This question was posted on our Linkedin group, ‘MemCom Membership marketing forum’ by member, Anna Stella from the Association of Colleges.
This was a hot topic for debate at our MemCom2011 conference.
Lee Davies from the Institute for Learning quite bluntly said, “Don’t bother doing it”. He also explained that he didn’t understand the benefit of linking social media sites such as ‘Facebook’ and ‘Twitter’ to CRM systems. Davies felt that membership organisations attract members for three main things, ‘ status, benefit and voice’ all of which he believed they are able to achieve themselves and that all the organisation can do is add value to the spaces that they already occupy by broadcasting.
In the debate Ray Perry of CIMA said ''l almost completely disagree’. Link here for the recorded debate http://vzaar.com/videos/776280
Anna did receive responses from fellow members of the MemCom Linkdin forum, one from Steve Arnold who see’s the positive in the connection of social media to membership bodies stating, “A great way to pull people back to the Association at the end a specific debate is to post summaries of the debates on your website (perhaps in the member areas) - this shows that you are listening intently to your members and taking on board their views - it also promotes the LinkedIn group further and gets others interested in getting involved. “
So that's what we've done at MemCom.
Add your comments to the Linkedin group.http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=1268497&trk=hb_side_g
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