Social Media & Associations: Moving Forward by Getting Back to the Basics

In therecent newsletterthat Association Trends™ published, there was an article titled “Social media and how it’s changing associations.” This article focused on the theme of the recent ASAE 2012 Technology Conference, which was how to integrate a social media strategy into an association’s corporate culture. Social continues to be a growing trend, and it is starting to pick up in popularity among associations.

Chris Carfi, VP of Social Business Strategy at Ant’s Eye View, discussed what he felt were thefive different levels of engagement:

1. Traditional phase of one-way communication
2. Experimental phase of dabbling without a connection to business operations
3. Operational phase that is embedded in business operations
4. Measurable stage that drives business results
5. Full engagement phase where social as part of the DNA

There is a nice parallel between these levels of engagement and the three layers in theSocial Ecosystem. Telligent has classified three different layers of engagement in the social space, which includes not only social media, but company-owned communities as well.

• Participating: The participating layer is where individuals and the company can participate on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Carfi’s first two levels of engagement take place here. Sometimes this manifests itself as “dabbling” in social media, but it does not connect to business objectives. However, companies in Cafri’s third stage could also use this as an effective means to draw people to their communities.
• Managed: This layer includes organization pages and groups on consumer-facing social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. As described in Carfi’s operational level of engagement, social media is embedded into business operations; but interaction does not take place on a platform that is owned by the organization.
• Owned: The third layer of the Social Ecosystem, classified as company-owned and managed, typically running on community and collaboration software. This is where the greatest value takes place from Carfi’s final two stages of engagement – measurable and full engagement. It is only in the context of a company-owned community, where an organization can fully own the data to both measure and drive business results. And, it is only in this context where there can be full integration with the company’s overall business processes, branding and control of the user experience.

Justin Couto ofCouto Solutionssummed this idea up nicely in our recent webinar with AICPA. Regarding how and where associations spend time and resources on social media, he says “The smartest investment you can make is in your organization.” It’s wise to capitalize on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter; however, remember that the social media landscape is ever-changing. The social networks that are popular today may not be in six months, a year or five years. Use these as social channels to attract and drive your focus audience into a community that truly fulfills their needs.  

For more information about how associations use online social communities, watch this webinar featuring Couto Solutions and AICPA.