Have Associations Utilized Social Media Power To Acquiring New Members?

If Not, Why Haven’t They?

You don’t get a second chance for first impression, that’s just crucial for everything we do in today’s business world.  For associations, new member inquiry is the first point of contact and should be treated like prospect clients, prompt response with clear instructions on what’s offered through membership and the efficient process for membership application; most associations have these information on their site and probably thinking that’s enough; sometimes even when you do contact them either via voicemail or email, you are still being directed to the site like you haven’t tried yet.  What really counts is the way associations interact with customers/clients, with the power of social media,  there is no place to hide your customer satisfaction index.  After reading Ellen Naylor’s article “Will Associations Go the Way of Print Media“, I feel the urge sharing my own experience with associations in my profession–information research, hopefully it’ll be lessons learned for associations going forward.

Back in March, when I was looking at few associations to join to keeping my skills current as well as expanding my network of contacts, I heard on LinkedIn that AIIM was running a promotion “Name Your Price” to help those impacted by economic downturn–either in-transition, or unemployed,  to upgrade skills, to network with peers, to obtain industry/market knowledge; all at a price you think you can afford.   I joined right away through LinkedIn, they provide a toll-free number to call and make sure I speak to real person, it was done within 5 minutes.  I think this is a fantastic idea, not only do they care,  they also act quickly to share our pain.  I wanted to find out how other associations have been doing to help our professionals, so I contacted SCIP and SLA (note: since I hadn’t thought of being Independent, so I didn’t consider AIIP, but they should be a good example to benchmark in the future) and there started my interesting (thankfully, short) journey.

I emailed and phoned the their headquarters, no answer for two days. Did it again, another week passed by.  I decided to go after local chapters, finally Jennifer Burns (@jennifereh, and I do appreciate her help), President-Elect at SLA Toronto 2010 Board, got back to me with regards different membership level, there was special for unemployed category for $35/year.  This is not bad but it took me over a week to track them down, fill out the form and fax !! It cannot be done electronically, only membership renewal is online; please don’t ask me why.  I vote for AIIM the winner in this competition, they’ve won over my loyalty.  Ironically SCIP is the first one dropped out the race given the lack of communications and poor customer support, as for SLA I had to go through local chapter, then report back to headquarter.  The whole process was not seamless, and it involved more people than it should be.  AIIM is on LinkedIn answering my questions immediately, and on Twitter to show their support.  It’s just excellent !

AIIM had another “Name Your Price” promotion in June for their Certificate Program, which usually costs lot more.  As I was writing this post, I DM Atle Skjekkeland (@skjekkeland), Vice President, Professional Development at AIIM, asking if he can provide me with numbers on how successful was the promotions using the power of social media, within two hours I got this:

“We got 221 new professional members averaging $40 per order where normal price is $125, for IOA Information Organization and Access), we received 160 orders averaging $115 per person.  The Standard price was $600 for members and $750 for non-members.  Each campaign lasted 1day with 2-3 days to promote.”

Not only was I impressed with the speed of response but also how effectively operates Mr. Skjekkeland’s team is.  It’s the best practice of operations in this exercise and people will make wise decision to stay if associations care enough to show them first.

Now that I have positive experience with AIIM started from social media, will I be their ambassador to refer other professions, will I spread the word if I know good things is happening at AIIM?  You bet.

So if social media can help associations reach broader audience, provide better services, ultimately generate more revenue, why haven’t they utilized the power?

Value of True Research

Some of you may have read my article in The Source Newsletter, “Research is Research, No Matter What”, I know information is still being valued but not marketed in an appropriate way, that too often many CI Practitioners , Information Professionals out there feel the frustration every single day.

As I branch out into recruitment research recently, I do what I normally do in business research–networking first.  I network with recruiters and researchers, and in this industry, most recruiters do research themselves because either they can’t justify the cost having dedicated researcher/sourcer;  or they simply feel it’s not that hard to do.  True, not hard to do but not easy to do a good job either.

Outsourcing no doubt has become one of the popular solutions for business to be cost effective, recruitment research is no exception; for this, India is on the radar and seems to be the favourite go-to place.  A technical recruiter (let’s call him John) I got to know lately is strongly convinced that he can have someone down there run the search and generate names for merely $7 an hour, how cost effective is that !  Well, wait until you hear the whole story.

John uses the India outsourcer example, said to me many times during our phone conversations and face-to-face meetings that, “Anyone can use Boolean strings do research” (here we go again, like everyone knows CI, everyone knows social media, blah blah blah), I know, you sourcing masters/gurus out there are pulling your hair now, yet I had to bite my tongue because; (1) he has more than 10 years of recruiting experience where I am only 6 months into recruitment researching/direct sourcing, and I know “experience speaks”, (2) I am  partnering with him on the search, so I listened attentively, smiling, nodding but not agreeing.

The result?  Total 28 names for 3 hours of work, with unverified information, only 2 names seemed interested enough to make calls.  Luckily John is a smart guy and quickly learned this is not going to fly anywhere, so he turned to me and said “I need more than that, someone can pre-screen and prequalify the candidates for me.”

I’m already doing that ! I provided him with 10 names in 2 hours and they are all bang on !! The reason?  I’m a Research Professional, it’ll take 15 hours for that India outsourcer to come up with this, and I am not counting the back and forth communications; in the end the monetary cost is about the same but time is something businesses can’t afford to lose in today’s competitive world.

Technology and internet make our work easier and faster, but it doesn’t guarantee better without human intellectual.  Outsource is not the ultimate solution, India certainly is not the ultimate destination either, I’ve seen it firsthand happened in management consulting/business world, now I’ve heard it’s happening in recruiting industry, no need to name the companies already done so but trust me on this one.

As Research Professional, I know how to filer mass amount of information and get the most critical pieces for your puzzle;  the value I bring to the table is, understand  the objectives and strategic directions of your business to provide necessary information for decision making.  I save your precious time which you can spend on other important tasks.

I hope many people would agree with me the value of research and are with me.

Hello and Welcome !

This is it.  My first blog that I’ve been thinking for quite some time now.

Being an Information Professional and somewhat Perfectionist (those who don’t always agree the way I work), I take it as the same approach of planning a research project; from request intake to data collection to synthesis & analysis and finally disseminate it.  I focus as much on the process of translating Information to Intelligence turn into Knowledge, as the same of Result impacting the bottom line decision, UNTIL I read Stephen Abram’s June column in Information Outlook “Blogging as Special Librarian” (fulltext document download) and his advice to new blogger learning the ropes including; don’t take yourself too seriously and shorter is better, phew, what a big relief to me.  Thanks Stephen !

So I borrow Nike’s slogan “Just do it” to start with, here I’ll share about things I’ve learned so far and will learn with fresh eyes (with the help from my kids) on the journey of information discovery.

Hope you’ll enjoy too and thanks for reading !