A communications professional with strengths in data management, business/member intelligence, brand strategy, corporate communications, advertising, electronic marketing and graphic design, Curt formerly worked at the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, where he managed the chamber’s website, print communications, advertising and branding efforts. 

Curt frequently presents sessions at state, regional and national chamber of commerce conferences on the topics of technology, marketing and communications.  He is also a faculty member of the Western Association of Chamber Executive's Academy.

If your chamber of commerce or business association moved to a new location, you'd probably let your members know, right?   You'd send them some emails - maybe even send some "snail mail."  You might even hang a sign on your old office letting visitors know that you've moved to a new location.

So, when you change your website, do you let your members know about all the changes? 

Most chambers of commerce and business assocations launch new websites by telling members in their print newsletters and via email.  Sometimes, they'll even hold events to "train" members on the new features.  I've seen some organizations record webinars or screen casts detailing how members can use the new website, too.

These are all great ideas - and you should consider using all of them.  But they only reach a certain percentage of the visitors to your website.  Don't forget to include a mention of the changes on the website itself! 

Recently, MSNBC.COM made a change to the navigation and layout of their website.  The old site had a navigation menu down the left-hand side of the page.   The new layout has horizontal navigation across the top of the page. 

Instead of hoping their site visitors could figure this out for themselves, MSNBC.COM included instructions where the old navigation was and direct visitors to the new navigation.   Right there where the old navigation was, they included this text, "Where's my navigation? We've moved it to the top."  They also included a link to tour the new design.  (See image below, click for larger version).
I thought this was a great example of giving vistors to the site an update of the navigation change.

Remember, that even subtle changes to your website can confuse your site visitors.  Give them all the tools they need to find the information the are looking for.   Try to view your site like a member would.  Or better yet, like someone from outside your community, who is looking for information about businesses in your community.  Make your site as easy to use and navigate as you can.  And remember to tell your visitors when you move content or navigation.

Note:  There is also a much more technical side of telling site visitors (and search engines) about site changes, such as 301 redirects and other server setttings, but I'll save that for another post. :-)

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.

I saw a post on Twitter today about how someone thought that texting was a useless form of communications.  It made me think about a story that a chamber of commerce president told me recently.

The chamber was having their regular board meeting and one board member was offering his opinion on a certain position he thought the organization should take.

He was getting some initial pushback from other board members and retreating slightly in his position. While other board members were discussing it, the chamber's president sent a text to the one board member with a message like, "We'll support you."

The president saw the board member glance down at his phone. The board member then took up the debate again, now with added confidence, and ultimately the chamber adopted his position.

Obviously, a call wouldn't have worked in that situation.  And, it's possible that the chamber president didn't feel like he could tell the board member that across the room.

I know that chambers of commerce also use text messages for staff to communicate during large events.  And some chambers use texting to send updates to their members on events or urgent business issues.

Does your chamber or business association use texting?  If so, how?  Do you have a story like the one above? Please share it in the comments.  Thank you!

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.

In the past year, I've seen dozens of chambers of commerce dramatically increase their use of social media, especially Twitter and Facebook.   I've noticed a few chambers of commerce that have truly created their own community of followers on Twitter, too. 

These chambers not only promote their own events and news, but they highlight their members (using their Twitter IDs) and they engage them with conversations.   And, their members even end up promoting each other in addition to recommending their chamber to others.

How cool is that?  An online community of chamber members using Twitter to promote their business, their friends' businesses, their chamber and their physical community!

I think this is fantastic, but it can be hard to keep your followers up to date on which of your members are on Twitter.

Today, I saw one way the Mountain Brook AL Chamber of Commerce makes it EASY for members to follow other members on Twitter - all at once.   On the lower right portion of their website (and probably in other communications), they link to a list of their members on Twitter.


The page you land on is created on TweepML, which lets you create lists for any group of Twitter users you want.   What's neat about this service (and makes it a bit different from the lists that Twitter lets you create) is that you can choose to follow one, multiple or ALL of the members on the list at once. 

You simply select the people you want to follow (or Select All) and scroll down the page to enter your Twitter name and password or connect using Twitter's Oath service.   Then you'll be following everyone you selected.  Quick and easy!

I know that some applications like Tweetdeck and Seesmic let you see Twitter lists that you follow, too. But most small business owners probably don't use those applications or fully understand how Twitter lists work.  By using a tool like TweepML, you can help them directly follow other chamber members.

I did a quick test of TweepML and it was very easy to set up my list.   Try it out for your chamber of commerce or business association.  And let me know other ways you connect your members on Twitter to each other, too.  Happy connecting!

There's a story making its way around the internet right now about a woman in Minnesota who tried to pay for tickets at a local movie theatre with a credit card.  After learning that the theatre only accepted cash, she left the theatre to get some cash and returned, only to continue the unpleasant experience.

Upon returning home, she sent an email to the company that runs the theatre.  While her email could be considered mildly inflamatory, the resulting reply is profanity-laden and offensive.

Read her full email and the reply here. Warning: the article contains profanity.  

So, what did she do?  (Besides never go to the theatre again?)   She told her friends - creating negative word of mouth.  And, she started a Facebook group called, "Boycott St. Croix Falls Cinema 8."   In just a few days, more than 4,300 people joined the group - about twice the population of the town.

You can also read a "clean" synposis of the situation and additional apologetic replies from the company here.    But, the damage was already done.

The lesson:  No communication is disposable!

Chambers of commerce often represent wide arrays of business types and not all members always agree with everything the chamber does or says.   It is likely that staff members of chambers of commerce receive emails, phone calls and personal visits from members who disagree with something or even had a bad experience with the chamber.

A good rule of thumb to ask yourself when replying is something like, "Would I be OK with this appearing as a headline in tomorrow's paper."   If not, don't click send or sumbit.  And don't leave that voice mail.

Remember the example from last year of the Batesville AR Chamber executive had to resign over some anti-Obama posts on Twitter.

Don't be afraid to communicate with social media or email, though! Just make sure you're crafting your communications wisely.

The Zionsville IN Chamber of Commerce (just northwest of Indianapolis) recently announced a new marketing initiative using technology to promote their community.   However, several of the community's business owners are not exactly enamored with the plan.   Read the full article here.

The Chamber has purchased advertising on electronic billboards at the baggage claim area of Indianapolis International Airport.  While this is a technology used by many companies to reach their target audience, I wonder how effective it could be for a community such as Zionsville.   
If you have already landed at an airport, you probably already have an agenda or schedule of things you need/want to accomplish.  Would a billboard advertising a nearby community influence you to stop by?

To be fair, the Zionsville Chamber will also place ads in the Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Authority's promotional materials.  These may do a better job or reaching potential visitors before they are already in the area.

I don't mean to beat up on the Zionsville Chamber by any means.  I've worked for a chamber and know there can be many challenges, especially with chambers in small towns.  But, I do think there are several other ways to use technology to promote the community that could be even more effective.

Search-optimized website with great content
Chambers of commerce along with convention and visitors bureaus have a great resource of content sitting right in their membership management software.  By leveraging the business names, categories, contact information and business descriptions effectively, chambers can create huge numbers of content-rich pages to be indexed by search engines. 

Coming up high in Google, Yahoo and other search engines is more CRITICAL than ever if chambers of commerce want to attract more business to their community and drive referrals to fuel local members’ business success. The higher they come up on search engines, the more traffic their websites will receive and thus create more opportunities to attract more business to the community and their members. More website traffic also enables chambers to generate significant non-dues revenue via website advertising.

And, you can reach potential visitors before they arrive in your community.

Social media engagement plan
Social media is fast becoming the ultimate word of mouth tool.  It allows your members and their customers be more engaged and share information quickly with dozens (or hundreds) of their friends.  Chambers of commerce have the opportunity to use social media not only to promote their own benefits to members and prospects, but to promote their members as well.

Chambers such as Oceanside, CA, Clovis, CA,  and Nashville, TN do a great job of  communicating their chamber's agenda and mission, AND spotlighting their members, too.  Find and follow these chambers on Twitter.  Read their blogs.  Become fans of them on Facebook.  You'll see the many ways they use social media to gain exposure for their members and community.

Teach your members how to use social media
I see chambers of commerce across the country offering workshops and seminars for their small business members on how to use social media and improve their websites.  They bring in local or national experts to teach their members about the tools and strategies for effectively using social media.

This is a fantastic opportunity for the chamber and their members to all work together to promote the community and engage potential visitors.  Social media is SOCIAL, so use these communications to help each other, make referrals and share information.

See this post from Mashable on how the resort industry is using social media.  There are several ideas that chambers of commerce and their members can adapt and use to strengthen their community's marketing efforts.

Using social media in this way allows the groups to also reach a potentially under-accessed group of visitors - people who already live in the larger surrounding communities.  While they may know you're "nearby," they may not know about many of the great things to do, places to eat or shopping opportunities in your town.  Reaching out via social media can be the first step in getting them to visit.


All of these methods help you generate additional word of mouth for your organization and your community.   And generally, they can be accomplished with little additional expense - at least when compared to other advertising options.

What other ways have you seen chambers of commerce or convention and visitors bureaus use technology to promote their members and their community?

The Maryland Chamber of Commerce is kicking off their 2010 Membership Drive with a special incentive for current members.   Recruit three new members and the Chamber's Chairman will wash your car.   Read more about the offer on the Maryland Chamber Blog.

I like this particular offer because unlike prizes or other incentives, it personalizes the organization.   And, unlike special offers where the new member gets a reward, in this case the exisiting member gets the prize.

However, this does require the member to recruit new members.  How about doing something special for the existing members, too, just thanking them for their business?

I saw on Twitter today that the Greater Owensboro Chamber has members personally visiting other members, thanking them for their business.     And I know that the Medford/Jackson OR and Las Vegas Chambers have staff members personally call each member just to say "Hi" and see how they are doing.  

In the fast-moving world of social media, sometimes the personal touch can go a long way.

What special things does your staff or board personally do for your members?   Please share them in the comments below.  Thanks!

I read a story today about how the Mesquite NV Chamber of Commerce has worked through a rather tumultuous year.  

In addition to the economy forcing the Chamber’s members to rethink their investment of membership dues, the Chamber lost a grant of $25,000 from the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority (LVCVA) – money that had already been budgeted.  (Note: The Chamber did nothing wrong; the LVCVA stopped grant monies to all chambers of commerce.)  

Read the full article here. 

As with many chambers of commerce this past year, these events sparked some major changes.  The one word mentioned repeatedly in the article is accountability.   Accountability of the exec to the board, accountability of board members to each other and members and accountability of the chamber as a whole to its membership and the community.

There are many ways you could define accountability.

• Doing what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it.
• Delivering on the value (and more) you promised the member
• Responsible use of membership, tax and/or grant dollars
• Accepting repercussions when promises are not kept or goals are not reached

How can you ensure you’re delivering on all your promises?   Certainly, a passion for your local community and a dedication to your members is paramount.  But, you simply can’t manage the relationships, expectations and benefits of all your members without a customer relationship management system.   Robust membership management software gives you operational, analytical and collaborative tools you need to deliver more value and be accountable to your members.

How does your chamber define accountability?  

And, how do you use technology to help you be accountable to your board, your members and your community?

Earlier this week I posted Part 1 of 10 Things Chambers of Commerce Can Do To Improve Their Websites.   Today, I continue with Part 2.

5. Cross promote your social media activities – You’ve probably got a Twitter account, a blog, a Facebook page and a LinkedIn profile.  You might even have a Flickr account or a YouTube channel.  How will your site visitors know about these unless you tell them? Include social media icons on your home page (every page would be better) and link them to your respective social media accounts.  Use widgets to include your chamber’s Twitter feed on your blog or website and link your blog’s RSS feed to your Twitter account and your Facebook stream.  You never know when someone’s going to be paying attention for the first time, so be sure to cross promote your efforts in the appropriate media outlets.

4. Post more photos  – Services such as Flickr or Picasa and many others make it very easy to upload photos and link to them or embed them on your site.  Take lots of photos of your community or at events, ribbon cuttings and press conferences…anytime…and share them with your site visitors. Use photos in your site’s design, create photo galleries and embed slide shows on appropriate pages.  Your members love to see photos from events. With a digital camera and a notebook computer, you can even upload directly from an event! If you use Facebook for photo albums, make sure you link to them from your website, too.  (See #5 above)

3.  Add more videos - With the availability of easy-to-use pocket video cameras like the Flip series and cell phones that can capture video, there is no excuse for not using videos.  Videos add a dynamic aspect to your site and site visitors love to watch them.  Use videos to post member testimonials, “live” updates from city council meetings or events.  Include videos in your blog posts to show the human side of your chamber and communicate your position on issues.  Generally, keep most videos 1-3 minutes long with occasional more in-depth videos.  You DO have a channel on YouTube, don’t you?  (If not, go create one now.)  See this post with examples of chambers of commerce using YouTube.

2. Include search – Include a site search box on your home page.  On every page would be even better.  Usually, search boxes are located somewhere near the top right of the page, but wherever you place it, keep it consistent on all pages.  Despite all the great changes you’ve just made to your navigation (in point #9), some people simply want to search instead and they expect that you’ll have that option. If you don’t, they might not stick around.

1. Create great content – Yes, you could call photos and video content, but I’m talking about good old fashioned text.  Relevant, timely and frequent.  A blog is one way to add content and helps position your chamber as an expert and news generator.  But, you should also add content to other areas of your site.  Keyword-rich text about visiting, living in and working in your community plus local business news helps your site rank higher for local searches – something your chamber needs to own! 

Use your readers’ vocabulary to deliver relevant content.  When possible, include real-life examples from members of how certain issues affect their business.  Keep text short and simple, use correct grammar and spelling and make it unique and interesting.  You might not think you can create that much content....yes you can! You can write about the history of your community, famous residents, long-time members and their impact on business in the area.  You can write about current business issues and member benefits and all the things your chamber does on a daily basis to benefit business in your community.  Great content is what will attract visitors to your site and updated content is what will bring them back. 


Notice a trend with these items?  Yes, they all involve work that you must do.   You must take an active roll in producing great content, setting goals for your website and making change that help produce the results you want.   Do these things well and you'll ultimately create more value for your members, which helps improve retention and generate new member sales.

And, you've probably noticed that many of these items aren't exclusively about your website - they involve other tools as well.  Your website should be the hub of ALL of your communications efforts and it should overlap with each of them.  Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, your blog, your printed newsletter, your events - they all should tie back into your website.  This is probably a shift in thinking for some chambers of commerce.   Think of your organization as a media company and find ways to use your various communications tools together to tell your story. 

There's an added benefit to making all these improvements, too, besides better usability and increased traffic - non-dues revenue.  I'll highlight ways you can leverage all the hard work you've done on your website and improve your chamber's bottom line in an upcoming post.


What improvements have you made to your website?  How have you measured the results?  What other ways do you think chambers can improve their websites? Let me know in the comments below.  Thanks!

A few months ago, I wrote about the Pitfalls of Social Media for chambers of commerce and associations. Since then I've had some great conversations with staff from chambers and association about how to avoid these pitfalls and use social media to strengthen their brands and engage their members.

Recently, I found this post by B.L. Ochman about Three Top Ways to Damage Your Brand With Social Media.   She makes some good points about ways you could negatively impact your organization with the MIS-USE of social media.


Start a Twitter account, then don't use it - Fortunately, I haven't see very many chambers of commerce with Twitter accounts such as the @TimeWarnerCares example in the post. 

However, I have seen plenty of chamber Twitter accounts with hundreds of followers, yet they are only following a handful of people.  A big part of using Twitter is listening and engaging in conversation with your followers.  What does it say about your organization if you're not following your members or other businesses in your community?  It seems like you're not interested in listening to them!  That doesn't do much for your brand, does it?

No, you don't have to follow everyone that follows you, but you should probably follow anyone who is located in your community or has an obvious link to your organization.  When someone follows you, look at their profile location, URL and bio to see to determine if you should follow them back. (In most cases, you should). 

Not tracking your brand using monitoring tools  -  With all the free tools available, there is really no excuse for not doing at least some monitoring.   See "Is your chamber 'listening' to the internet" for more info.  Set up searches for your organization's name, your city name or other terms specific to your organization so you can know when people are talking about you. (And decide if/when to respond).  Some tools to try include:

• Twitter Search - View results in your browser or set up an RSS feed of your search
• Google Alerts - View results, set up email alerts or get an RSS feed
• Google Blogsearch - View results, set up email alerts or get an RSS feed
• Twilert - does a Twitter search, but sends you email
• Monitter - a browser based Twitter search tool that lets you search by keyword and geographic location.

If you don't monitor the web for your brand mentions, you will probably be left out of the conversations taking place in your community.  You can't do much for your reputation and brand if you don't know about these discussions.
 
Start using social media, but don't tell the rest of the organization - Good news, here.  I don't know any chambers of commerce or business associations who have done this.  Occasionally, individuals will start using social media and because they work for a chamber of commerce or assocation, the followers will assume they are speaking on behalf of the organization.  It's probably worthwhile to have a conversation with all staff about the appropriate use of social media and refinforce that (whether they like it or not) they are respresenting your organization.  Remember, too, to keep your board (and members) advised of what you're doing with social media.  We've all had those phone calls from board members who are upset because they had to find out about something from someone else.


I have a couple of addtional ways beyond those listed in the post:

One way communications on Twitter - I've seen a few chambers of commerce that only post updates on Twitter with links to their own events, blog posts or website.  There are no replies to others, no retweets and no sharing of links or resources on other sites.   This practice is similar to not listening.   Even when someone replies to the organization, there are no subsequent replies. 

If someone answers your question or retweets your info, reply to them, thank them and engage them!   Some replies are certainly better sent as direct messages (and not viewable on your stream), but having some RTs and @replies in your Twitter stream shows you're engaging your audience, not just pushing out info. 

Repetitive Tweeting - Some organizations seem to post the same 5-10 things every day on Twitter. "Check out our website" or "Did you know XYZ" are great every once in a while, but when done systematically, day after day, with exactly the same text, they become the equivilent of spam.

Sure, you could argue that not all followers will see the message each time and you want to make sure you get the word out. I certainly understand that. But, you can vary your text and messaging so that you're not monotonous.  Your followers will quickly tire of seeing the same message over and over again and may choose to stop following you.


What do you think?  Are there other ways you could damage your organization by using (or mis-using) social media?

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?

You've probably been using social media such as blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for a while now.  Have you seen your efforts pay off with new members?  Some chambers of commerce have.

Read this article about how the Athens GA Area Chamber of Commerce appealed to a local businessman with their adoption of social media. From the article:

A few months ago, I got this note from Jessica Hibbard of the Frederick County MD Chamber of Commerce in response to a post about how social media may not be effective for associations:

The North Mason WA Chamber of Commerce has increased their membership from 210 to 400 in the past 19 months.  Frank Kenny, President & CEO of the Chamber, attributes much of that growth to the Chamber's adoption of social media, including Twitter, blogs and a dedicated social network.

These are just a few examples of chambers of commerce connecting with new members via Twitter and social media.  How about your chamber or business association?  

Can you attribute an increase in new member sales or an improvement in retention to your use of social media?  I'd love to hear your stories.

Retention. It's a key indicator for most chambers of commerce and business associations.  The factors that drive retention also drive just about everything else about the financial health and growth of your member-based organization.  Revenue. Sponsorships.  Event attendance. New member sales. 

Higher retention means more satisfied members, more connected members and more word of mouth advertising for your organization.  

And more fans.

Fans.  Not just Facebook fans, but someone who actually loves your organization and your staff and will tell other people about you.  In his book, Purple Cow, Seth Godin calls your biggest fans "sneezers" because they are so enamored with your company that  tell others about your products and services and help spread your ideas.

How do you get more fans faster?  Social media!

Think about how hard it would be to increase the number of true (raving) fans your chamber of commerce or business association has by hosting great events or sending out great newsletters.  Yes, you can use member segmentation and mass customization to deliver targeted, relevant information, but events and newsetters are relatively infrequent compared to how you can use social media. 

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and others all help you tell your story more frequently, more immediately and in more places.  And these social media allow your members to help you tell your story WAY more than your events or newsletters do.  (Word of mouth advertising).  Having more fans helps you build more momentum and improve retention even more since they can now all help you in your efforts.

Social media allows you to share more information than ever before without spamming your members.  They've voluntarily choosen to follow you, read your content or join your group.  They can reply, ask questions or share your content with others.   This blog and many others are full of great examples of non-profit organizations, chambers of commerce and business assocations using social media to actively engage their members and prospects and create an entirely new fan base.   I've seen great examples of members in a community reposting information about their chamber of commerce, writing blog posts about chamber events and even creating videos on YouTube about their chamber.

You can't do it with social media alone, though.  You must provide real benefits and demonstrate your value to your members using all of your communications tools.  You must ask for their input and respond.  Listening, learing, adapting and communicating helps you improve retention and all the other things listed above.  And, great membership management software can help you record and track information about your members to help you communicate your value more effectively.

But, social media lets you do this all faster and on a much larger scale.  So, go improve retention!  (And get more fans.)

Over the past few weeks, I've spent quite a bit of time talking face to face with chamber of commerce executives, both at the American Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) Convention and the Western Association of Chamber Executives (W.A.C.E.) Academy.  We've talked about improving retention, increasing new members sales, generating non-dues revenue and more. But by far the hottest topic has been social media.

I find it puzzling that so many chambers of commerce are still "holding off" on using social media because they want to "get our strategy figured out." 

Sarah Hubbard from the Detroit Chamber of Commerce says to not "overthink" your use of social media. Jump in and start learning! See her post where she explains that you need to be familiar with the tools before you can determine a strategy for using them.

Let's think about social media relative to your other communications tools for a moment.

What is your strategy for your newsletter? 
For your events?
For your emails?
For your website? 

I'll guess that your strategies for these items involves providing relevant and useful information to your members regarding local business issues, government affairs efforts, chamber programs, benefits and policies, your events and community topics.  Do the same thing with social media!

Social media allows you to do all the things you're already doing, but with more immediacy and frequency!  And, your members get to participate!

Aha....that last bit scares many chambers.  How do you handle the "wild card" of your members?

As a rule of thumb, don't say anything on social media sites that you wouldn't say in front of a group of 50, 200 or 500 members.  Sure, you'll get some people who disagree you.  Take that opportunity to engage in a healthy discussion....be social!   See The Pitfalls of Social Media for additional thoughts on this.

Yes, I know I'm simplifying the process here, but my point is that it doesn't need to be hard!  You're already using a variety of other communications tools - simply add social media to the mix.  

But, who will "control" the social media for your chamber of commerce?  My suggestion is to let the same staff who manage your website, email, newsletters and other communications.  They're already used to crafting your chamber's message - let them start using additional social media tools to tell your stories.

Jump in! Don't worry about being a social media expert. Use common sense. Learn from others. Adjust to fit your other communications strategies.

And, have some fun, too.  The Asheville Chamber of Commerce does a great job of using their blog and Twitter accounts to provide information to their community and promote their members.  Recently, they also share a security camera video of a bear that had rummaged through trash cans in their parking lot.  It had no direct correlation to business in Asheville, but it was unusual and kind of fun.  I've seen other chambers share funny stories of things that happen in the office, too.  

These "real life" stories help build relationships with your members and followers.   While they want and need the information that can help them run their business more effectively or generate new sales, they'll also appreciate the fact that there's a real person (or people) behind all those great updates from your chamber.  

And regardless of your social media goals, building relationships will certainly be part of the strategy.

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!

Last week at the American Chamber of Commerce Executives (ACCE) Convention in Raleigh, I sat in on Rahaf Harfoush's presentation on how the Obama campaign used social media, websites and email to connect to and engage voters during the 2008 Presedential Election.

She explained several ways that the campaign created online connections to facilitate offline actions by voters.  These included extensive use of technology and social media such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, a dedicated social network, an iPhone app and many others. 

When she got to email, she stressed the key to their success: Hyper-Segmentation

The campaign delivered different messages to voters based on:

1. State
2. Interests on certain issues (indicated when opting in to emails)
3. Donation history

By carefully crafting messages for people and keying on their location, interests and history, they could make each email extremely relevant.  This helped make the recipient feel that the campaign truly knew who they were and that the issues discussed were happening right in their backyard.

Are you segmenting your email communications to your members?   Can you deliver relevant messages to your members so they feel like your chamber of commerce understands them and is working to serve their needs?  Can you make your messages personal?

I've mentioned segmentation on this blog before, but the concept bears repeating since many chambers of commerce are just now realizing the power of segmentating communications to help increase member satistaction and retention and generate new member sales.

Ways you can segment your members include:

• Employee count
• Business category
• Interests (collected through your website or membership application)
• Dues amount
• Length of membership
• NAICS code
• Previous event attendance

So, when you send out emails to members about how certain issues affect their business, why not break that email into two or more versions?  Send one email to members with 1-50 employees, and include quotes from similarly-sized business stating how the issues affect them. Then rework the email for the members with 50+ employees with a different take on the issues.

You can do this for just about every email you send to members using any number of ways to segment.  Try to make your "blast" emails seem like you sat down and typed out a note to each of your members individually.  By carefully crafting your messages, you'll end up demonstrating more value to your members.

This issue was highlighted recently by Ben Wolf, IOM, vice president of member services at the Nashville Area (TN) Chamber of Commerce in his article in ACCE's Chamber Executive, "Are You Effectively Communicating Your Value? Make it Personal."   (Congratulations to the Nashville Chamber for being recognized by ACCE as the top Chamber in the country for their dues range.  The Nashville Chamber is a WebLink International client!) :-)

In the article, Wolf states, "Communicating value is not just about delivering a standard message. It’s about identifying what one perceives as valuable. It’s not just what is said, but how it is said that makes the difference. It is tailoring a specific, targeted message to a targeted audience member."  Excellent advice.

Know your members though data collection and management
Segment your members for greater member intelligence
Communicate your value by using segmentation and knowledge gained from your data

Obviously, the key here is membership management software or a customer relationship management system that allows you to collect your members' interests and other demographic information and easily export that for use with email and other communications.  Find ways to input AND extract this information in your database and use it to deliver targeted, relevant communications.

And...why stop at email?  You could create different versions of postcards, letters, mailings....even your printed newsletter, to deliver relevant messages to your members.

Happy segmenting!

Recently, I posted about chambers of commerce being "Twitter-worthy." Since then, I've had some good discussions with chambers of commerce on how they are working to be remarkable for their members. 

In some cases, chambers are leading the way in their community by being on Twitter and other social media and showing their members how to use it.  In others, the chamber is just learning how to use social media to connect to and engage their members to improve member satisfaction, increase retention and even gain new member sales. 

Some chambers are using social media AND getting back to more face-to-face and phone conversations to truly show their members that they care about their business. I know of a few chambers who are calling every member 2-4 times per year just to say "Hi," ask how their business is doing and see if there's anything the chamber can do to help them.  With all the media available today, sometimes a simple phone call and genuine concern can go a long way towards being remarkable for your members and improving member satisfaction.

Today, I found this post on Twitter where a chamber of commerce is clearly remarkable for at least one member.  WOW!  What a great unsolicited remark!

On Wednesday, I posted about having a TweetUp just for chamber of commerce Twitter users during the ACCE Convention in Raleigh, NC.  (If you're going to the convention, please join us!)  Since then, I've had a few people ask me, "What is a TweetUp?"

In chamber of commerce terms, a TweetUp is a mixer. Twitter users get together to "meetup" and network, just like your members would at a "traditional" mixer.  Nothing special has to happen at the event to make it a TweetUp....just get together and network.  Sometimes they are sponsored, but ususally it's just a group of people getting together at a certain place. 

I've been to a few TweetUps and it's always fun trying to match people to their Twitter IDs or profile photos.   But....it is VERY cool when you meet someone in person with whom you've been sharing information and having conversations through Twitter or other social media.  And, it's that the purpose of social media - to build relationships that ultimately result in some transaction or a face to face meeting.   That's certainly one of the missions of your chamber of commerce - to be a connector for members in your community.  So, go out and host some TweetUps!

Has your chamber of commerce hosted TweetUps?  How did you promote it? What was the turnout?  Let us know in the comments below.

For more info, check out these posts:  Tweetups (and other tweety meetings) - a primer.   And, Mashable's How To: Organize a Successful Tweetup.