by Aaron Cox, Membership Management Specialist

I have seen the puzzled look on the faces of board members, volunteers and sadly even staff at chambers of commerce and business associations when asked the question, “Do you know anyone else that would benefit from membership in your organization?”

While referrals are one of the best ways to generate new membership sales, existing members often understand the value they receive from the organization but can’t always readily see the same benefits for others. 

Further, with busy lives, packed schedules, and a thousand other thoughts how do you get current members to refer you? 



Here’s a thought — a quick survey of members that asks,  “Who Fixes Your Car,” “Who Cuts Your Hair,” “Who Does Your Taxes,”  or something similar that your members are likely to use in your community.   

Send the survey to members, ask them to complete it and end with 2 easy questions: “Are you happy with or feel you are receiving excellent value from our organization” and “If asked by any of the people/businesses above would you recommend membership in our organization.” 

Then take these business names you receive to develop a list of the common services, activities, and business categories that will be well served by your organization.

There you have it—several new referrals, potentially lots of new references, and at a bare minimum a nice new list of prospective members. 

It’s worth a shot.  Even if you get 50 people referring 3 people each and you can gain 1/3 of those referred as new members, at $200/member, you'd have $10,000 in new member revenue. 

What works for your organziation when asking for referrals from members?

Aaron Cox, a Membership Management Specialist at WebLink, brings a wealth of Chamber and not-for-profit leadership and management experience. Immediately prior to joining the WebLink team, Aaron served as the first executive director of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce Executives (KCCE). During his tenure with KCCE, the membership doubled, revenue increased dramatically, sponsorship of the organization was increased over 400% and three affinity programs designed to provide necessary services to KCCE chamber members and their members were developed and implemented.

Prior to KCCE, Aaron managed several not-for-profits in the areas of workforce and economic development. These organizations have ranged in size from a staff of one on a shoestring budget to staff of 60 and $6.5 million budget, hence his keen awareness on how to maximize staff, technological and other resources.  You can contact Aaron at aaron.cox@weblinkinternational.com.

In a blog post last week, I shared part of my presentation from the Florida Association of Chamber Professionals 90th Annual Meeting, titled "Social Media Strategy for Impacting Member Sales & Retention."

In that post I discussed how tools like the Facebook Like button and others can help make your chamber's website content more "sharable" to encourage your members, fans and followers to post your content on other networks.

How can you get them to share your content, though?  Well...let's give them something to talk about. That is, let's get them to tell their story through you....or tell your story through them.   How would you do that?  One way is to talk about THEM.

Here are some ideas: 

Ask them for stories about how they got new business through your chamber of commerce, add those stories to your website or blog and tag/mention your members when you promote that website content on social media sites.  (Tag members in photos or posts on Facebook, mention their specific user ID - such as @curtmoss - when posting on Twitter.)

You'll be suprised how many of your members will share that information via reposts or retweets.  Your website content will be automatically shared with all their followers, increasing positive word of mouth for your chamber.

The best time to get your members to talk about you is when they are happy, so be sure to ask them to post after:

• joining your chamber of commerce
• attending events
• they receive awards or recognition from your chamber
• ribbon cuttings
• major business iniatives led by your chamber

Ask your members on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites, "Do you know any businesses that should join the Chamber?"  You'll engage them in conversation that both of your followers will be able to see.  AND....be sure to thank those members in additional posts when the referral leads to a new member for your chamber.  For a double-dip, thank both the new member and the member who gave you a referral in the same post!   Be sure to ask your followers to welcome new members to the chamber or community, too. 

Talk about what your chamber is doing and ask your members and followers for their thoughts on:

• local business issues
• government advocacy efforts
• chamber programs
• discounts and affinity programs
• events
• community topics

Reply to your members.  Retweet them or reshare their news on your website, Facebook or Twitter.  Ask them questions.  Includes links and photos in your posts, too!  Your members will be more likely to share your posts if there is a link to useful (or fun) information.

Get your members and followers to share your content and your story with THEIR followers.  Their followers all work for businesses would could be prospects for joining your chamber of commerce. Or they could already be members who need more evidence of the value your chamber is providing.

I've got lots of great examples of chambers of commerce doing all of the above.  There's just too many to put them in this post.  Let me know if you'd like to see them, I'd be happy to share them with you.   What other ways are YOU getting your members to share your content?

We know that one of the main reasons companies join chambers of commerce is to increase their business.  And the exposure your members gain via your website is the single largest way you can promote them and drive traffic to their business.

The value that members receive from exposure on - and traffic from - your chamber’s website often justifies their membership renewal each year.  And, that value can be used to acquire new members, plus generate non-dues revenue through website advertising.

With chamber websites clearly being a critical communications and member promotion vehicle, any chamber executive who is serious about promoting their members and their community must ask themselves two questions.

Is our website doing all it can to promote our members?

Chamber of commerce websites have certainly evolved over the past few years, but the time has come for a major leap forward.  

Consider this:  40% of all search engine queries are done with local intent, meaning some city name, place name or local term is included.  If your site is not search engine optimized, you’re missing a huge opportunity to capitalize on your chamber’s and your members’ local presence.  After all, your chamber and your members are already LOCAL, so if your website is not showing up for local searches, you’re missing out (and so are your members).

Perhaps the single largest asset your chamber has is your members and their collective marketing power via your website.  Chambers must leverage this information to maximize their exposure to search engines.  A search engine optimized website lets Google and other searches engines realize the relevance of your website (and your chamber) and helps you create additional exposure for your community.

Perform some simple test searches for your community.  Search for your popular business categories, such as hotels, restaurants, attorneys, golf, etc., but include your city or area name in the search.  (For example, “Indianapolis hotels”)   Does your chamber’s site come up on the first page?  Are you in the first 3 results?   If not, your website is not doing all it can to drive traffic to your members. 


Who is competing with our chamber and taking credit for promoting our members?

Online directory sites such as ShopLocal, Yelp, CitySearch, TripAdvisor, YellowPages.com and dozens more are all competing with your chamber for your members’ attention AND for their money. 

If these sites come up higher in searches for local businesses in your community, they will get the credit for driving traffic to your members, not your chamber.  Eventually, business owners may question what value they are receiving from your chamber if they aren’t receiving referrals or traffic from your site.  When they don’t see enough value from your chamber, they will drop their membership.   

Plus, all these sites sell advertising of some kind.  If your members find those sites more valuable for promoting their businesses, they may purchase ads on those sites as well, thereby taking money out of your local community.  That money should be going towards dues or advertising on YOUR website where you can use it to strengthen your community.

Your website is critical to your success

Chambers of commerce have long been concerned about how to gain new members, increase retention and generate non-dues revenue.  A well-designed, search optimized website helps you accomplish all three!

Decide today that your website is critical to your success and dedicate the resources needed to make that happen.  Do an evaluation of how well your site is indexed by Google.  What changes can you make to improve your ranking?  Do you need a new website?  Do you need help?   Determine what you need and go do it!  Your online relevance is eroding – but you CAN reverse it and take control of your community’s local online presence.

Recently, the Thousand Oaks-Westlake Village Regional Chamber of Commerce changed is name to the Greater Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce to create broader appeal for the region it serves.  Read a brief article about this change here.

While the new name is certainly a bit easier to type and say, I was curious as to how those various place names could potentially drive traffic to the chamber's website.

Using Google's Keyword Tool, I looked for the monthly search volume for each of the areas covered by the chamber. Here are the results:

Area Name	Monthly Search Volume
Conejo Valley	27,100
Agoura Hills	246,000
Westlake Village	368,000
Thousand Oaks	1,000,000

Conejo Valley is the least-used search term of the four and may result in referring less traffic than the other keywords.   So in theory, to take advantage of higher search volume, the chamber may have wanted to leave "Thousand Oaks" in their name.

I understand that the chamber needed to be more inclusive for the region it serves and their name gets used in far more places that just search engines. I'm not really suggesting that the chamber should have kept the name "Thousand Oaks."

But, it does bring up a good point regarding keyword content for chambers of commerce.   I recently wrote another post about how chambers can leverage their members' contact information and descriptions for increased search engine optimization.

When you're creating new programs, securing additional domain names or just adding text to your website or blog, be aware of the keywords you're using.  If you need (or hope) to reach a certain audience, be sure to include those keywords in your text.  Also, make sure you use your organization's full name and city in articles.  (Instead of saying "the chamber," be sure to use "Yourtown Chamber of Commerce.") 

If you're lucky (or have planned accordingly), your organization's name, your programs and/or your events will match more things that people are searching for.

Since WebLink International works exclusively with chambers of commerce, business associations and membership organizations, I get to see and use chamber websites every day.  And, since I managed the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce website for eight years, I remember all the challenges of keeping a chamber website up to date and relevant.

Recently, I was asked what things most chambers of commerce could do to improve their sites. I thought this topic would make a great "top 10" list for the WebLink blog. Here are the first 5 ways I came up with.


10.  Leverage your analytics – Stop worrying about page views and visitor sessions without understanding how the design of your site influences your visitors’ behavior.  Rather, focus on the outcomes you want from your site. Do you want 10 new members to join online each month?  Would you like to get 500 new people to sign up for your e-newsletter?  Do you want visitors to order something or register for an event?  Once you set such goals and review your analytics, you can determine how you can change your site to help create your desired outcomes.

9.  Streamline navigation & overall design – Streamline your navigation into as few main items as possible.  Try to view your site through your typical visitors’ eyes.  What are the main reasons people visit your site?  What information are they viewing most often? Create main navigation buttons or links that reflect the major areas of your site and use sub-navigation for everything else.  Don’t design navigation or critical information so it looks like advertising.  Keep the site as open and easy to view as possible.  Look to some of your favorite web 2.0 or social media sites for inspiration.

8.  Make it shareable – Sharing information via social media is hot right now, so why not make it easy for site visitors to share your content?  Services such as AddThis and ShareThis (see example at the bottom of this post) give you code to embed on your website that make it easy to share your site’s content via multiple popular social media services such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs.  Including such tools on your site shows that your chamber is progressive and understands the current media trends.

7.  (Don’t ) click here – The words “click here” don’t add anything to the usability of your site and they certainly don’t help you with any search engine optimization (SEO).  Instead, use strong anchor text (the text that’s actually linked), such as “Download the Chamber’s annual report” or “Watch our latest State of the City video.”  Where you can, use both a graphic (such as the cover of your annual report) AND a text link to help guide readers to your content.

6.  Use internal links – Linking from within your text to other relevant areas of your site does two things.  First, it improves the usability for visitors since they can now easily move on to additional content on your site. Second, it helps improve your rankings in search engines and can get more of your content indexed.  Usually 3-5 internal links per page is good.  More than that can become distracting to your readers.


Part 2 of this list will be coming soon. What other items do you think should be on the list?

WebLink is proud to announce the winners of our big contest conducted at the American Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) Convention in Raleigh, NC.   Please read on to see if any of your peers were winners.

iPod touchGarmin Nuvi GPS system
Flip Digital Video CameraiPod Shuffle
$50 Amazon gift cardIt was great to meet so many of the chamber of commerce staff I've connected with on Twitter and other social media.  Thanks for stopping by the booth so we can now match a face with the avatar. :-)   That's one of the great things about social media - ultimately connecting face-to-face with someone you've been following for a while.  The online connection leads to an offline action.

WebLink received tremendous response and interest in our membership management software, website design and development, and non-dues revenue programs for chambers of commerce while at ACCE.  From all of the chambers we talked to it appears that now is the time most of you are seeking to make a change for the better.  Whether it's creating more functional websites, better utilizing your member database or jumping into using social media, chambers of commerce are eager to keep pushing forward.

Thanks again to those who stopped by the booth.  And congratulations to all of our winners!

WebLink International will host a webinar on July 22 titled "Top 5 Reasons to Use Member Segmentation to Drive Your Marketing Strategy."  Cathi Hight of Hight Performance Group and Mike Bryan, WebLink's vice president of marketing will demonstrate ways you can use technology to learn more about your members.

This webinar will show you ways to use your membership management software plus your website and survey data to analyze and define your ideal target market for members. You'll learn how segmentation strategies drive sales, increase retention, promote satisfaction, define program development, and deliver high lifetime value.  

Cathi and Mike teamed up last month to present a webinar on "Leveraging Technology to Measure Member Loyalty and Engagement." That session was very well received by chambers of commerce and business associations. 

Cathi has more than 18 years experience in sales & marketing and training & development. She has worked with organizations of all sizes and across industry sectors to plan for market changes and to develop customer loyalty strategies.   She is a national trainer for ACCE (American Chamber of Commerce Executives) for membership development and facilitates regional workshops on membership sales and retention. Cathi is also an instructor for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Organizational Management.


Mike Bryan has more than 14 years of experience in business strategy, marketing, and product development in the web-based software industry, including experience at First Advantage, TruStar Solutions, Major Video Concepts and consumer products at Walt Disney. TruStar Solutions was an Inc 500 Fast Growth Company in 2003 and 2004.  At WebLink he is responsible for client acquisition and retention, marketing strategy, advertising, and public relations initiatives, strategic business development and partner management.

Learn more about the webinar and register here.  Register on or before July 15 to receive the early bird rate of $49.  After that date, the registration will be $59.  We hope you can join us for this informative and inspiring webinar on using techonology to better understand and manage your membership.

A while back I posted about Five ways your chamber can use Twitter. With the recent increase in chambers of commerce using Twitter, I've seen some great examples of how chambers can use Twitter.  I thought I'd share some of them with you.

Promote your members

Several chambers of commerce use Twitter to announce when local businesses join.  Below is an example from the Stillwater OK Chamber. In this example, they are also providing the member's address and a link to their website.   You might also consider linking to a Google Map of their location or to that member's listing on your own website.  (You can use URL shortening services to fit within the 140 character limit)


Another way to promote your members is to announce when they receive local press coverage or awards.  The Clovis CA Chamber recently posted the item below to congratulate a member on being featured in a local publication, with a link to the article. 

Connect your local businesses on Twitter
By using some of the tools I mentioned in this post, you can quickly find people and businesses in your area that are using Twitter.  Once you've found them, why not let your followers know, too?  The Asheville NC Chamber shared two local businesses and asked for others as well.  This can be a great way to develop your community of Twitter followers.



Promote Ribbon Cuttings
Holding ribbon cuttings is still a big part of business for many communities.  If your chamber does them, why not use Twitter to promote them?  The Greenville SC Chamber does this.  One thing I might recommend is to include a Google Map link to the location of the ribbon cutting.


Note:  Try to use your chamber's name when ever possible.  Using "Stillwater Chamber" or "Asheville Chamber" will help your tweets be found in search.   You do use Twitter Search, don't you?  As you might imagine, a search for "chamber" returns many more results than one for "Greenville Chamber." (Including some for chamber orchestras, gun chambers, etc.)

And Twitter is tweaking the SEO value of their pages, so using your name may help your chamber be found in more Google searches.  Note that the Clovis Chamber used their Twitter name in the post above, "@ClovisChamber," which is another way of including your organization's name in the tweet.

How are you using Twitter to promote your members and your community?  Please share your ideas in the comments below and include links to your tweets if you can.

Times are tough, money is tight, and No One is spending money right now.   Well the first two points are certainly true, but the latter is not.  The truth is; everyone is more selective in how and where they spend their money, but they ARE spending money.  Your members are looking to make the most of their dollars and get a clear Return on Investment (ROI) from your chamber.  You are in the right place at exactly the right time to make money with your website and provide tremendous value AND results to your members.

Why chambers exist
Now is an opportune time to revisit why you exist in the first place, or at least why members belong to your organization.  Chamber initiatives are diverse and you do so many important things for the local economy you serve, but members join to grow their business. 

It bears repeating.  Members join primarily to grow their business.  If you are helping them grow their business, you are VERY valuable to them. Most especially in tough economic times. 
                                                                                              
The chamber brand = Credibility
Chambers of commerce have a “brand name” advantage over other local directory sites as most consumers know each community has a chamber and they will seek out a chamber’s website to search before the site of a local newspaper, TV station or radio station.   And chambers have a physical presence to support their efforts – something most directory websites do not.  Local means physically local and that still matters to buyers.

In the 2007 Schapiro Study, a key takeaway is that when consumers know that a small business is a member of the chamber of commerce, they are 44% more likely to think favorably of them and 63% more likely to purchase goods or services from that company in the future.  This translates directly into credibility.  Why does that matter?  People do business with businesses they trust.  They can’t afford to take risks with their money and a chamber membership is an implied seal of approval by the local business community when people search for local businesses online.

So what is the potential?  Let’s look at some important trends.

Internet advertising trends
In 2008, $100 Billion was projected to be spent on local advertising across all mediums (Insiders Report – Universal McCann Dec. 07).  Local online advertising was expected to reach $13.1 Billion in 2008 according to Borrell and Associates.   What was your share of the $13.1 Billion spent in 2008 and are you positioned to take advantage of the $100 Billion already spent locally that is migrating online?

Online usage trends and directories
According to a recent Pew Internet and American Life Study – 49% of people use online search at least once a day.  More importantly to you, a study conducted by Piper Jaffrey & Co. in 2007 determined that 58% of online activities are searches for local information!  People are already searching online for local businesses in your community EVERY DAY.

New sites with interactive directories are popping up continually and other sites are adding them to compete for advertising dollars.  Traditional local media websites such as TV, radio, newspaper and yellow page sites are moving to designs and features that blur the lines regarding their media type.  In essence, everyone is going online and you have a fantastic resource in your online business directory that is under-promoted and under-monetized as a profit center. 

Results matter and conversion is king
A client of WebLink is generating a 2.9% click through rate on ads on their website. As a point of reference, industry-wide average click through rates for web advertising (impressions delivered / clicks) are typically 0.1% to 0.2%.  This means that ads on chamber sites can 14x to 28x more productive than other websites.  Conversion rates are high on chamber sites because you are trusted by visitors.   Greater credibility AND greater results.  Now that will get members’ attention.  And their dollars.
  
History shows that the greatest opportunities often come during the times of greatest adversity.  Your chamber IS the most valuable cost effective advertising medium there is.   Your chamber website provides targeted, immediate, affordable, and measurable results.  Remember that members join primarily to grow their business and you can help them do exactly that with your website. 

To summarize: people are searching for local business information, your website has high credibility, and businesses are already purchasing local online advertising.    

NOW is the time to take action and make money from your website. 

Our clients and prospects continue to ask about blogging.  Should we blog? How do we blog? What would we blog about?  How will it benefit us and our members?    I’ll get into more detail below, but first let me say “YES,” chambers should blog. 

1.    Communication that engages your members.   Just a few years ago, we were saying “every chamber needs a website.”  Now it’s “every chamber needs blog.”   Your current members are becoming more tech savvy every day.  And, the young professionals you hope to attract as members are already using new methods of communicating.  To stay relevant to your audience and to expand your influence moving forward, you need to engage them with media in which they can also participate.  Instead of “talking at them,” make them a part of the conversation with blogs and other social media.  Yes, that does mean you lose a bit of control, but in the long run you have more meaningful conversations and engage your audience. 

2.    Positioning you as an expert.   You shouldn’t just be following the business trends; you should be helping to create them.  By blogging about relevant business issues, you can strengthen your position as an expert and the voice of business for your community.  By “breaking” news on your blog or by providing frequent updates, your chamber can be viewed as an insider, a news generator and an organization that has influence.  Businesses will recognize that your chamber is an organization they should be aligned with (and hopefully a member of) if they want to stay connected to local business community.

3.     More immediate delivery.  Blogs make it very easy for you to publish content in an instant.  Your print and even email newsletters have such a lead time that information may be outdated before it reaches your members.   You can blog from the city council meeting, state legislature, your own events or anywhere to create a sense of urgency to your communications.   Your blog can become the portal to your chamber, make your chamber easier to find and provide a reason to visit your site more often. (Or even subscribe to your feed).   

4.    Your members are blogging, you should too.   Many of your members already have blogs for their businesses or they are commenting on other business blogs in your community.   You need to join the conversation and tell your story!  And, you can become a good case study for your small business members who aren’t yet blogging. It can be a powerful demonstration when you’ve actually used the tools you suggest to your members.

5.    Focus on member benefits.  Yes, all of your communications should do this, but blogging keeps your chamber focused on what is important to your members (and prospects). It forces you talk to their benefit instead of talking about your chamber.  Blogs allow you to easily create lots of content, giving you many chances to demonstrate the benefits of your organization.  Talk about your government affairs efforts, specific benefit programs, events, economic development items, etc., but always demonstrate how these items can benefit (or protect) your members.  Weave in posts about exclusive benefits, too, so that non-members learn why they should join your chamber.

Several of our clients are blogging with good results, including the Boston Chamber of Commerce,  Eugene Chamber of Commerce and the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, who I’ve mentioned before.

Check out these chamber blogs and see how they are using blogging technology to engage their members, help to improve retention and even generate new member sales.  I’ll have more posts soon about specific blog post topics for chamber, too.

Next up on the "List of Best and Worst practices for designing a high traffic website" is the use of keywords in the beginning of a page.

The beginning of the document can be really important when it comes to what is indexed by the search engines.  According to the guys at WebConfs.com, this might not play as big a role as the other keyword-related topics, but still is important.

Once again, we'll stay home for our example and use the WebLink Case Studies page.

Screen Capture from WebLink Case Studies Page:


Screen Capture from Google Results - WebLink Case Studies:


You'll see that the same text that is on our page is showing up in the indexed results of the Google results from a search on "WebLink Case Studies".

Another small point to make on this topic is when you're in the process of developing a new website for your association or chamber of commerce, be sure that your developer is considering the elements placement from the indexing standpoint.

Next on our list:  Keywords in <alt> tags