These days, it seems like everyone’s got an opinion about social media. Trouble is, opinions don’t go very far in helping associations determine which strategies and tactics they should employ as they seek to capitalize on the undeniable and enormous potential that social media provides to associations and the executives who run them. Associations have been using social media long enough that the experience of those who began early can point us towards effective social media practices specific to the association industry.
The community of association professionals who use social media is strong: We compare notes and ask about each others’ experiences and opinions, but their experience hasn’t been compiled. After coming up empty as I searched for data on how associations were actually using social media, I decided to get my own data. And the Association Social Technologies survey was born.
After gathering and analyzing data in 2008 and reporting it out in early 2009, the Association Social Technologies report, published by Principled Innovation, LLC with support from Omnipress, is the first research study to delve into the nitty gritty details of how associations are using social media. This survey answers questions such as:
- What is the most common blogging platform being used in the association industry?
- Who on staff writes for association blogs and to what extent do members write for association blog?
- What motivations do associations have for deploying certain social media tools?
- How does comment moderation technique used on an association blog affect the average number of comments per post?
On these questions and others, here’s what we found:
- The most common blogging platform being used by associations is Blogger, an easy to set up, hosted blogging service owned by Google.
- Rank and file members are the most likely to contribute to association blogs, followed by the executive director, and communications staff coming in third.
- Associations are primarily interested in engaging members when they launch blogs and social networking sites. However, their top goal in deploying a wiki is to encourage collaboration.
- We discovered that associations that moderate blog comments after they post received twice as many comments per post as those associations that moderate comments before they post.
- Only 39% of associations that publish blogs syndicate their content by e-mail.
- The average association blog gets 5339 unique visitors per month and 14 percent of their incoming traffic from search engines.
- Marketing/communications staff are most likely to spearhead an association’s social media efforts, but more than half of associations have the duty assigned elsewhere, including a significant minority of associations that have divided the responsibility for social media amongst two or more departments.
- There is no dominant player in the custom or “white label” social networking site industry.
Many of the findings in the Association Social Technologies report can inform your decision-making. In some cases, you’ll want to follow the wisdom of the crowd. For example:
- Knowing that moderating blog comments after they post can potentially double the number of comments your blog gets per post might convince you to adopt this practice, especially if you view blog comments as an important member engagement opportunity.
- Realizing that associations’ social media initiatives are not universally assigned to any single department can give the association executive a measure of confidence in assigning social media projects to staff that have an interest or talent but that don’t work in communications or membership.
In other cases, you’ll want to view the results as a hint on what not to do. For example:
- Failing to offer your blog’s content by e-mail reduces the number of people who will subscribe to it and inhibits your ability to identify and communicate with blog readers.
- Understanding that there are many players in the custom or “white label” social networking site business, you’ll want to make sure you don’t cut corners on searching out solutions.
The Association Social Technologies report is available for $99 from www.SocialTechReport.org.
