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Small Association – Collaborative Web Site on a Small Budget
Revenue Growth, Technology & WebsitesHelping the Greensboro Association Go Online
Over the last few years, I have worked with a number of larger associations to modernize their online experience and build and enhance community among their membership. With the advent of web 2.0 and social media, these associations recognized that to sustain their membership and attract new members, they needed to deliver a more compelling experience online. At the same time, I have had the good fortune to serve on the board of the Greensboro Association in Vermont. We are a very small community organization to enhance the village and the beautiful Caspian Lake area by promoting practices that enhance community interaction, protect the lake and serve members and visitors to this idyllic place in northern Vermont. As the demographics of the community are changing and fewer summer members spend an extended time in the village and local residents become more engaged in the Association, the community will increasingly rely on the online experience to stay engaged with the community and the Association on a continuous, year round basis.
As part of this team, I volunteered to help launch a new web site and services for the community. Naturally, with the size of the organization, we did not have the luxury of a fully customized web presence and needed to deliver value within a low budget! What was the solution? I worked with the committee to select and launch the site on a strong back-end Joomla platform so we could take advantage of the plug and play modules and extensions available in the open community and the long term flexibility. The site was deployed with an off-the-shelf template, which provides a lot of flexibility- though we know that, over time, we will want to enhance the user experience. We decided on a number of extensions to enhance the functionality to include:
Our membership is diverse demographically and not all members are fully comfortable with online experiences. Going forward, we will need to help committee and association leaders take a more active role in managing the online discussions, publishing content and engaging the site as an extension of the collaborative experience of the Association. We consider the online experience an extension to our already rich human interactions among the membership – while also appealing to those more comfortable and familiar with online 24×7 access now available.
I am sure an approach like the one we took would work with community organizations of a similar size and focus. Below is a presentation I made recently at the Annual Meeting. This presentation will give you an idea of the site and its functionality.
Two Days at the Reynolds Plantation with OPEI
Revenue GrowthI have just returned from a terrific two day visit with OPEI at the Reynolds Plantation in Greensboro, GA.
I was speaking there on Social Media and Web 2.0. (Presentation below). OPEI is an intimate Association who’s members are both competitors and friends – they come together each year for a few days of learning and social activities at some of the finer venues across the US.
This was a chance to speak with leaders in Outdoor Equipment Manufacturing. A key focus they have is on advocating their message as a strong contributor to our both our economy and as facilitator of a green environment through their critical role in grass cutting and turf care – did you know grass is #2 behind trees as the top carbon-reducing natural asset? See the Slideshare presentation here…
Changing the Education & Information Delivery Paradigm
Revenue Growth, Technology & WebsitesUse new technologies to enhance your education and information delivery strategy! I think we all agree that education and learning is critical – for students, educational institutions, corporations, and governments. An educated workforce delivers competitive advantage of nations, and our educational institutions and information resources must deliver the best possible learning experience. Corporations and governments need to address the full spectrum from concept education to on-demand learning, information delivery, and electronic performance support. These organizations need to educate their audience with new concepts, processes, policies, procedures and products on a continuous basis and deliver insights and help at the point of delivery and execution.
The traditional classroom education paradigm is no longer adequate to ensure students receive the education and learning insights they need. We know there is significant value in the face-to-face, instructor led educational experience, but the traditional model needs to be enhanced with new information delivery models that take advantage of the new second circle technologies available today. What are some of the challenges we experience with the traditional model?
I worked with a large insurance company with a non-captive agent workforce spread broadly across geographies. They needed a solution that delivered critical insights at the point of client delivery and communication, but they also needed to deliver a broader educational foundation for these agents. Delivering formal educational programs to an audience this diverse was prohibitively expensive and couldn’t support the day-to-day support needs. They needed both a performance support solution AND an online teaching solution. Increasingly, educational institutions need new sources of income while providing the services that are being demanded by students. Major online education providers are signing up well over 20,000 new online students a month – I think we can confirm the demand is here. Prestigious educational institutions should naturally preserve the integrity of their educational brand and foster the complete on-campus educational experience that includes personal relationships, but they can also begin to more effectively compliment their delivery model with enhanced delivery methods and media. Tufts is working on programs that will deliver the Tufts-brand of education through distance learning to places like Dubai. In another business example, a leading retail bank needs to better leverage their expert knowledge about innovative products and services across the branch store network. Why lose a valuable product cross-sell or adoption because branch platform personnel were not yet up to speed on key product features and advantages? Use experts to deliver content on-demand at the point of sale. They need both a broader educational content foundation and live video services that deliver real-time branch to branch and web-based video conferencing and delivery services. Education and learning delivery should blend traditional classroom learning with new on-demand virtual teaching and information delivery models. New virtual education and information delivery technologies provide the mechanisms to deliver education at the pace students need and provide critical knowledge content on-demand to a company’s customers, employees, partners and students. One example is Panviva’s Supportpoint solution which is being used by companies that need a performance management solution delivered at the point of delivery. The technology integrates with existing applications to provide context-sensitve help and educational performance support. Another compelling solution is being delivered by Retrieve Technology in Henniker, NH. Retrieve’s vBook technology delivers rich educational content in video /multi-media on-demand to governments, corporations and educational institutions. Teachers and publishers can record their content/classroom using green screen technology and blend text book, assessments and evaluation structures. The teacher can collaborate with students both on-line and in person using collaborative web 2.0 services to deliver a rich educational experience. These technologies can be applied in a wide range of contexts – including traditional education, corporate and government training and individual eBook authorship. Some of the features to look for in a winning new media education solution include:
Take a look at the new second circle solutions that are out there – the industry is changing quickly, and solutions – like Retrieve Technology – are transforming how we educate and learn. Please comment at Revenue Architects or contact me if you want to learn more about these exciting technologies and the economic value they create!
At Gilbane San Francisco June 2-4
Revenue GrowthI am looking forward to visiting some friends in Napa Valley over the weekend of June 30-31 where I will get to see how the other half lives! 🙂 After that, I will be heading to San Francisco to facilitate a workshop at the Gilbane Conference on June 2-4. My topic: Social Media and the Digital Marketing Platform. Everyone is talking about social media. Social networks are growing by the day with more and more people joining. New networks are popping up all over the place. Companies are challenged with building out community platforms around their products and services. Corporations are trying to figure out what social media is and how to integrate both the corporate communities and public social media platforms into their businesses. Where do you start? Should you be on Twitter? What about Facebook? How do you go about building out a platform solution? This workshop will teach new media techniques, including blogging and social media as well as how all of this ties into business strategies and goals. The session will provide a roadmap for building out and integrating these solutions.
OPEI's 57th Annual Meeting
Revenue GrowthT.J. O’Connor and I are looking forward to speaking on June 25-7: Ritz Carlton-Lodge Reynolds Plantation One Lake Oconee Trail Greensboro, GA 30642 Abstract: Companies are undergoing a massive shift in investment away from traditional media toward online media. New web sites and social networks are accelerating brand awareness and audience engagement. Customers are making their product purchase selections and engaging brands online. While they follow a familiar buying process, the selling process needs to adapt to a more dynamic online environment that you can’t fully control. How do you capture customer value in a complex online environment? The answer is to use new online marketing strategies to nurture and engage your direct and indirect audience across the buy-sell process. opei_newsletter09_spread
Digital Marketing Strategy Checklist
Inbound Marketing, Revenue Growth, Revenue Marketing, Social MediaWhen setting out to develop an Internet Marketing strategy, you need to connect the dots between a wide range of business, marketing, technology and project elements.
A web strategy today involves a lot more than your web site. In the late 1990s it was very much about defining your branded online presence via the web site and related web services and online applications. Today, with the important roll of Search and Social Media, your brand presence must now consider delivering impact and engagement across the broader social web and involves a far more sophisticated strategy for inbound marketing and lead capture. With that in mind, if you are about to embark on a comprehensive Internet Marketing Strategy, you might want to get answers to a range of questions. So, here is a list, but let’s add to the list- what have you found as critical success factors and key issues that should be addressed in developing your internet strategy.
1) Market, Audience and Sales Model – You need to define the underlying business model for marketing and sales so that you can tie your Internet Marketing Strategy to business goals:
2) Functionality and Services – Now that you understand your core business model and your audience, what are the capabilities that your audience will be seeking to engage your brand online – both at your site(s) and across the social and mobile web?
3) Branding and Design – maybe you already have a brand identity – including logo marks and look and feel -but you may also need to develop a “brand architecture” that ties together all your related product and services into a unifying identity – both on and offline.
4) Content and Information Architecture – How do you arrange your content into a clear information architecture that your audience can understand and access?
5) Marketing and Promotion – After you build out your sites, Internet presence, content and services, how are you going to attract the audience?
6) Technical Architecture Design – Once you have defined an overall business and functional blueprint, it will be a lot easier to select the right technology foundation to handle your needs.
7) Operating Model – This is a key step to your strategy – defining a core business and process model that will ensure your digital assets and systems are well managed and that your content and services are up to date.
8) Implementation Plan – With all the core business, marketing and technical elements framed out, you can now better layer in an overall project time line driven by critical business commitments.