MC Talks
The MemberClicks Blog

Does your association or chamber of commerce have committees in place? Perhaps you have an event planning committee, a fundraising committee, and/or a diversity and inclusion committee.

But let us ask you this: For whatever committees you have set up, how do you evaluate their success? Do you track specific deliverables? Do you send committee members a self-assessment once their term is up?

While both of those practices are important, they can sometimes occur too late. (What happens if a deliverable doesn’t get done and the committee has run its course? A simple, “Well, that committee wasn’t successful. Maybe next year!” won’t really do anyone any good.)

Your youngest members - especially recent graduates - probably have one thing predominantly on their mind:

Find. A. Job!

Job hunting can almost feel like a job itself. Researching different opportunities, reworking your resume to speak specifically to each, writing cover letter after cover letter, prepping for interviews...it takes a lot of time.

Consider providing these valuable services to help your young professional members on their hunt (and engage them along the way, too):

Video content is on the rise - and has been for a while! In fact, it’s estimated that this year, video will make up 80 percent of internet traffic.

If your association or chamber hasn’t taken the dive into video yet, now is definitely the time. And it’s easy, with a specific type of content you’re already producing: your events!

Have you ever considered filming your event sessions? Tagging videography services onto your events opens up a whole new avenue for revenue growth. How?

Mistakes: We all make them. Maybe you got the date wrong in one of your emails. Or you sent an email to the wrong list. Or your website went down for a couple of minutes, cutting off access to members-only content.

They’re those moments that make you think (and possibly even say), shoot! But whether those mistakes were something you had a hand in or not, they all warrant an outreach to your members.

Not sure what to say or how to even approach that type of outreach? Here are a few tips:

So much of the event planning process comes before and during the actual event - and understandably so! But to keep the experience alive, it’s important to have a post-event engagement plan as well.

How will you follow up with attendees? What types of collateral will you create? Will you create any collateral?

To keep the excitement (and chatter) going following your organization’s event, check out these tactics:

When you think of your organization’s database, what comes to mind? A goldmine of valuable information? A giant mess? A combination of the two?

If you’re like most companies and organizations, it’s probably a combination of the two - and that’s completely normal. No one’s database is perfect, and really, no one’s database can be perfect, because data changes so fast, there are bound to be some inaccuracies.

That said, the more up-to-date and organized you can keep your organization’s database, the more effective your communications (to both members and prospects) will be. And with spring officially here, what better time to do a little database clean-up?!

To make it a smooth process, be mindful of these four tips:

Planning events specifically for recruitment can be really effective - after all, communicating membership value is a whole lot easier in person. But, to make them as effective as they can be (and worth the planning effort), they should go above and beyond what you might normally do for a typical networking event.

Strapped for ideas? Here are a few refreshing ways to engage your prospects face-to-face with current members:

Learning management systems are flexible enough to make an impact on your organization (and its members) in a number of different ways.

Content management? Check.

Continuing education tracking? Check.

Revenue generation? Check.

And that only scratches the surface. If you’ve been considering an LMS, but aren’t sure the time is right, here are five signs your organization is ready for one:

Newsletters are great for engaging your organization’s membership. But in order for your newsletter to effectively do that, the content must be:

1. Valuable
2. Easily scannable (No one wants an overly-long email)
3. Fresh

Now those first two are probably self-explanatory, but what about that last one? What do we mean by fresh?

Well, we mean new; different; out-of-the-box. Sure, some of your content will need to be repeated month to month (your upcoming events and featured content, for example), but when time and space permit, why not try something new?

In fact, here are three fresh content ideas to try out in your organization’s newsletter:

With spring comes graduation and with graduation comes job-seekers. If your organization is looking to hire, now could be the perfect time - especially if you’re looking to fill an entry-level position.

But heads up: When hiring a recent graduate - to set both you and the young professional up for success - steer clear of these four common hiring mistakes: