It seems like there’s an endless supply of new skills to pick up—from design to coding to the latest in marketing best practices. So how can association leaders keep up or catch up? It turns out a single subscription may go a long way.

A startup approach to learn from in today’s Social Media Roundup:

Education Through Subscription

https://twitter.com/mikekarnj/status/446642312094158848

Skillshare, a site that allows anyone who has a particular talent—whether it be the ins and outs of Photoshop or fashion design—to teach classes to students who sign up through the site, used to charge fees on a per-class basis. Classes could cost upwards of $40.

But Skillshare announced today that it’s following in the footsteps of Netflix and Spotify, offering unlimited access with monthly subscriptions. For $9.99 a month, the site, and all of its lessons, will be at a subscriber’s disposal. There’s still a paywall placing a premium on the teachers’ institutional knowledge, but it’s a significantly lower barrier to entry. Now think about all of the resources and instructional information that’s housed within your association—Skillshare’s new model could provide a means to place a premium on all of that content without tossing it entirely out into the open.

For those curious to see how the site works, Skillshare is offering seven free days for anyone who signs up by the end of the day Monday, March 24, so take a look and see if Skillshare’s shift could inform your association’s content strategy. (ht @mikekarnj)

Remember Your First Tweet?

Good morning — oh, and hello. Welcome to the new http://t.co/m13HroGY! #asae #assnchat #asaemag

— Associations Now (@AssociationsNow) October 1, 2012

We definitely remember Associations Now‘s, but that’s largely thanks to Twitter’s new Discover tool, which celebrates the social network’s eighth birthday. Discover allows users to hop into a digital time machine and head back to their 140-character origins.

Many first tweets are pretty standard, saying hello and welcoming their new readers or experimenting with nascent tweet style. Others did nothing to celebrate the foray into a new social media platform. Some made no sense, and some hilariously speak to the difficulties many organizations had in securing their identities during the Wild West era of Twitter. (ht @Twitter)

So feel free to reach back and grab your association’s first tweet and share it in the comments below! 

Skillshare screenshot