Board Meeting Boot Camp

I'm at the tail end of preparations for my first board meeting with the Dairy Calf & Heifer Association. To say I'm a little nervous is an understatement.

I've been working with the organization for three months, but have not met the majority of the board yet. Not only will this meeting give me that opportunity, but it will also be their first chance to "test" my leadership skills. Yep, nerves are definitely surfacing.

 I suppose I'm nervous because of my past experience with board meetings. I guess you could say I was trained in "board meeting boot camp." The organization I previously worked for closely evaluated their staff's work during board meetings. They watched you dot your "I's" and cross your "T's" and if one slipped by you, they were quick to point it out.

It was tough getting through those board meetings, but I can guarantee I learned how to think on my feet and prepare for anything and everything. I'm grateful for the training I received during "boot camp," and am certain it will help me be successful with DCHA.

I'm also nervous because I have yet to meet the full board. One of my DrakeCo colleagues, Becky Hadley, wrote a blog earlier this month about working for individuals she's never met (http://blog.drakeco.com/2009/09/working-together-apart.html).

The thoughts in her blog are probably shared with a majority of those working in association management. We often have to build relationships with people via phone or e-mail, and we rely on our relationship skills to build them successfully.

 That's one more thing that I learned in "boot camp" - how to build a solid, professional relationship. I learned to base those relationships on honesty, creativity and integrity - core characteristics that I carry with me every day. So as exhausting and frustrating as "boot camp" may have been, I learned a great deal. Along with my leadership skills, the relationships I've built with the DCHA board will be tested in person at this first board meeting. And thanks to my "boot camp" training, I'm looking for it to be a success.

Tailgating and Ad Reservations

For me fall is a busy time of year. During the college football season, if my team has a home game, chances are I’ll be there cheering them on (after driving 300 miles to get there). When I thought of all the things on my “To Do” list for football weekends, it reminded me quite a bit of my “To Do” list at Drake & Company to schedule ad reservations for 2010. Surprisingly, the tasks are very similar.

For Tailgate Weekends

1. Do the prep work – arrange for a house sitter to come. Write out care instructions for the pets.
2. Check out weather forecast to determine what I need to pack – you can never have enough clothing with the team logo on it, in school colors, of course.
3. Contact tailgating friends to see who’s bringing what to the gathering – salads, casseroles, appetizers, brownies (my specialty!), etc.
4. Enjoy catching up with tailgating friends, people you have been sitting next to at the games for years and making new friends!

For 2010 Ad Space Reservations

1. Do the prep work – update rate cards and ad contracts. Develop or rewrite brochures/PDFs for tips, webinars and sponsor packages.
2. Check with current advertisers to determine if their current ad schedule is serving their needs. Help them determine how their 2010 ad “forecast” can be packaged into your ad offerings.
3. Once advertisers/sponsors are on board for 2010, contact them to be sure that you have everything you need for a winning ad season – new ad materials, updated logos in the company’s colors, new URL links, etc.
4. And last but not least, enjoy reconnecting with longtime company contacts ad agency reps and making new relationships with new companies/contacts!

So get started on your “To Do” list for your 2010 ad placements. With effort and lots of enthusiasm, your client (team) can be an ad revenue (game) winner!

Transition

So you read last week that we signed an agreement with the International Fruit Tree Association to become their full service management firm. This week was the official start date of that agreement and we have been chugging away at a LOOOOONG list of tasks to complete to make the full transition. This is the first new client for whom I have been named the account executive, so while I've seen many new associations get transitioned in to the DrakeCo purvue, this is in many ways a new experience for me. It becomes brutally clear right away that this simply isn't possible without a team approach. And part of our transition team is on vacation this week fishing in Canada ....grrrrhhh. (Jealousy rears its ugly head). We've mostly been dealing with transferring ownership of monies, bank accounts and working on getting an audit going. Dianne, our Finance Manager, has been helping with all of this. Thank goodness, because banking is not my strong suit. But that's kinda the point...we all have strengths and weaknesses, and we learn to rely on each other to compliment one another to get the job done right for our clients. On a personal note, I'm also getting ready for my first duathlon on September 26. It's not a really long race, but it's making me a little nervous nonetheless. It's set up as a run - bike - run race so I'll be dealing with a whole different set of "transition" issues. HA!

How Do You Measure Your Social Media Efforts?

Some of our recent bloggers have addressed the challenges and opportunities presented by social media. But when all is said and done, how do we know our efforts are making a difference? How do we know we're actually reaching anyone? How do we set goals for increasing our reach and impact if we don't know where we stand now? That's just one of the discussions we've had around the office. If you have a company or association Web site, chances are that you're tracking its Web statistics, whether through Google Analytics, another Web tracking service or a customized application. These Web metrics, if monitored frequently, can help you determine the number of visitors coming to your site, how they're getting there, how long they're staying, where they go once on your site and other trends. These are valuable stats - but how do they transfer to the world of social media, where interactivity is key? I'm not sure anyone has the answer just yet (and if you do - please share!), but here's one way to go about it.

1. Start today. Even if you're just getting started with Facebook or Twitter, now's the time to start tracking. Getting a baseline helps you set goals for the future and measure whether you've been able to accomplish these goals.
2. Determine the key stats or metrics for your social media strategy. If you only have a presence on one social media site, this should be pretty simple. But in the case of many of our clients, we're measuring across multiple sites - Twitter, Facebook, blogs, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. In my opinion, the more stats the better - as these can help give you a clear overall picture of your social media efforts.
3. Create a spreadsheet for these metrics. It may sound simplistic, but for one of our clients, we created a basic Excel spreadsheet with each metric as a column header. For example, on Twitter, we look at not only the number of followers but also the average number of Tweets per month. On our blogs, we look at subscribers and the number of blog posts and comments per month. This helps us, as staff, stay on top of our goals in terms of posting and content as well as measure whether these efforts are reaching others outside our organization. I prefer to keep all of our sites on one spreadsheet so that you can easily compare and contrast the effectiveness of different social media sites. For example, if we've had a huge increase in our Twitter followers but our Facebook page is stagnant, it might be a sign that we need to devote a bit more time in this area.
4. Set goals and track your results frequently. Stats are only helpful if you take the time to record and review them. We update our stats monthly - but you'll need to figure out what works for your organization.

As I said, this is just one way to go about it -- and who knows how we might tweak this strategy in the future. Have an idea that's working for your association? Let us know!

Persistence is Key

Social media, online networks, Web 2.0 - these are all names I continually hear for the online systems connecting us together. We may be linked; you could be my friend, or perhaps my follower; however our online relationship is defined, it is important to identify how you can make it work for your association without getting burnt out. Nicole Fischer's recent blog post lent some great insight into getting organized and not letting the social media atmosphere overwhelm you. When you have found a level of comfort, you should then make it a priority to grow your fan/follower base and get them involved in your social media conversation. This is where my greatest frustrations with social media lie. Although, like you have just read, I myself have read in countless articles about social media that the key to a successful page is to involve your friends/fans/followers and make the page conversational. The part that so many articles and experts tend to leave out is exactly how to do so. As I worked to grow the fan base and fan participation of NCTA's Facebook Fan Page (Christmas Trees & Wreaths - come on now, no one can avoid a shameless plug!) I found that all of my thoughtful attempts were yielding unsuccessful results. Why is that all 50 of our fans were Facebook friends of someone in the office? Why were the only wall posts from the NCTA staff? And, why was no one commenting on my interesting status updates? That was the case, until I began to notice fans I didn't recognize, ones that sought out our page on their own! And then, my greatest confidence boost, a fan commented on one of our daily status updates. Yes, I realize this is no large feat, in fact it is quite small, but I have learned to celebrate the small victories and persist, the large ones will follow. So persist I did. I have continually looked for new and interesting things to post and many days, I receive no response, but learning that persistence is key has been my most important lesson learned when it comes to social media. Continue to put your association out there in the world of social media, it will eventually pay you back.

Working Together, Apart

Next month I’m going to Miami Beach, Florida to help put on the International Conference on Communication in Healthcare (ICCH) for one of my clients, the American Academy on Communication in Healthcare (AACH). The preparation for this conference has required innumerous hours and a great deal of communication between our client team at Drake & Company and the scientific committee of the conference (including our vendors, sponsors, attendees, etc!). While I am excited to experience the largest annual gathering of researchers, educators and administrators from around the globe to focus on improving communication in healthcare there is one thing that I’m excited about more than anything (and it isn’t the ocean!). I will finally shake hands with the people whom I’ve worked with for over a year, but have never met! That’s right. I have never met any AACH member, even those I talk to on the phone or via email each day. That is one of the most interesting aspects of working for an association management company like Drake & Company. Since our members are spread out all over the world we normally don’t get to meet up with them until a conference or special meeting. We work closely with our members, especially those who serve on the executive board or in committees, but we rarely see them. Over time we learn about their lives, their families and their careers. It is like having a super pen-pal; we’re “doing good” as we remotely work together to forward AACH’s mission and values. When I started working at Drake & Company I didn’t have much knowledge about communication in healthcare. With the help of our members and leaders in the organization, however, I quickly learned about a really fascinating industry and group of people. I talk and work with our members so often that I feel like I already know them and have worked with them for years. The rewarding challenge of association management, for me, is that I can work well as a team and accomplish goals with people I have never met. I think the fact that this is possible (and the fact that it works) is a testament to both our clients and our company. I’m definitely looking forward to putting faces with names next month!

Social Media Challenges

Is social media just a fad or is it a new way of communicating and distributing information? While I think there are some social media sites that have been more popular at certain times than others, our company takes the stance that social media is important and here to stay. Although I may be biased, I do believe that Drake & Company employees do a great job of staying ahead of the curve on using and understanding social media and helping our clients take advantage of this new means of communication. Personally, however, I have run into some challenges with using social media. For me, it can be overwhelming. At a staff meeting a couple of weeks ago I heard that if Facebook were a country it would be the 7th largest nation. Today I saw on a YouTube video about social media that if it were a country, it would be the 4th largest country! Although it is overwhelming, maybe I can help by sharing some of my challenges with you and how I'm working through them. My 1st challenge: What do I say? This may seem silly, but often I find myself looking at the Twitter screen thinking "Ok what do I say?" I tweet for our client, the Christmas Spirit Foundation and when it is not Christmas it can be difficult to think of what to say. To help with this writer's block (if you can call it that with only 140 characters) I have started to receive Google alerts with the words, "Chritmas Spirit". Often I receive stories of how people in communities around the country are spreading the Christmas Spirit and I share these stories. Also, I try to find good content from others and retweet that information. My 2nd challenge: How much time should I be spending Tweeting or on Facebook? Once you start tweeting or facebooking you will find that there is a lot of content and it is easy to spend a lot of time going through the content. I have decided to tweet or post a comment at least once a day. Then, I periodically monitor TweetDeck throughout the day to see what others are saying. This helps me to keep a balance between spending too much time on social media sites or not enough. My 3rd challenge: Staying organized Lately I have been following more folks on Twitter. It is easy to forget who they are or why I decided to follow them. TweetDeck allows you to categorize those you are following into groups. For example, I tweet for the Trees4Troops page and I have people categorized into military support charities, children's charities and social media tweeters. However, it takes time to put these tweeters into their appropriate category. To resolve this problem, I try to organize my new tweeters into their appropriate category at least once a week. My advice for not getting overwhelmed with social media is to take a breath, post content at least once a day and stay organized. Good luck!