Alexandria is full of associations and while they all serve a wide variety of industries and individuals, they all have a lot in common. Namely the way they communication with their constituents; or sometimes don’t communicate. I have worked for associations as large at the Mortgage Bankers Association in its golden age when there were departments of ten or more for Marketing Communications, Events, and Education. I have also worked with much smaller associations like the Solar Energy Industry Association who only has a handful of in-house people on their marketing and events team.

Large or small, there are some fundamentals of communication that can be enhanced by using today’s technology strategically:

1. Your members look to you for industry best practices, advocacy, and all around good free information. Share your expertise far and wide. Syndicate through RSS feeds, use every applicable social media outlet for additional exposure, repurpose materials for audiences that want to view asynchronously on their desired media, aggregate and tag information so audiences can find the long tail information, and allow your readers to give feedback that will be used.
2. Events take a lot of effort, so maximize your exposure and inbound marketing during that effort. With some incremental changes to your approach to events, you can expand your “mailing list”, create conversation pre- during- and post-event, and enhance your attendee’s experience while they are at the event or viewing online. Setup social media outlets properly and promote your event and topics well before and after the event itself. Be sure to include a hashtag and how to use it for Twitter followers. Engage your cloud and webinar audiences by allowing participation in session discussion. Include all cross-promotional information in ads, program guides, eblasts, postcards, etc to leverage on- and offline assets. Engage booth visitors and bring them into the variety of ways they can connect online later.
3. There are times when you need to mobilize your members for advocacy, fundraising, participation, or just new educational opportunities. Establish a solid online and social media virtual community that offers value and interaction between members, vendors, and the association for a consistent following. By using an internal and external community approach that is fully integrated using social media APIs, you can go to your constituents where they already do business and aggregate the collective knowledge in one place allowing you to monetize and cross-pollinate the information. Having immediate access to your influencers and influencer toolkits to guide them through your desired actions will transform your discussion community into a well-oiled team of active advocates.

I hope to be presenting “Brand Management through Social Media Channels” at the Meeting Professionals International Mid-Atlantic Conference and Expostion later this year. I am working on the presentation with Linda Hagopian from Hagopian Marketing, a seasoned association marketer. It should be great.