It occurs to me every now and then that I have terrible timing for some things in life, mostly because patience is not one of my strong points. Career-wise, it’s been occurring to me a lot this past year, as I’ve watched the association community management space blossom….about three years after I left it. […]
Blogging from the Higher Logic Super Forum
Even though community management is just a small part of my responsibilities as Communications & PR manager for a small staff association (SFPE, the Society of Fire Protection Engineers), if you read this blog you know I’ve always been and will probably always be passionate about community management. Especially in the context of associations, I […]
10 Things Associations Need to Know About Upcoming Changes to LinkedIn Groups
Remember when we were talking about LinkedIn removing the groups feature? Ok, make that “remember when I was wildly speculating about LinkedIn removing the groups feature?” Well, while I wasn’t entirely right—groups aren’t being totally eliminated—apparently it wasn’t all wild speculation or paranoia on my part, as today when I logged into one of the […]
Why Associations Should Be Planning Their LinkedIn Exit Strategy
Ah, LinkedIn…where would my blogging be without your Groups feature? It’s been a few months since I’ve written about why associations shouldn’t rely on LinkedIn Groups and speculated about whether LinkedIn is in the (albeit slow) process of phasing out the groups feature, but a few recent things have ramped up my suspicions and made me think that […]
What Associations Can Learn from Reddit’s Volunteer Moderator Revolt
According to MGI’s 2015 Membership Marketing Benchmarking Report, more and more associations are tying member retention to private online communities, citing that “for associations reporting more participation in their private social network, 53% report an increase in membership over the past year, compared to 22% whose membership declined.” Not bad, right? Not to be all […]
Reason One Billion Your Association Community Shouldn’t Live on LinkedIn
Despite all evidence to the contrary given my lack of posts over the past months, I’m still here. And yes, I’m still obsessed with the same issues, if maybe a tiny bit less since I just spent the last year working outside the association world. But it seems like no matter how hard I try […]
Associations With Engaged Communities Have Higher Retention Rates
If you read this blog, you know I’m obsessed with two things: associations and community management. I’ve been happy to see a slight uptick in associations hiring community managers this year–although salaries seem to be significantly lower than the average salaries reported in the Community Roundtable’s recent salary survey (the average salary for community manager is almost $70k; […]
Why Community Manager Should Be Your Association’s Next Hire
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about my favorite topic, association community management, right? I’m not currently working in the association world, but I still strongly believe in the importance of associations and can’t help but think “how does this apply to associations” when I read pretty much anything. This was especially true when […]
How to Showcase Online Community Wins for Membership Marketing
Reading this article about Sermo, an online community for physicians, reaching 260,000 members, a part that jumped out at me was this one: “Over the years, physicians collaborated on tens of thousands of cases and although many successes go unreported, over 50% of iConsult cases posted are “Solved on Sermo.” Our average solve time is […]
Online Community Spurs Inter-Association Collaboration
Perusing Twitter yesterday, I happened to see an SLP (speech-language pathologist) tweet a link to this ASHA Leader article. It’s a great article about a grassroots movement among SLPs and other healthcare practitioners to figure out a way to reduce stress on clinicians and foster patient-centered care in long term care facilities. It’s also a […]
