Acronym

Thanks for the stats...more fuel for the fire. You're right. It's time for every association to look for ways to participate.

Who's adopted a social media plan? I'd love to hear some case studies from associations who are doing it.

Our Facebook and LinkedIn groups continue to gain traction, only being live less than 48 hours. Over 250 on LinkedIn and over 160 on Facebook. We have even had members connect with the association on some new benefits and services they haven't used, just because they saw them on the group.

http://blogclump.blogspot.com/2008/01/social-media-experiment.html

Interesting stuff, but I'm afraid the stats will only contribute to many organizations jumping into something they have no idea how to manage and isn't part of a larger strategy. Lindy hit it on the head, how many associations actually have social media plans? LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. are fantastic tools for connecting members together, but then what? Without a larger goal or strategy in mind all that you end up with is yet another connection and nothing more. Why create a bunch of YouTube videos for your members if they don't find value in it. Similarly, why create yet another Facebook group if it isn't part of a grander plan. Fail to plan, plan to fail.

Lisa, perhaps we should look at what kinds of videos are being looked at rather than just the fact that videos are being looked at. I'm pretty sure most of them were looking at that funny wedding reception video where the couple of the hour suddenly break into a routine to "Baby Got Back."

Dave's right. I just don't see the point of doing anything because it seems "cool" or because of a feverish race not to be "left behind." That kind of catch-up thinking can lead to an organization spending a lot of time and energy spinning wheels with little to show for it. If your plan to offer value to your membership involves a Facebook group and a series of viral videos that actually play a strategic role, then great. Otherwise they just seem like tasks to assign some lower-level employees so you can proudly say "hey, look, we're cutting edge" while "the real work" (and yeah, the quotes are there for a reason) gets done by the "adults" (again, reason for the quotes).

Dave and Kevin--You both have good points about the need for planning and overall strategy--I absolutely agree. But I'm thinking that some initial experimentation is an important part of testing the waters in this area and, quickly or over time, developing the kind of strategy you're both talking about.

Note that to me, "experimenting" doesn't have to mean that the association creates a whole series of videos or Facebook groups--it could mean reading and discussing blogs among the staff, commenting on them, interacting in a social networking group, launching a blog for a single event, etc. Without at least some experience of that kind, I would think it would be really hard to envision a bigger-picture approach to social media. Do you disagree?

Lisa, sure, there's never anything wrong with experimenting in my book. Except ... sometimes we forget that experimenting is experimenting. In a busy association atmosphere, sometimes instead of saying "what did we learn from that?" we say "okay, we did that already, what's next?" You do a blog for an event and think, well, we did blogging, check that one off the list. Perhaps there's a real strategic way an organization could use blogging, but it's now become "something that you do for meetings and that really didn't make any money or bring in a lot of traffic."

Finally, I think with any technology there is a fear of being left behind -- people think that, as you put it, they "are going to have a really hard time catching up if they wait much longer." I just don't buy that sort of thing any more because I just don't think it's true. Which major trade associations didn't have a website in 1995? Do you remember? Does anyone? Does it reslly matter now if they did or didn't, and is there any proof that if they did they are bigger/better today than if they hadn't?

First of all, I agree with everyone above regarding having a larger plan in mind when adopting new media strategies, and being critical of what the Pew data is actually saying (good point, Kevin).

I think a lot of these comments are underscoring a larger idea that has been touched on before, and that is how to measure ROI in terms of social media endeavors. Is "bigger/better" really better? What about loyalty, and members finding more value in their membership? I think Scott’s recent post about tradeshows may have somewhat surfaced these thoughts (member satisfaction/involvement over numbers).

These are difficult to gauge and that is why oftentimes people shy away from these new forms of communication. And I think that Lisa is right -- unless there is some experimentation, how can an association know what forms of communication might work for them? There should be ownership in these kinds of experiments – if you can’t make time to discuss them and strategize, how do you expect to move forward with them?

Kevin: Two very good points. Perhaps the key is "strategic experimentation"--not being afraid to try a few new things on the road to developing a strategy, but being rigorous about drawing out lessons learned whenever such experiments take place ...

Stephanie: Thank you so much for your comment! And for your good point about measuring ROI in social media. I did see a really interesting blog post the other day about measuring success specifically for blogs--admittedly, that's only part of the puzzle, but I'd be curious to hear what other folks think about the method he suggests.

Lisa: I like the concept of "strategic experimentation." In particular I like the concept of an organization making a conscious choice to try certain things, not to see if they "work" or not, but to learn something from their execution. It is a difficult thing. Some of us are lucky enough to work for organizations that value risk, but even then we have a hard time remembering that there's a difference between trying something to see if it works, and trying something just to see what we learn.

Stephanie: I said "bigger/better" with a slash between it because some people think bigger is better, and some people think better has nothing whatsoever to do with being bigger. I'm not at this point judging between the two viewpoints. My point was just that with every new technology, over time (even a scant decade) it is hard to determine whether or not an early adoption mentality has anything to do with an organization's attainment of its goals. Google was neither the first search engine nor the first to offer keyword search advertising. The iPod was not the first MP3 player. Early adoption for its own sake is not necessarily a good strategy for any organization.