What Will Your Members Remember About You This Year?
As we enter the one-year mark of the isolation, WFH, no in-person meetings and lots of new Zoom relationships, what will your members think, feel and do differently this year that they’ll attribute to you?
Fast forward to 12.31.21 and ask yourself: will your association or society have become more indispensable, more of a “go-to” resource and will you have deepened the bonds of engagement your members crave and the loyalty and attraction that you need to cultivate?
2021 can be an exceptional year if you zig when others zag, listen when others talk and deliver value when others are hunkering down.
The good news is that you already have what your members need:
- Professional development resources. Doing better at their jobs or looking for a new job is more important than ever.
- Communities of mutual interest. This is the reason your members joined and what's keeping them connected to you.
- Insights and implications that make sense of what’s happening in your industry or sector.
- Research, new information and relevant breaking news tailored to your members needs, that they can’t get anywhere else.
There’s an even longer list that I’m sure you can draw upon for your organization.
More good news is that there may be many more potential opportunities that you can adopt right now to make this year more meaningful for your members. Here are three ideas to get you started:
- Daily communications to members that keep you top of mind, offering words of encouragement and a tip or reminder that your members will find interesting. Wouldn’t it be great for the first email of the day to come from you with a message of hope and inspiration?
- Contextualize information for your members that makes sense of the world appropriate to your industry. Think of it as a weekly op-ed approach that sheds a smart light to help your members see things more clearly. We could all use help clearing the fog of uncertainty.
- Host more frequent webinars, gatherings and discussion groups. Crowd-source topics and pick your most thoughtful and influential members and staff to facilitate and lead the conversations. It’s really not possible to do too much of this type of communication. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how much your members appreciate this.
This year will continue to be uncertain and dynamic and it’s unlikely we’ll all be together again anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean you can’t increase your level of communication, connection and impact on the lives of your members.
Now more than ever, the association we have with one another really matters. Make this a year that your members will remember with gratitude for all you did for them.
Stay well.