Lunchtime Links: How to Onboard New Members

Recruiting new members is exciting. But are you doing everything you can to ensure your newest additions feel at home in your organization? How to onboard new members, and more, in today’s Lunchtime Links.

Come in, stay a while: Your association loves it when new members come aboard. But are you sharing your excitement with them? Joey Baird, director of acquisition marketing at YourMembership.com, offers three steps for successful member onboarding  (opens in a new tab). Number one: communicate. Members shouldn’t receive a dusty old form letter welcoming them to your organization. Instead, have a senior member reach out to them personally, suggests Baird. Direction is also important. Members join associations because they believe in the mission. But that doesn’t mean they know what products and benefits you offer. Get to know their interests and point them in a direction that will satisfy their needs. And don’t forget to follow up from time to time. New members like it when you check in on them, and they’ll appreciate the effort, Baird says. What does your organization do to welcome and support its newest members?

Traffic boon: Facebook and Twitter dominate the social media conversation. But new research suggests another, less-heralded platform is just as (if not more) capable of driving eyeballs to your content. Pinterest, the tackboard-style sharing site, reports three times more traffic to publishers than Twitter, coming in second on a list of eight social networks, reports Mashable business reporter Seth Fiegerman  (opens in a new tab). (Facebook, to no one’s surprise, is the top driver of traffic; Google+, on the other hand, generates the fewest numbers.) What social networks does your association use?

Mission accomplished: Your mission is your association’s heart and soul—but what’s the plan once that mission is achieved? Writing for Association Management Blog  (opens in a new tab), Virtual, Inc., President Andy Freed offers this surprising advice: shut down (“For standards groups, that often means putting the standard in the public domain or in the custody of another group”); adjust the mission (providing it’s the “will of your members and your board”); or get your association in for some strategic counseling. It’s a major feat to accomplish your founding mission, and some organizations never make it. If you do get there, you’ll need to be ready for what comes next.

Does your organization have a plan beyond The Plan? Let us know in the comments.

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