Lunchtime Links: Gaging Member Expectations

Understanding what your members expect out of your association’s services. Plus: the future of online recruitment.

Want to develop a membership program that works? Get a grip on what your members actually want out of the deal.

Matching member expectations to the services you offer, and more, in today’s Lunchtime Links.

Exceed their expectations: The magic word: research. That’s what the Association Laboratory suggests  (opens in a new tab) is important for understanding what members want from your organization. “At its heart, the investigative step is a creative and entrepreneurial process. It relies on qualitative insights that are discussed at depth so that different scenarios or strategic paths can be identified,” its blog states. Among the recommendations: Note the competition in your industry so you’re aware of why your members have stuck with your service. Dealing with kvetching customers? Go for an onsite visit or interview executives—put yourself in their shoes to investigate their issues and uncover solutions. What techniques do you use to better gauge member expectations?

Compelling content: Straightforward, informative content will only get you so far. Plan B: Grab the reader’s interest by selling the story, writes author and professor Jonah Berger  (opens in a new tab). Who does it right, according to Berger? New York Times bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell. He “boils down complicated concepts into the key details and shares only those. Not the whole forest, just the most important trees,” Berger writes. Scrap the flowery language, and stick to simple—avoiding overloading readers with an excess of information. Your stories should embody your greater message while encouraging readers to learn more.

The future of digital recruitment: Going to interview someone on the moon someday? Perhaps not—but that’s not to say employee recruitment hasn’t come a long way in the digital age. (Think: LinkedIn!) But what lies ahead? Fistful of Talent‘s Tim Sackett  (opens in a new tab) suggests that recruiters will soon pool data from across the web to track prospects who perhaps aren’t plugged into today’s primary recruitment networks. That’s the basic premise behind sites like Dice’s Open Web  (opens in a new tab) and Hiring Solved  (opens in a new tab), he says. “Heck, everyone is out there on the web! … All of us, including all those candidates we want, leave small bits of stuff around the web as we search, visit our favorite sites, etc. This ‘exhaust’ allows implicit search crawlers to build a social profile of you based on where you work and play on the web,” he says. Imagine the potential.

What techniques do you use to recruit job candidates? Tell us in the comments below.

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