But I stuck with it and I am glad that I did. Because as I continued to read , I found the book to be a very practical and constructive guide on how to go about starting and developing a social media strategy for an association.
The book provides a step by step road map on how to start by listening to the market, building an organizational consensus around the purpose, and launching low risk efforts to see what works best.
But what I particularly appreciate about Open Community is the clear call to purpose and focus for social media.
The book makes clear “that just using social media for the sake of having a Facebook Page or a Twitter account just doesn’t make sense. There has to be a real, ‘show me the ROI’ reason to start and some business intelligence backing that up.”1.
Open Community also emphasizes building a value proposition around your social media strategy. “The most important question is this: What can your members get from your social spaces that they can’t get anywhere else? If you can’t answer that question, start over.”2.
Finally, the book highlights some of the add-on benefits social media provides to an association like empowering members to champion the organization to others and providing staff with real time feedback on association events, marketing, and content.
There is one thing that I think would make the book more helpful – maybe Lindy and Maddie are setting us up for a sequel. It is great to say a social media strategy needs to have an ROI focus and a clear value proposition, but it is another thing to do it. I think that even though every situation will be different, the book would have benefited from some case studies that highlight the ROI and value that associations have achieved by deploying a successful social media strategy.
The bottom line is that if starting or improving your social media strategy is part of the plan for 2011, then it is well worth buying, reading, and using the ideas in Open Community.
1. Lindy Dreyer and Maddie Grant, CAE, Open Community: A Little Book of Big Ideas for Associations Navigating the Social Web, 2010, page 40.
2. Ibid. page 140.
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3 comments:
Thanks Tony. I'm glad we didn't lose you at page 21! Your review and feedback means a lot. I agree we need to back these concepts up with case studies. We plan to spend this year seeking out and blogging about real associations putting open community concepts to work for them. And you just might see a sequel. ;-)
Glad to hear that a sequel could be on the way. I think that the most perplexing question for membership professionals remains how to use and integrate social media into the membership marketing mix -- to help build awareness, support recruitment, and encourage engagement and renewal. Tony
Hi Tony,
I could not agree with you more. Social Media is a great, yet somewhat scary, thing. I say that it is scary because there is a lot to it and it can really be a time suck if not used strategically. Using it strategically to me means that you would know what your goals are for a campaign or a product or service before you start marketing and then include social media in your marketing mix in a way that it will best help you reach your goals. If an association is using social media just to use social media I would say that in many ways they are better off not using it at all as it can take time and resources away from activities that can drive the result they are looking for.
Scott
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