Give New Life to Your Presentations

History repeats—and your content can too. How to stretch the value of your presentations, recoup meeting costs, and more, in today’s Lunchtime Links.

Recycle, reuse: You’ve just had your annual meeting and it was chock full of great presentations. Surely there’s some way to repackage that content to get more mileage out of it, and—if you market it right—maybe even help you recoup some of those meeting costs. Writing for his blog From Relevance to Revolution, veteran association executive Tom Morrison offers several suggestions to expand the reach—and the value—of your meeting content  (opens in a new tab). Gather up those PowerPoints, the stored-away discs, videos, and printed materials from past events, and transfer them to a digital format. Or grab a camera and tripod and start recording your speakers (with their approval, of course). Expanding your digital material provides ample resources to broaden your online content. By doing so, Morrison says, your association can maximize its potential to reach more members. Isn’t that the goal?

Strategize with purpose: You know all about social media. But what about social business? Writing for CMSWire, Symon Garfield explores the phenomenon, which involves shifting management practices and rewriting policies  (opens in a new tab) to deliver “benefits associated with knowledge worker productivity and innovation.” When it comes to social business, the majority of organizations are “stuck in first gear,” writes Garfield. The problem: a lack of purpose. “If you know what you are trying to do (strategy), then that will give you the means to measure success (business case or value proposition),” he writes. What’s your association’s purpose—and what steps are you taking to work toward it?

Pay to play? Remember the good old days (all of a few weeks ago) when web analytics included the string of Google search terms that led users to your page? No longer—or, at least, no longer for free, reports The New York Times’s Eilene Zimmerman  (opens in a new tab). Google’s new secure search limits the data users can access through the search engine’s popular analytics tool. Zimmerman talks to Louis Gagnon, chief product and marketing officer for small-business consulting firm Yodle, who says the change could have a major impact on the 25 percent of small businesses—and many associations—that rely on the company’s analytics tool to plan marketing efforts. Fortunately, there are other ways to get that information. Users can create and pay for a Google AdWords account that tracks users who click on ads, says Gagnon. Or they can carve some money out of their marketing budgets to pay a third-party provider to track web traffic.

Does your association rely on Google Analytics? If so, how might you adjust to the changes in the data it delivers? Tell us in the comments.

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