By Lee Hornstein
By some estimates, more than 90 percent of professionals feel they lack the skills to carry them into the digital future. For anyone who has been out of school for 10 years or more, topics like content management, digital media, and communication metrics are things learned on the fly or left to interns or the IT staff.
The coming digital future is already upon us. In 2015, the Newhouse School at Syracuse University—arguably one of the top communications schools in the world—launched an online Master’s degree program in digital media. Students can pursue specializations in digital advertising, journalism innovation, or public relations (an old-world term with a new meaning covering all social communications). This program and others like it at universities around the country seek to apply systems to the world of online communications.
In the early days of the web, the ability to communicate electronically was somewhat amazing. Now, a little more than 20 years later, we are frustrated with email, confused about Twitter, and unconvinced that all of this constant communication and connection actually adds up to anything.
There is an entire lexicon devoted to the digital future. There are digital assets: images, video, sound recordings, text. There are metrics: ways of measuring how many saw, how many clicked, how many engaged. Most importantly, there is digital strategy: a plan for how, when, and why you are using various social tools to communicate and what you expect as a result of those communications.
For many associations, crafting and applying a digital strategy will require taking a step back. During the rise of social media and communications (starting in about 2008), organizations rushed to secure their brand identity of every social channel that popped up. Some started plastering those social channels with information; others let the channels lie fallow. Some pressed interns into service, believing digital natives would intuitively understand how to make social channels work in this new environment. Others tasked their traditional communications staffs with learning a new world on the fly, believing that the traditional roles of public relations, journalism, and corporate communications would protect organizations from outright social embarrassment.
In order to move forward into the digital future, associations need to consider digital as part of their overall communications strategy and not treat it as something new or unusual anymore.
One of the great things the digital age has brought to communications is the ability to track and analyze metrics: How many times was something viewed? How many interactions did it generate? Did users share, comment, or favorite a post? What path did users take through a website?
All that data is important and valuable, but without context it has very little strategic impact. Analytics require more than applying a piece of code and collecting information. To use analytics effectively, organizations should decide in advance what they want to measure and what those measurements mean to the association. For example, page views give an overall sense of website traffic, while tracking a specific URL may be more helpful in determining the conversion rate from an online ad, for example. Moving forward, more granular and finite measurements will have a greater impact and more strategic importance for organizations.
It has been said that content is king, and more and more that old saw rings true. The only thing that has changed is the nature of the content. While it was once enough to do an excellent job describing the mission and functions of your association, that is no longer considered a best practice. In today’s digital arena, content is all about telling the story. An association would have, at one time, devoted a page or two of its website to listing the benefits of being a member. In today’s digital age, that same association may have a series of short, digital videos of members telling how they use various benefits.
The true winners in the digital age are those who can successfully mix the best of the past with an eye toward the future. A high performing association would not rely solely on video for storytelling. That association would employ some video, some anecdotes from members, and would also offer an opportunity for members to share their own views, stories, and experiences with using the association’s benefits.
The single most important thing organizations need to know about the digital future is that it belongs to everyone. While crowdsourcing and a sharing economy are still in their infancy, they can only be expected to grow exponentially. For organizations that have a member-based business model, it is critical to be inviting and welcoming, and to making member voices a part of your digital strategy.
Lee Hornstein, is CEO, (C) Systems Global, providing consulting and implementation of association management software iMIS from Advanced Solutions International and event management software from etouches. Lee is a member of NYSAE’s Technology Committee. He can be reached at 732-548-6100, LHornstein@csystemsglobal.com, or through his website at www.csystemsglobal.com.