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Creating a social network for your members

Now more than ever, association professionals must continuously define ways to deliver a valuable experience for members. Nurturing relationships, facilitating connections, sharing knowledge and ideas – all of these things are great in theory, but how do you really make them work?

Here are a few strategies:

  1. Keep it simple and easy to use – don’t over-complicate things
  2. Keep valuable content and learning experiences front-and-center
  3. Be engaged. Lead conversations, hold online events, package content and tools that really matter.
  4. Delegate a few very engaged, early-adopters to lead conversations and to have input in the direction of the online community
  5. Form online working groups to solve problems

For years, I have been creating a members-only social networks (formerly known as online communities). The good news is that not only have the tools improved significantly, they are much more attainable — even for organizations with the smallest of budgets.

My new favorite is Ning.com. Ning, a social networking platform that lets you build your own network in as little as 20 minutes. It’s a great environment for meeting people, collaborating and learning.

Ning’s popularity is growing rapidly – and was recently featured on cnet for reaching 1 million social networks.

Some examples of associations using Ning for member social networks:

eMarketing Association network group
2300+ members

National Association of Female Professionals
1500+ members

Association for Information and Image Management
3000+ members

The bottom line if you are thinking of starting a social network for your organization – don’t overcomplicate things. Give Ning.com a try.

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Building a strong online reputation

I just read an excellent article from Knowledge@Wharton, “Advertising Yourself: Building a Personal Brand through Social Networks.”

Many of the ideas and concepts I have been working on lately around being fully engaged in your own online brand are discussed in this article. The bottom line – it pays off to invest time in developing and engaging in your online brand and reputation. What I really love about this is the creativity involved. With the networks and tools easily available to us, all it takes is a little creativity and a lot of engagement and passion to pay off. I will certainly take this to heart for my own online brand (which is not even close to where it should be).

Read the article

[btw, Knowledge@Wharton is at the top of my "must read" list]

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Content, Conversation and Community

I just got back from presenting at ASAE’s Springtime meeting in DC – Using Social Networks to Promote and Sustain Your Meeting’s Longevity – with my longtime colleague, Margaret Core.

It was a great discussion on using social networks to strengthen your brand, and keeping your audience engaged year-round using a variety of tools. We discussed ways to get really creative with content, using free or relatively inexpensive tools as well as using RSS, tagging and other means to repurpose and repackage.

Download the presentation here