincing Gen Y that your organization is a great place to work isn’t so easy. If you can’t afford (or don’t want) distracting foosball tables, how do you appeal to young professionals?
The easy answer? Lean on research, including studies and surveys, that flat-out asks millennials what they want.
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Topics:
Communications,
Millennials,
Engagement,
Collaboration Tools,
Online Community
Do you remember sitting at the kiddie table? I do, and it's a memory that brings up mixed feelings. I loved the kiddie table when I was five, but by 14 I was tired of all the screaming children. I wanted to move on to the main table. I imagine you can think of a time when you wanted the same thing.
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Topics:
Millennials,
Associations,
Member Experience,
Marketing Automation,
Online Community
Have you heard of Google’s nap pods? What about Yahoo’s offer of free food for employees? These types of workplace perks are everywhere these days, but they may actually be harming your organization.
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Topics:
Millennials,
Collaboration Tools,
Marketing Automation,
Online Community
71% of American adults think that millennials are selfish. That's according to a recent public opinion survey from Reason-Rupe, and it gives valuable insight into how society views one of the largest generations in history. People look at millennials on their smartphones and tablets and say they're focused on themselves, lacking engagement with other people.
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Topics:
Millennials,
Online Community Management,
Associations,
Online Community
How would you finish this sentence: “Millennials are _____”? Maybe “selfish”? A lot of people might choose “lazy.” How about, “generous”? Didn’t expect that, did you?
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Topics:
Millennials,
Engagement,
Volunteer Management,
Online Community
Every organization has a hierarchy, both on the staff side and on the member/volunteer side. And while the business world has been talking about “flattening” organizations for some time now, the truth is hierarchies are actually a good thing, so we shouldn’t try to get rid of them.
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Topics:
Millennials,
Marketing Automation,
Online Community
Ever since the Millennials started coming into the workforce about 10 years ago, we’ve been hearing a lot of complaints about them. This happens every twenty years, of course – when the new generation hits the scene, the older generations tend to freak out about “kids these days.” You can actually trace these kinds of reactions back for centuries. The older generations always conclude that the new generation is flawed, inappropriate, ill-prepared and generally making things difficult.
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Topics:
Millennials,
Associations,
Marketing Automation,
Online Community
Generations expert (and my co-author and partner) Jamie Notter recently posted this extensive article detailing some numbers research he has been doing around exactly how many Millennials there are. It’s important stuff, so I’m going to interrupt my regular column to point you to it. Here’s an excerpt:
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Topics:
Millennials,
Online Community
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