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Member Prospecting Webinar– Fishing in the Right Ponds

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We recently presented a Webinar as part of the Young Association Professionals & Association Universe Member Engagement Webinar Series.

A short description of the Webinar follows. We hope you enjoy! Please let us know, in the comments below, if your association or group is using Micro Marketing for recruiting or retention efforts.

[slideshare id=15625979&doc=assndec12webcastfinal-121213131540-phpapp01] 

An example of a power law graph showing popularity ranking. To the right (yellow) is the long tail; to the left (green) are the few that dominate. In this example, the areas of both regions are equal.

Associations want marketing to create new members at a predictable cost. We hear a lot these days about the “Long Tail” with its untapped and micro-targeted prospecting segments such as government, healthcare, and education. Mass marketing models are not designed to go downstream or cost effectively reach these new, targeted member segments.

In this webinar, you will learn how the core elements of online community building and social media are being used to cost effectively identify influencers and build relationships that produce loyal members and supporters. Mitch will also be sharing case studies and best practices for results-driven association programs, projects and campaigns. You will learn that reaching the promise of the Long Tail is hard but can be done using research, tools, analytics and the right people!

4 Things You Should Do Before Hiring a Social Media Agency

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It seems like every marketing and PR shop out there is “doing” social media – everything from influencer outreach and managing your social media presence to “getting you (insert number here) more followers – guaranteed!”. And yes, Tuvel is also a digital communications shop that offers social media services (and we do some great work, too). But the task of choosing a social media agency to help you out should not be taken lightly.

Before even starting to look at potential social media agencies, there are 4 important steps you need to take (by the way, this will help you tremendously when it comes time to writing up that RFP for agencies to bid on):

Do your research. Just as you would research the online and offline publications your audience is reading, you should also do some preliminary research into their social media habits. Are your customers/members/attendees using social media? If so, where are they? What are they talking about? This is certainly something a social media agency can help you do, but this cursory research will help you gain valuable insights and establish goals. Which is the next thing you should do…

Establish goals. This is where you need to ask yourself WHY your brand should be using social media. Use the insights from your preliminary research, in conjunction with your high-level business goals, to determine specific, trackable and realistic goals for your social media marketing efforts. Examples might be:

  • Increase awareness of your brand or product.
  • Establish a customer service channel through social media.
  • Establish your brand as a thought-leader.
  • Increase new leads and sales.
  • Increase traffic.

Evaluate resources. You may have already determined that you need to hire a social media agency to provide your organization with the additional knowledge and people-power to run a successful social media program; however, you should still evaluate the resources you already have in-house who will be assisting with program implementation, or even carrying on the effort after the agency has laid the groundwork.

Set expectations. Make sure that your internal team and management are clear on what to expect from social media. Everyone needs to understand that it will take time to build traction. Social media is also so much more than a set of tools – a well-defined social media strategy will have content, email, PR, sales and customer service elements woven into it – and everyone will need to pitch in time and effort to make it work, in tandem with the agency.

What steps do you take before hiring an outside marketing or communications agency, social media or otherwise?

INFOGRAPHIC: How to Identify and Empower Your Social Media Influencers

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Blackbaud, in partnership with Small Act and the National Wildlife Federation, recently published an interesting whitepaper on social media influencers and how to identify them for fundraising efforts. What I found most interesting about this whitepaper (which you can download here) is how influencers are scored based on how many networks on which they’re active, how large their networks are, and how engaged they are with those networks. The whitepaper breaks influencers down into 4 groups:

What’s even more interesting, is while Key Influencers and Engagers make up only 6% of total influencers, they have a total average estate value of over $700K. So, when it comes to engaging social media influencers for your next fundraising campaign, those two groups should be your biggest focus.

But, don’t discount Multichannel Consumers and Standard Consumers. While not as active on social media, they’re prolific (94% of total influencers) and still wield considerable donation power. They should be engaged in different ways, since they tend to be influenced more than influential – following the recommendations of their social media networks, friends and family.

Blackbaud produced this useful infographic, which defines each of the four groups and gives a good overview of the information contained in the whitepaper: