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The very thought of having to learn something new – especially if it involves technology – is off-putting for many. I remember the days when I trained members on how to use the association’s website. For some, it was the first time they learned what a mouse was. I learned by experience that to learn something new you need some sort of motivation. Many years ago, that motivation was simply – hey, there’s this new world wide web-thingy, maybe I should check it out!

But now, with the rapid deployment of web tools it can seem futile to try to keep pace. Why bother with blogs? No one takes them seriously. Who cares about wikis? We’ve collaborated for years without them. I don’t need an RSS feed. I know how to find information when I need it.

So how can you encourage members and staff to try out some of these new technologies when they simply do not have the motivation to do so? My answer has been to find a low-cost, low-effort solution, deploy it with minimum hoopla and find a few people who are interested in learning more about it. Stay positive, keep expectations to a minimum, and remind everyone what it means to be out in front, to set the pace for expectations.

We launched a conference blog for the first time this year. I knew I was in for a challenge when I asked our planning committee if they read blogs and not a soul raised a hand. Some asked what a blog was. These are accomplished, highly-educated folks. I even showed them other associations’ conference blogs. They didn’t actively oppose the idea, they just didn’t have a clue about what we might accomplish with such a blog. I managed to scrape up a few volunteers who agreed to try writing a post.

Ultimately, we had a few member-contributed posts, but not many. And we didn’t have many page views either. But we did learn a few lessons along the way. To continue our educational process, earlier this week I made a presentation to our volunteer leadership about our first experience with the blog. I focused on how we succeeded – by creating a new opportunity for member engagement. I talked about the value of the information that was shared on the blog. I invited one of the guest authors to talk about her experience.

Then, I made recommendations for how we might build upon our experiences – by boosting our marketing efforts, by adding pictures, by encouraging and supporting posting onsite at the meeting. Those ideas are probably pretty obvious to many of you, but they would have seemed like pie in the sky to our leadership if I had launched the idea of a conference blog with such ambitious goals. Our leadership welcomed the ideas and one member even commented to me later that he thought we were heading in the right direction – acknowledging that he and his peers might not be the perfect audience, but that if we are to engage future members we need to get started now.

When you want to start something that is so foreign to the audience you are trying to reach, you have to start with the basics, just like learning the letters of the alphabet before learning to read. Often when we are fluent with an idea or concept, it’s easy to overwhelm those who aren’t as experienced. Understand what motivates your audience, start small, keep expectations realistic and know that you can build quickly – those are my keys to integrating the use of social media into the mainstream of our association communication methodologies.