How to use Software to Leverage your Associations Social Media and Marketing Efforts

Marketing and social media are great avenues for Associations to build member engagement, increase brand awareness, provide industry programs and improve industry standards. An interesting statistic highlights that 54% of associations do not have an allocation for a social marketing budget.

Association challenges:

• Not able to measure ROI
• Not enough integration of social media throughout organisation
• No budget allocated to social media marketing
• Not having social media goals

Step 1: Goals

Try and determine what it is your association wants to measure in terms of marketing and social media. Align your social media and marketing activities with your membership management goals.  It’s also a good idea to have both short term goals such as to increase your website traffic, and long term goals such as growing your membership base by X percentage each year. 

Decide what you would like to achieve from both your newsletters and social media:
Newsletters: could it be what links people clicked on? Or who opened the newsletter and who didn’t?
Social media: Who retweeted or liked your post or tweet? Who saw your tweets or posts?

Step 2: Channels 

Your organisation might already know which social media channels are most successful with your audience. LinkedIn is a great place to target relevant communities where you could target current and prospective members, by posting interesting articles and other industry news. Other NFP organisations might look to other platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to grow their conversations.

There are other networks other than these big three such as; Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat. If you don’t think your organisation would suite these very visual networks consider using different types of content such as infographics, timelines and videos on them. These platforms are also used by younger professionals so if you’re looking at engaging with younger members look to these networks.

Step 3: Resources      

If you are struggling with the thought of how you’re going to handle and manage all of your campaigns, ensure you have a membership management software solution that offers social media integrations and produces live feeds on your website. This way member’s don’t have to look elsewhere to find information. Real time reporting is another great association membership management feature that allows you to manage your campaigns and see your ROI.

Partnering with a professional association membership marketing team could also benefit your member organisation with establishing your social media presence, generating clever ideas and strategies moving forward. Our Member Evolution marketing team are certified Google partners and have had many years’ experience working with community networks. Enquire now for more information.  

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