Chats for Associations

There is already a meta-discussion on Twitter called #assnchat where association leaders collaborate.  How many of those associations are using a Twitter Chat (overview, tools) to create an additional collaboration avenue for THEIR members?  Judging from the Twitter Chat Schedule, the answer seems to be, “very few”.

It seems that social media savvy individuals rather than associations are the ones starting the chats.  Lara Mculloch-Carter (@ready2spark) started #eventprofs.  It could have been MPI.   Jeff DeCagna (@pinnovation) started #assnchat.  It could have been ASAE.

On the recent Oct 6 #assnchat (transcript), I moderated a discussion of how and whether associations should be creating Twitter Chats for their membership.  The chat included some good reasons for an association to run a Twitter Chat

1. It provides another avenue for collaboration
2. It’s free so it can be added as a benefit without driving up costs
3. Content tends to be very good on chats
4. Less intimidating than a conference call for those who are shy to speak out
5. Chat attracts attention from members and prospects due to its nature of tweets going out publicly

and some reasons why an association may not want to run a Twitter Chat

1. Discussion is 100% open.  There might be a privacy issues which necessitates more of a walled-garden
2. Participation may be low until more people are on twitter
3. Yet another channel might spread the activity even more so that it is hard to gain a tipping point of activity in any one channel
4. members may want a non-computer based collaboration since they are already on computer all day

In my personal opinion

• #1 – Certainly a good reason that you should watch out for
• #2 – Even with only 3 people in a Twitter Chat, you can learn a lot.  Get started.  Once word gets out, more will join
• #3 – when done well, channels feed each other rather than take away.  Tout your website during the chat and talk about the chat on your website.  Mention the chat during your f2f meeting and gain registrations for f2f from the chat
• #4 – I have found that most people who spend a lot of time on a computer, prefer additional means of communication that use the same device.  email, IM, and even Skype are often preferred over the telephone by heavy computer users.

A chat session is never going to replace face2face collaboration.  Due to human nature, we develop a significantly deeper/quicker bond when we can see and touch each other.  But, we should not consider the choice an either/or.  Chats can increase the demand for f2f and they can help with the hype.

There is a very different set of opinions based on the same chat session over on Memberclicks.  I hope you will chime in with some of your thoughts either here or there.

Pre-Event Community Building

Don't let your events stand alone as isolated pillars

Some of the really great discussion lately on the #assnchat Twitter Chat definitely merits reflection.   Standard first stage use of social media for events are apps like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as a marketing mouthpiece to reach prospective audiences.

That is just scratching the surface of the potential.  Event owners and organizational leaders are quickly realizing that social media provides value well beyond the megaphone.

Thanks to a variety of communication methods (including SM), periodic face2face events are just one element of overall community management.  Rather than using one as a broadcast medium for the other, they can both be used in conjunction to enrich a community.

That may sound good, but leave you thinking, “how the heck do I do that?”.  To some degree the answer depends on your audience (members) and your history with them.  However, since “it depends” isn’t very helpful, I will attempt to provide ideas from which you can pick/choose a-la-carte for your situation.  This post was inspired by @MichelleBruno’s blog post about additional revenue at events.

This first post covers pre-event ideas beyond the expected “create a webpage”, “create a Facebook page”.  Stay tuned for parts 2 (during events) and 3 (post-event)

• Show the buzz
  • Select and promote a hashtag EARLY.  Your attendees will collect there and create more buzz.  You can use a widget to bring those posts into your web environment for more exposure
  • If anyone writes about your upcoming event, give them a way to submit their blog post so that you can showcase it to prospects and attendees.  There is nothing a blogger likes more than exposure.
  • Give them online buttons they can use to proudly display on their site/blog that they are going to your event.  Give them a bonus if someone came to register through their button
  • Post links to any articles that were written about previous events.
• Ask your members what they would like from the event.  You don’t have to DO everything they say, but at least listen
  • crowdsource speakers, topics, session-formats, locations, etc…  try these tools: uservoice, crowdsound, ideascale
  • Provide a way for your attendees to communicate with your speakers.  Many speakers will customize their speeches if they know what questions people have.
  • Run info/Q&A sessions using live stream providers eg. Audio: blogtalkradio, talkshoe Video: ustream.tv, livestream.  Make sure you combine the live stream with a twebevent to make it collaborative and to add more activity to your hashtag.
• Inform prospective attendees who is already registered
  • Post a list that grows automatically as people register.  Don’t just put names, include organization name and title.
  • If your online community has profiles, display that they are attending as a badge on their profile and all their community contributions
  • Profile key people who will be attending including interviews with them about why they find the event valuable
• Give prospects and attendees a taste
  • Make sure you have more than just a short bio of your speakers, connect relevant posts from their blog, videos they have posted, etc…
  • Get your speakers to do some custom content for your event (community): podcasts, blog posts, videos, etc… all about the session they are going to do at your event
  • Run some web events talking about the event and previewing content from presenters
  • Show some of the fun/education that happened last year.  If you are not already taking lots of video at your event, you should be (more in next post)
• Open up some pre-learning
  • freebie samples to get people excited
  • Some of the presentations that did not make the final selection for in-person
  • content that they can get immediate access to once they register for the event
  • design some at-event sessions around the pre-event content.  Since the common foundation will be established pre-event, the face2face time can be used for greater collaboration
  • Provide an option for attendees to pay a greater amount to receive extra online content.  Some might want extra content, but can’t come a day early for your extra session.
• Help attendees find each other - If you have a quality online community, members can find each other easily already.  This is especially important before an event for people who want to maximize networking  Tools: Crowdvine, SocialCollective, Pathable
• Allow people to indicate sessions they want to attend.  Show everyone who is going to what sessions.  This is another way to determine the size of rooms, whether to run a session twice, or cancel a session.
• Provide a virtual expo.  There are software providers for this, but even a single webpage with links to a few brochures and their website per sponsor, helps to narrow down where attendees want to focus their time at the event.

I know many of my fellow #eventprofs and #assnchat colleagues will have more suggestions.  If you liked this post, please Re-tweet it on Twitter.

Community Intersection

In my personal opinion, the #1 rule for the success of an online community is that members should not have to go somewhere they don’t already go in order to participate.  Since that goal is usually quite challenging, the fallback is that if they do have to go somewhere else, there better be a significant quantity of links from where members are to where the online community is.

There are only so many places that people exist in the online space.  Facebook, Google, maybe LinkedIn, some to Ning.  After that it gets pretty fragmented.  Along comes Twitter.  Different people join for different reasons, but once they are there, the barriers between communities are negligable.  If you are wondering what does he mean by “communities on Twitter”, then you should check out the hashtag communities that are starting to form and the tools which support them (Tweetchat, Twubs, wthashtag).  A hashtag is just a keyword with a ‘#’ in front to denote a topic.

The intersection that I am talking about is when people post multiple hashtags in a tweet.  Eg. “There is a great new list of Professional speakers on Twitter: http://bit.ly/ManhC #spkrchat #eventprofs”   The speaker list is something that may be of interest to both speakers who might want to add themselves and event professionals who might want to book or at least follow certain speakers.

Now the members of both communities are aware of each other.  If this cross-posting continues, there is likely some cross-interest between the communities and therefore some intersection of membership.  Those who are members of one will find the second community very easily and have constant links to it put in front of them.

eg. If I am an event planner (member of #eventprofs) who books a lot of speakers, I am gaining awareness of this other community (#spkrchat) and become far more likely to join and participate.

If Twitter continues to grow and remains popular amongst regular users, watch for these communities to become quite important.

Future Education

There is no doubt that Education is critical to the future of the United States economy. Thomas Friedman talks about it extensively in his very popular book, The World is Flat. Therefore, the concepts in this post on Future Education are not only directly applicable to business, but our success in Future Education will have a direct impact on our abilities in Future Business.

I spent 90 minutes last night on the phone with an excellent visionary from the NYC Dept of Education.  Arthur VanderVeen is focused on how best to achieve knowledge sharing for NYC educators.

We talked about the difficulty of turning tacit knowledge into explicit and we talked about the challenges of fostering active communities of interest/practice.

Two of the main tenets of our discussion were

1. Give them what they want: the sharing needs to have value to the way they work today or want to work today. There are some technologies (eg. Computer, cell phone) that completely change the way we work, but most enhance the way we already work in a more evolutionary fashion rather than revolutionary
2. Work bottom-up rather than top-down. Try various programs in schools and see what works. Where there is success, invest more to work out if it can be scaled up.

One thing that has come to mind since our discussion is the 100-10-1 rule of community involvement. In the case of education it is probably 1000-100-10-1 due to the challenge of getting already overworked educators to even view information.

• For every 1000 educators
• 100 will actively or passively browse the knowledge-base
• 10 will comment on or use existing content
• and 1 will contribute something new

That means that for 80,000 teachers you may only have 80 contributors. This is likely not sufficient volume to create a critical mass of content that keeps the 100 coming back and gets more of the 1000 to view. The larger districts may decide to invest in “librarians” who seek out good content and take the time to get it into the knowledge-base, but this is not the most efficient model and is probably not tenable for the smaller districts.