When Brian Feehan took over as president of the Industrial Truck Association a year ago, he was challenged by the board of directors to rethink the organization’s communications strategy.

From a member perspective, this is another platform from which they can share either a product launch or some other activity that the member company is doing. It expands their reach and gets their message out.

It needed to effectively communicate the value of ITA both externally and internally, and one significant tool at Feehan’s disposal was the organization’s website, which was relaunched this month. In a twist on the typical website redesign, Feehan saw the site as more than the voice of the association: He envisioned a platform where industry members could glean business intelligence specific to their needs and get their own messages out to each other and to the public.

The new site features a place for inter-organizational news and information coming out of the association’s various committees.

It’s an added value for members, Feehan said, because each committee represents a different group of members with different skill sets. So to have a place where, for example, members on the engineering committee can go and see new market intelligence coming out of the statistics committee is important.

Members will also be able to post press releases, which ITA will help disseminate.

“From a member perspective, this is another platform from which they can share either a product launch or some other activity that the member company is doing,” Feehan said. “It expands their reach and gets their message out.”

The new site will include more public-facing information for policymakers and anyone interested in learning more about the industrial trucking industry, as well as serve as the association’s online business card. “We wanted to make sure that the image that our association portrayed matched the quality and visibility of some of our member companies,” Feehan said.

The website is just one component of ITA’s new communications strategy, which also includes a new logo and a forthcoming e-newsletter.

“It’s really a branding exercise that we’re going through,” Feehan said. “Our communications strategy is to reinforce the brand that we offer.”

(Industrial Truck Association)