We are thinking of all those affected by the novel coronavirus and sending huge “thank you’s” to those essential workers who are working tirelessly to keep our communities safe and healthy. It is the responsibility of individuals to be cautious and thoughtful of others during this time so that we can work to “flatten the curve” and prevent future devastations.
Building your brand is more than creating an enticing logo. Your target potential members place value on your core competencies and culture, both of which cannot be fabricated. Start by defining what it is that makes your association stand out, and capture that value in all aspects of the company. Incorporating these values into your market outreach strategies shows potential members the true benefit to joining your organization over others. You can do this in several ways! Here are some examples:
In his bestselling book, The Lean Startup, Eric Ries makes the case for getting new products into customers’ hands faster. He advocates for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach, starting lean instead of investing time and money perfecting a product that may end up being of little or no interest to customers. Ries’s methodology starts with launching the MVP and using it to learn what the market actually wants, then continually iterating based on that learned intelligence. This “build-measure-learn” feedback loop saves both time and money, enabling lean startups to get a product to market quickly and customers to help shape the solution that meets their actual needs, rather than needs founders think they have.
Generating ongoing member engagement for your association is about more than just giving your members a good experience. With increased engagement, you can boost renewal rates and attract new members. Since members primarily join associations to connect with others in their industry, engaged members are likely getting more of the value they are seeking from their membership. Happier members means a more financially stable association — in short, everyone wins.
When online communities are at their best, content is valuable, members are consistently engaged and everyone involved feels supported and fulfilled by the connection.
It’s been a bit since we’ve talked about the new features the Breezio community platform has released. In the past few months, we’ve focused on platform updates that our customers have requested. Don’t get me wrong, there are also plenty of new fun features in the pipeline (and I’ll give a hint of that a bit later)! For now, I want to talk about why this year, we’ve focused on improvements that help community managers.