How associations can use Google+ Pages to create community

When Google+ launches +Pages this fall, associations will have an interesting new way to connect members. This new social operating system has the potential to give you a virtual association community that stays with members wherever they go on the web. Unlike Facebook’s static pages, Google’s +Pages are poised to become a key hub for your members.

Here’s how:

• You start a +Page for your association (when business +Pages launch)
• Encourage your board members, key staff members, editors, and volunteers to start their own +Pages (start now)
• Invite your members to follow the association, leaders, and other members on Google+
• Actively use Google’s +1 feature to publish your association’s web content to your +Page network
• Make sure you have Google +1 buttons on content throughout your website
• Members then see your updates and web content right in their Google+ feed… and if they +1 the content, members of their network will also see it.
• As more and more members connect through Google+, all members benefit as people +1 articles and content from across the web

Bottom line: Google+ will give you and your members the tools to stay in close touch, share ideas, and network all over the web.

Until Google+ introduces business pages, I can’t link to examples. But, start planning now… Google+ is growing faster than expected, and business pages were pulled down because the demand was so high. Once they launch, expect explosive growth.

NOT ON GOOGLE+? Use my link to request your invitation.

Why We Went Virtual

People are often surprised to learn that we converted O’Connell Meier to a virtual firm several years ago. My own mother never could believe that we could manage staff in multiple states and several countries from a home office. After all, she’d seen the fancy offices, complete with four team areas, three conference rooms, 75+ file cabinets, reception, kitchen, etc. How could we successfully leave that infrastructure behind? Why would we want to?

The idea to go virtual came to us back in 2003 when I was virtually managing a team of 125 advertising volunteers for a presidential campaign. This group was meeting deadlines, collaborating seamlessly, and producing terrific work. My in-house employees were doing great work, too…. but they were also wrestling with horrific DC traffic, long commutes, and daycare challenges. Not easy when you work in a deadline-driven business that sometimes requires late nights.  And, we were paying rent roughly equal to the price of a new Hyundai each and every month.

Still, the idea of going completely virtual was scary. Especially as we the online management tools were primitive compared to the tools we have today. Sure, we could email drafts, comps, and proofs back and forth. But how would we really know that people were working? How would we train new team members? What would clients think? Didn’t we need the office for client meetings?

But, when we stepped back, we realized that clients rarely came to our offices. Why should they? They all had great conference rooms, too. And no one could survive at our company if they weren’t dedicated and self-motivated. Plus, we realized that we were already working virtually for our biggest clients… when managing large conference or membership campaigns, we were in constant daily contact with clients from our desktops.

When we launched our social networking company in 2004, we decided to launch virtually. It was a smart start-up move… and the lessons learned very quickly convinced us to take the whole agency virtual. At first, we kept central offices for meetings and training. But, as online tools improved, we eventually left those behind as well. And, despite all our fears (and my Mom’s inability to understand), it was definitely one of the best business decisions we ever made. In future posts, I’ll talk about the tools we use to keep our team working as one cohesive unit… and how those same tools help our clients.

Sensible Social Media Strategy

We recently sent an email out with the subject line “Sensible Social Media Strategy.” The response was overwhelming! Although many associations have integrated social media into their marketing programs, there are still big concerns about results, relevance, and participation. I wanted to share some of the questions we’re hearing over and over:

* How do we get our customers to interact with us?

* How do we use social media to reach beyond our members/supporters?

* Is it worth spending time/money just to communicate with a small subset of our existing audience?

* Who manages content? Marketing or publications staff?

* How do we handle negative comments?

* How do we measure ROI?

* We have a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Now what?

Or to quote Bruce Springsteen “Is there anybody alive out there?” Many groups have invested time and energy but don’t see their members/customers responding.

These questions are coming from seasoned marketing and communications professionals. They aren’t afraid of the technology, and many have led their organizations through the e-marketing explosion of the last decade. Still, coming up with a social media strategy that delivers measurable results is proving to be a bigger challenge than they expected. Here’s what one Vice President had to say:

“If we were promoting a game to young adults there are all kinds of fun things we could do online. But we’re a professional society. Our members are business people. They value the services we provide, but there’s just no way that anyone is going to view our topic as fun.”

Clearly, finding a sensible social media strategy is a challenge for even the most experienced marketers.  In the days and weeks ahead, we’ll be posting a series of short articles and tips designed to share what we’ve learned.

When members don’t renew — what to do?

There are many strategies for keeping members, but, lately I’ve been thinking about the ones you just can’t retain right now. The people who have lost their jobs, small business owners who are barely staying afloat, and people who work at companies that will no longer pay dues. Some were members for years, some just joined recently. How do you handle these past members?

In years past, the answer was obvious. Give them ample warning, then stop their subscriptions, pull the member discounts, and cut off access to any members-only services. The members understood that this was the price of not paying, and, if all went well, they’d rejoin when they got a new job or wanted the conference discount.

I’m not so sure that this is the right answer this time. If your association has a lively online community, people are more likely to feel cast out or shunned when they lose access. And, with the whole economy reeling, they are less likely to feel like it is their own fault. They logically know they didn’t pay dues… but, emotionally? This mess isn’t their fault.

This came to mind because of two stories I heard recently. The first is typical. A small business hit hard times,  had to lay off staff, and cut any non-essential expense. They belong to a small but tight association that they were very actively involved with. In fact, they had turned to the association president for advice about their situation. When dues came up, they couldn’t pay, and the association proceeded to move them to non-member status. This was about 5-years ago and the company is doing very well now (despite the recession). Still, they haven’t rejoined the association.

Contrast that to a small company that was very involved in another small association. They had sponsored events, were regular attendees at events, and involved online. They have been hit hard by the recession and did not renew their membership. This association’s response was very different. First, the Exeecutive Director called to find out why they didn’t renew. They explained the situation. Next, they waited to be cut off. And, they were cut off from some things — access to members-only database and member discounts, for example. So what was the big difference? This association has continued to treat them like a member of the family. Once in a while, they are invited to join a free webinar, they still receive call for proposal emails, and they’re still getting an enewsletter. Just recently, the group created a page on Facebook and asked them to join. Finally, the association leadership continues to check in with them periodically in a no pressure, “how are you doing?” way. Not surprisingly, the company is eager to rejoin this association and plans to as soon as they can.

The first association did absolutely nothing wrong. And, arguably, the second association was being unfair to their paying members by not cutting the past member off completely. And yet… which one do you think will have more members when good times return?

In a research study that agencies love to quote, McGraw Hill  found that firms that keep marketing through a recession gain market share. For associations, keeping your past members close should be a key part of your marketing plan.

More Twitter Contests

More Twitter contests every day! Today, Macheist convinced me to buy their software bundle (12 programs for $39) by giving 25% to charity AND throwing in two additional programs in exchange for following them and tweeting about the deal. And, they promoted forwarding news to a friend by offering an additional 2 programs if a friend signs up.

As more companies turn to Twitter contests, the effectiveness will fall. But, for now, this could be an opportunity for associations and charities to partner with companies. They donate a percentage to your cause as an incentive to help close the sales… and in exchange, perhaps you promote the contest on your site and your Twitter feed.

Explosive growth in texting

The Washington Post reported today that ” U.S. subscribers sent 1 trillion text messages last year, three times the 2007 volume.” Voice minutes went up only 5%. (Article here.)

The implications for consumer marketing are obvious. But how does this trend impact B2B marketing campaigns? We’ll keep watching for winning campaigns.

Build your Twitter audience with contest

I recently saw a Facebook status update from a friend who was retweeting a Twitter contest to win an iPod. I entered — why not — and was prompted to follow the poster and also to post about the contest on Twitter. It was simple and easy, so I decided to look into how the contest was managed. Here’s what I found:

Website twitr.contest.com has a simple platform to support viral Twitter contests. It costs $199 for a one-month contest and looks like a fun way to grow your Twitter audience.

“Our custom Twitter API enabled contest site allows for a fully automated contest entry process.  Twitter users who enter a contest can automatically follow the contest promoter’s account, to grow the audience you can communicate with on Twitter.  Our system is also viral, each entrant will send a message through Twitter to everyone who follows them, letting their friends know about the contest they just entered.”

Facebook status updates: Too much of a good thing?

The new Facebook redesign gives organizations pages that are very similar to a person’s page. Your organization’s status notes now flow into the News Feed on the home page. This is a big increase in visibility as your fans can regularly see your updates. Some organizations are racing to take advantage of that visibility by updating their status several times a day.

We think it is a little too soon to move to high frequency status updates. Some users are very unhappy about the new design and they are responding by deleting applications and pages that update too often. (Or are unfortunate enough to update when another company has over-posted!) Plus, Facebook is tweaking the home page and altering the mix of news and updates, so it remains to be seen exactly when and where your updates will be seen.

Our suggestion: update your page to work with the new layout, consider promoting your page to your members/customers, and experiment with status updates and page content. But take it slow. Don’t try to turn your Facebook page into a Twitter feed right now — instead invite people to follow you on Twitter. Limit your status updates to one or two a day until people get used to the non-stop flow of news.

Recession: your time to stand out?

O’Connell Meier thrived thanks to a recession in 1990-91. We launched in ’89 and were fortunate enough to be growing fast when the recession hit. We had seen the famous McGraw-Hill study that found that companies who maintained or increased their ad budgets experienced a 256 percent increase in sales compared to those who cut their budgets. So, we upped our marketing and came out of the recession stronger and with a bigger share of the market.

So now its 2009, we’re all wrestling with another recession, and we go looking for data. Only to find that everyone is still quoting that same 1980-85 McGraw-Hill study. We can’t expect our clients to rely on a single study done before some of them were born, so we kept searching. And Eureka! — we found a report on Innovating Through Recession by Andrew Razeghi, Kellogg School of Management. Check it out if you need facts and figures to support your marketing budget requests. We’ll keep looking for new and interesting data.

Do your customer service reps understand your offers?

How often do marketing departments come up with great promotions, only to have them squashed by customer service reps? Here’s an example from the consumer world:

Pharmacies in the D.C. area are having a major coupon battle. They’re offering $25 gift cards to switch from one pharmacy to another, and they all say they’ll match competitors coupons. All good — until you try to actually use the coupon! Then you can watch in amazement as the staff finds ways to make you feel bad about redeeming the very coupon their marketing department produced. From denying that they honor the coupons to claiming that a transferred prescription is not really transferred because they had to make a call, they go to absurd lengths to make it difficult to redeem the coupons. (Or, just as bad, they try to redeem the coupon, but don’t know how to create a gift card.) So marketing spends a pile of money to get you into the store… and in mere minutes, the clerks make sure you’ll never come back.

Are the clerks torturing customers to ensure they never come back? Unlikely. Odds are they think they are protecting the company from scammers, or they simply have not been trained to manage the company’s coupon-matching policy.

How does this apply to your company or association? Are your customer service reps trained on new offers you distribute? Do they understand that the lifetime value of a member or customer far outweighs the cost of whatever discount or premium you’re offering? Maybe… or maybe not. When our team does marketing audits, we often find that customer service and data entry people are in the dark about offers. Worse, they often tell us that forms are not capturing key data.

Whether you’re promoting online, by email, or by mail, make sure that the people who will fulfill the offer know what you’re offering and why. It only takes a few minutes and it can make the difference between a successful campaign and a failed attempt.