Engaging Members: Five Email Techniques to Try

In the first part of this “Engaging Members” series, we we looked at why associations are seeing their “organic reach” on Facebook drop so dramatically. Simply put, Facebook wants businesses and organizations to pay for advertising. In the second part, we examined one of the best alternatives for associations that lack the big advertising budgets of corporate brands:…

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Monday Motivator: Pexels

Your association should certainly consider hiring a photographer to create some “custom” stock images that you can use for your association. Encouraging members to submit their photos is a good idea. Here, too, are some tips about how you can improve your event photography. But for those times when you need something different, Pexels is a site that offers free, high-quality stock photos…

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Six Steps for Achieving Digital Transformation: Step 3

Whatever the answer, it will set the course for your digital transformation. In order to develop a clear roadmap for digital excellence, you must focus your visions on organizational capabilities, customer needs and competition in your industry. Take into account these proven strategies: A well-coordinated system of priorities for digital channels, each with its own…

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Six Steps for Achieving Digital Transformation: Step 2

Consider these questions: How do your best members or customers spend their time online? Where do they go and how do they behave online? In what ways do they interact with your association and what are the expectations? What information is most important to them? What information do they need to make decisions? How can…

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Monday Motivator: Slack

Slack allows users to set up “channels” to organize and separate messages by project, topic or team. Users can share files, documents, spreadsheets, and images – and its archiving and search functions are particularly powerful. It also allows users to integrate tools they use outside of Slack into one searchable place. Slack does have a learning…

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Engaging Members: Email Marketing Is Not Flashy, But It Works

So where does that leave nonprofits that want to better engage their members but lack the big advertising budgets of corporate brands? One of the best alternatives is something associations have been doing for so long that it’s become like a favorite pair of sweatpants: Comfortable, reliable, but certainly not exciting. That something is email…

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Monday Motivator: Zoom Video Conferencing

This video conferencing and web conferencing service stresses its ease of use, reliability and value. With Zoom, you can host everything from a small, simple online meeting to a group collaboration to a large conference featuring HD audio and HD video. It boasts a number of unique features including the ability to share computer audio during screen sharing and iPhone/iPad…

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Six Steps for Achieving Digital Transformation

This is the first entry in a six-part blog series about achieving digital excellence. Here, we focus on how to create a digital strategy. They wrestle with managing the risk of growing volumes of content, transforming content-intensive business processes, using content to better engage customers, employees and partners, and gain business insight out of the…

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Monday Motivator: Fast Scanner

In our new weekly “Monday Motivator” series, we are offering tech tips to help your association be more productive in 2016. So far, we’ve taken a look at Wunderlist and the design tool Canva. Up next is the app Fast Scanner. Available for both Apple and Android products, Fast Scanner is an app that turns your mobile device into a scanner for documents,…

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Brand First, Logo Second

Several years ago I wrote an article for FORUM about designing a brand identity—not just a logo (October 2011). That article came to mind today when I read that Microsoft Bing has new logo. The new version is green (or perhaps teal). It also uses an upper case “B.” The new color is intended to be easier to…

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