An online community can be the foundation of an organization—but maybe not in the way you think.

Sure, your member community might live heavily online, but the reality is that those engagements aren’t that special, community manager Marjorie Anderson explains in a post on Community by Association.

What is special about online communities is what your association can get out of them. That is, an online community is often the cornerstone to developing other important elements of an organization, such as ROI, member acquisition and retention, event registration, and so on.

So, while the conversations themselves might not be the highest priority on your association to-do list, the actions they can enable are—and the strategy around your online member community should reflect that accordingly.

Developing a Learning Curve

Good bye #ASAE18 – another great conference by the @ASAEcenter team- thank you! Now to get some of these ideas and connections up and running back home…. pic.twitter.com/bOxyniNDk6

— Stephanie Doute, CAE (@sdoute) August 22, 2018

With another ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition in the books, it’s time to sit back and digest everything that transpired over the past few days—but only for a moment. The next step is jumping back into work and figuring out how to integrate the new strategies and ideas you learned into your association.

Every organization is different, but here’s one approach: Write down a list of things you learned, and prioritize their importance. Decide what can be done today, what can be done next week, and what will take more research, planning, and involvement to be rolled out long term. From there, make next steps and deadlines for each item so you can keep yourself—and your team—accountable.

Other Links of Note

Considering starting a podcast? The Membership Guys explain why it’s one of the best marketing tools to promote membership in the latest episode of—you guessed it—their podcast.

Artificial intelligence is up and coming, and if your organization is slow to adapt, it will be to its detriment, from Entrepreneur.

Not all staff meetings are created equally. PCMA Convene outlines six tips for high-performing staff meetings.

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