Memnet Conference – 28th April 2010
Memnet Conference – 28th April 2010
This is an abridged summary of a presentation I gave to the annual Memnet conference at the Liberal Club in London on the 28th April 2010. Abridged in that I tend to make things up as I go along, so this is my best recollection of what I said. The focus of the presentation was the potential for membership and professional bodies to harness social media and web 2.0 technologies to add value to the membership experience. The underlying message was the opportunity offered by social media and, if not embraced, the counter threat it presents in terms of the reasons why people join membership bodies.
Download the presentation from SlideShare
Hello
My name is Lee Davies. I’m not going to introduce myself any further than that, for reasons which will become apparent as we go along, but I will introduce my colleague James Geldart. James and I have worked together on a number of technology-based projects within the world of ‘membership’ and he is here today to interrupt me when I get things wrong and answer all the techie questions you are bound to have, questions that will fall well outside of my expertise.
I think I am the very best person to be giving this presentation to you today, because I am not an expert and I am not selling anything. So come with me now as I take a ramble through my thoughts on social media and the challenges for us, membership professionals, in weighing up just what it all means for membership and professional bodies. Oh and please keep your BlackBerries on or your laptops open as I’m sure you will want to tweet and update your status so your friends and colleagues can get a flavour of the conference.
Who am I?
Well we have established that I am Lee Mark Davies.
You can contact me in a range of ways via the web and, for those of you who can’t see me from the back of the room, here I am looking my best.
I’m male, was born on the 14th December 1966, which makes me a Sagittarian.
I’m 43 … and a bit. Depending which survey or form I am completing, I am over 16, over 18, over 21, somewhere between 35 – 45, though I won’t be able to tick that box for much longer, and am under 65.
I was born in 1966, the year England won the world cup, we never forget it do we, but my footballing pedigree doesn’t end there as I share my birthday with Michael Owen. That is as far as it goes, however, because Portsmouth Football Club can hardly be a great claim to fame at the moment. I like using this slide because it is a brilliant picture of my brother. No, not the loon in the middle, see that ear there, just under John Portsmouth Football Club Westwood’s armpit, that’s my brother.
For those of you who don’t know where Portsmouth is, it’s down there look, right at the bottom of the country, just before you stumble into the Solent. I was born in Portsmouth, but very few people know it is an island, even if you can pretty much jump the stretch of water that separates it from mainland England.
It is Portsmouth’s island status that makes it such a great natural harbour and home to the Royal Navy. An important part of Portsmouth’s heritage going back to Nelson, HMS Victory and beyond.
The fishing is pretty good which is handy for me because sea fishing is a great passion as is cooking the fish I am sometimes lucky enough to catch. Though this is a picture of me being taught how to do it properly by Rick Stein.
Some of my home city’s other claims to fame. Well, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes whilst plying his trade as Dr Doyle in Southsea. Sherlock Holmes is going to be a bit of a recurring theme for me today, we will meet him again when we look at personal learning spaces in my presentation this afternoon.
Conan Doyle was an amateur cricketer who had the great claim of having bowled the legendary W G Grace for a duck, that’s no score for those of you who don’t follow the game. I do and have been fortunate to play some of my cricket at Broadhalfpenny Down, once home to Hambledon Cricket Club and well known as the cradle of cricket, having nurtured the growth of the game before Thomas Lord nabbed the rights when he built his eponymous ground in London.
What else can I tell you about me? Well, last year was very special for me when I was commended by His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh for my services to education and training as part of the Prince Philip Medal award scheme under his presidency of City & Guilds. Dinner at his place was pretty special.
I didn’t do terribly well at school. A couple of O Levels being my sole contribution to the world of learning at that stage, though at least I was numerate and literate.
So I was packed off by my mum and dad to train as a plumber, wasn’t such a bad move as I was lucky enough to get one of the last indentured apprenticeships before government dismantled them (funny how things go full circle, isn’t it). This time round I actually did quite well, one of the top five results in the country for my advanced craft certificate, so much so that a couple of years later I was offered the chance to do some part-time teaching at Highbury College. That’s in Portsmouth, not London. Portsmouth, you remember, south coast city, natural harbour, home to Conan Doyle … oh, we’ve done all that.
I’ve no doubt that at this stage many of you are feeling like this man (George Bush), wondering what the heck any of this has got to do with social media and membership bodies. Let me explain.
Most of this you would already know if you were friends with me on Facebook, I have both personal and professional profiles – seriously, you do not want to have to suffer having a window into my personal life and the ups and downs of my six kids. You could be following me on Twitter, google me and find me on You Tube, be connected with me on Linked In, be a member of the various Ning networks I frequent from time to time, have spotted me on the Institute for Learning’s Facebook page or group or even come across my own fan page on Facebook, where I combine my three passions of cooking, education and plumbing.
My point is that just like this man here (Rory Bremner), much in demand at the moment, all of us are growing multiple identities on the web – through our personal and professional use of social media and also because we tend to belong to more than one membership or professional body.
Why do we join membership and professional bodies? The research evidence tells us that there are two primary reasons. We join because it affords us some kind of status and because it provides opportunities for networking. In the dark ages, you know, before web 2.0, membership and professional bodies were just about the only way we could connect with other professionals or those with shared interests – networking was a compelling reason for membership. But not any longer. I could take any profession or interest represented here today, google it (is google a verb?) and find any number of related groups, networks or community blogs. All free to start, all free to belong to. We are rapidly losing one of the main reasons why people join our organisations … quite simply, they no longer need us to network, unless we add value to the networks they choose to use.
Let’s get a bit techie, or as techie as I am able to get.
Most of us have a CRM system, the ‘database’ that is the engine of the membership experience. Within it, or clumsily bolted to it, we have a CMS system managing our website. Data is everything to membership and professional bodies so the CRM/CMS system rules, it is where we record all of our various transactions and, if we were forward thinking a few years ago, it is where our online community or forum exists, that ‘walled garden’ we provide as a benefit of membership, the place our members network, a place we control.
Many of our members, however, will be active on the web and that activity will include references to our work – good and bad. Google your organisation when you are next able to. Hopefully you have your own Wikipedia entry, one you control and monitor. Because of search engine optimisation I will almost certainly find you through your Wiki page before I find you through your website. What? You don’t have one? You’d better check because there is absolutely nothing to stop one or more of your members from starting it ‘for you’. If they are positive about you this could be a good thing, if they are not…….
A number of your members will be keen bloggers, using Blogger, Word Press or other sites to create and publish their own content. They may come together in blogging communities. They could, of course, do this for you if you harness their enthusiasm, identify your champions and draw their content through to your website so it reaches a wider audience. There you go, today’s first big tip, make blogging work for you whilst adding value to those of your members who blog by bringing their work to a wider audience.
A fair few of your members will be active on Facebook and may have referenced your organisation as one they belong to. You may already have your own Facebook page where you push content out or your own Facebook group where your members who are Facebook users can connect with each other. You don’t? Well, don’t be surprised if you do, but not one you create or control. You could, of course, adopt a similar strategy here, pulling content to your website and adding value to the Facebook community by pushing out content your members can subscribe to. But don’t forget others can subscribe to. A bad thing as it is no longer a member benefit? That may be so, though I wouldn’t agree, and it might just be an effective extension of your recruitment strategy.
More and more people are twittering, (another new verb) or is it tweeting (and another), and this includes your members. A corporate Twitter identity is a great way to push out messages to your members who wish to receive them in this way and hashtags (#) provide a brilliant way of corralling conversations so you can get quick feedback on issues.
Ning provides fully featured online communities that enable members to create their own special interest groups. Many members will belong to a number of Ning communities and the use of this technology enables individuals to share experience across a range of themes.
You Tube and other content sharing platforms such as Slide Share are used to publish content, initially by individuals but more and more these spaces are used by organisations. This provides a membership organisations with a range of options for supporting members who wish to share resources.
Linked In is a professional networking space and offers membership and professional bodies a way of connecting members through their shared interests.
Last, but not least, personal learning spaces create an environment where members can plan, record, reflect on and share their learning. IfL uses its REfLECT personal learning space, powered by PebblePad, to deliver and individualised methodology for CPD, where learning is truly in the hands of each member. By connecting up the many and varied spaces our members use we can add value to their experience and deliver a vibrant personal learning environment.
It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? Let’s take stock and examine the lessons in all of this for our organisations.
We need to understand our how our members currently engage in social media, this means talking to them, finding out what they use, where they use it and to identify those champions who will help to drive forward our social media strategy. I did this with you in preparation for this conference, 50 of you kindly giving up a few minutes of your time to complete an online survey.
If we look at your enthusiasm for social media and the skills you believe you have we get a very mixed picture. Three of you have no enthusiasm and very little skill, I’m going to have my work cut out there. The majority of you, however, fall into that band with increasing skill and increasing enthusiasm and here I will find my champions. I can also see those of you who are incredibly enthusiastic but lack the skill – a CPD challenge – and those of you who are skilled but where I need to convince you of the benefits of social media. My strategy is born.
Let’s look at some other interesting data. Most of you are using social media at work or a mix of work and home. You see social media as being important professionally and I will find most of you on Facebook or Linked In. Only half of you are on Twitter and a very small number use Ning or Yahoo Groups.
But what does all this mean for our social media strategy?
Firstly I think we need to accept some facts:
Social media is here to stay, it is not a fad. The technology may change over time but it is satisfying a number of needs: people like to network, they want to share experience and they want to publish their thoughts.
The strategy cannot work unless it is owned at a senior level in the organisation. I’m not here to tell you all those horror stories of the big corporates who have suffered having left their social media strategy in the hands of relatively junior staff, but that is a real risk. For me, however, the senior tie in is important because using social media is only part of the story and the organisation must take ownership of the strategy at the highest level.
Social media is important for membership and professional bodies, but because it meets the needs of the people who belong, not because of the technology. That said the technology is a key consideration. We can’t control it, we can only work with and alongside it and there is a tension here between innovators creatively building an open social network platform for members and dataphiles who see the CRM system or membership database as having primacy because we must, of course, record every single movement our members make.
The strategy must add value, it must enhance the use members already make of social media sites.
It must harness the technologies our members use and own.
For me there are seven guiding principles to a successful social media strategy.
- Understanding the audience
- Setting realistic objectives
- Choosing the right technology
- Determining the content
- Identifying the people who will lead participation
- Launching the concept and resourcing it in the earliest stages
- Describing what ‘success’ looks like
You will find similar principles to this in a range of online resources, but I would draw your attention to the paper ‘how to develop a successful social network strategy’ by Terrance Barkan of GlobalSTRAT, aimed at not-for-profit organisations.
Thank you for listening.