I travel quite a bit in my role, and my first-choice airline is typically Southwest. Among other things, I “LUV” their sense of fun and their customer service. And I really enjoy Spirit, their in-flight magazine. The company’s fun culture comes through loud and clear in its eclectic content mix. Reading the August issue en route to St. Louis yesterday for ASAE’s annual meeting, I came across an article very timely for the association community as we gather to learn and share ideas.
Today’s the first full day of the meeting, and there are lots of tweets, sessions, and expo booths focusing on engaging members in today’s rich social media environment. A lot of what I’ve seen so far seems to focus on how associations can innovate, be creative, and engage members. All fine and good; yet the message that appears to be missing (so far) is the importance and value of listening to members. Not just giving them the latest tools and content…really listening to member conversations. We have so many tools we can use now to “eavesdrop” on those conversations to inform so many aspects of managing our associations, not the least of which are the learning opportunities we offer.
Writer Nicholas Webb, in his Spirit article “Hear Hear: How the best companies are succeeding by listening,” says this:
The days of carefully vetted press releases, a polished brand image, and corporate separatism are over. Also gone are the rampant focus groups and surveys intended to tap customer thought. The transformation has been so complete that companies no longer own their message; rather, the message is shaped by rapidly growing and vociferous online communities. For some businesses, particularly those accustomed to controlling the message, it’s a scary phenomenon; for others, it’s manna from heaven.
Sound familiar? Associations are jumping onto the social media bandwagon in droves; however there are still those having problems letting go of message control and doing more pushing out instead of pulling in. The article highlights what companies like Kodak, Dell, and the U.S. Army are doing to listen to their customers. One thing that really struck me is that one company, Kodak, even established a new position: Chief Listening Officer.
It seems to me that associations spend a lot of time telling members, when they should be spending a lot more time listening. How well does your organization listen to its members? And what could happen if you listen purposefully? Hmmm…here’s a thought: is it a new staff position, or the responsibility of every member of the association’s staff and volunteer leadership? What do you think?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I definitely agree that most associations seem to view social media as a broadcast channel — just another way to push out content and hopefully attract people’s attenion. However, I wonder whether public social media tools (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc) are the best way to engage with members. As a caveat, I work for a company that builds private social networking software for associations, so I’m probably just a little biased
But based on our experience thus far, there are definite advantages to having a “closed” community made of the members and staff of the association. The first is that the closed community tends to result in a better signal to noise ratio; you know that you are dealing with the members of the organization rather than having to separate members from public. The second is that a closed community creates a context in which discussion can be more open than is appropriate for a publicly visible site.
Another factor that comes into play is that public social media tools don’t necessarily have features that are completely aligned with the needs of associations. In particular, our experience is that public social media tools do not provide good content management features and these are often very useful in the association context — for example, most associations will have a number of documents that they would like to share and discuss with members which is a feature supported nicely in a number of private social networking tools.
Thank you for your comments, Terry! I think I’m essentially on the fence concerning use of white-label social networks vs. using public ones such as Facebook and Twitter. I can see advantages both ways. What’s really important, though, is that associations go where their members are, and listen to them there. It could be easier to monitor existing locations rather than get people to start using a new tool. If members aren’t using the public tools yet, they might feel more comfortable getting engaged if they know their conversations are viewable only to the people in their association. Then again, the type of profession/industry, the nature of the conversations, etc., could determine what would work best. There are a lot of considerations, and each association has to carefully examine what will work best for its members. My main point, however, is that associations DO need to do more listening and less telling….
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