2014 – The State of Association Publishing
Association publishing professionals are always on the lookout for insights into the trends that impact their industry. My recent Association Membership Trends article covered four trend areas: member enrollment, customized content, tiered memberships, and member engagement. A survey of association publishing professionals by Folio provides a look into what is happening financially within association publications. Their findings show that continued challenges with revenue have largely been met with creative cost savings. And their findings show that disaster isn’t on the…
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If we build it, will they come? Event Promotion Best Practices
Your annual conference is likely the single most important event of the year for advancing the association’s agenda, member recognition and retention, and networking. It’s in everyone’s best interests to maximize attendance and engagement. So the obvious questions arise: What do we have at our disposal to promote the event? What are the new and must-have resources? While your ultimate objective is to draw members to the event, promoting the event isn’t simply about advertising to (a.k.a. talking at) your members.…
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10 Ways Association Events Are Improving
Associations that hold member conference meetings are always looking for ways to improve their events and better engage their membership. After all, these conferences typically play an important role in fulfilling an association’s mission. And, conferences can be an effective way to keep members engaged and energized. An article by Association Adviser’s Hank Berkowitz reviews improvements that have made conferences more valuable both for host associations and participants. Many of these improvements relate to the impacts of streaming technology to…
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Honing Your Content: Audience Feedback Best Practices
Relevant editorial? Glad you asked. Your publication can be one of your key tools for maintaining a vibrant relationship with your readers – which makes it extremely important to provide content that’s engaging and thought provoking while underscoring the mission of your organization. In fact, if your publication isn’t highly relevant to your audience, demanding attention when it lands on their desk or tablet, you could have a problem. So it’s important to constantly be seeking audience feedback on your…
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5 Steps for Turning Facebook Fans into Customers
Facebook isn’t just a social media website for sharing personal status updates and photographs anymore. It’s also a place where thousands of businesses are finding new customers. With Facebook’s sophisticated and precise audience-targeting capability, it has become a powerful marketing tool. The most effective Facebook marketing strategy is to offer a free, but high-value, product such as an eBook or webinar, so you can turn fans into new email subscribers. If you are considering adding Facebook marketing to your advertising…
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Tips for Measuring Member Engagement
Member engagement encompasses different meanings to different organizations. What does your association think of when you talk about member engagement, for example, subscription renewals, donations or other specific behaviors of individual members? The problem with discussing engagement is that the term has become somewhat generic and broad, so we’re often lumping different ideas under a single term. We have shared how publication apps can help you increase reader engagement. This is an example of measuring engagement based on individual behavior…
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