How is your association doing with its adoption / implementation of social media tools? Individuals like myself, Jeff De Cagna, and many others have spent a lot of time researching, discussing and blogging about the use of social media by associations. The basic conclusion is the fact that embracing Web 2.0-type technologies that encourage participation and collaboration simply isn’t happening in associations, at least in comparison to other professions. While it is a bit of a criticism, I see it as more of a statement of opportunity for associations to innovate and increase member value.

As with any type of new initiative, project or program, you need to know where you are in order to determine how to get to where you are going. The one challenge with the whole social media phenomenon is the fact that there is no logical beginning or end. It really depends on what your goals and objectives are and how much time you have to commit on a regular basis as to what type of path you pursue. For some it may be as simple as having your CEO or one of your senior leaders publishing a few blog posts a week and making these posts available via a RSS feed. For others it may be adding the use of a Wiki to encourage collaboration or the dissemination of knowledge among project teams. Still others may jump in feet first and decide to implement blogs, wiki’s, RSS feeds, as well as podcasts/vodcasts, and other highly interactive features.

What is important, however, is that your use of social media not only correlate to some aspect of your associations strategic plan but also add value to your members. If you have a membership base that is highly mobile forcing them to be connected to their computer is not only impractical, it is also unfair. Similarly, if you have a membership base that has only started to adopt and use more advanced technologies on a regular basis, hitting them with a lot of fancy features on your website may only serve to overwhelm them.

This invariably leads one to ask a number of questions including: what type of social media is best suited for achieving my associations strategic goals and objectives and further more how can I/we use it to create more value for our stakeholders? Additionally, if my association has already implemented some aspects of social media how can we tell how we compare with others and how far can we go in terms of furthering our use and adoption. The first question is a bit challenging to answer and is definitely a topic for a future post. However, the second question may be slightly easier to answer thanks to a great web application that I stumbled upon a few days ago.

I was reading an entry on the Digital Influence Mapping Project blog that is written by John Bell from Ogilvy PR. In a recent posting he was basically announcing that there was going to be an event titled: Measuring Social Media in DC a gathering of top brands in DC coming together to share insights from measuring the performance of social media programs.

In the announcement I saw that John mentioned another Ogilvy website: Your Social Media Score that allows organizations to self-assess themselves on a variety of social media related topics as shown below:

After completing the questions and submitting the form, you are provided with a numerical score and a verbal interpretation of your score:

Perhaps the nicest part of the entire tool is the fact that they provide you with additional information to help your organization/association improve at all levels of their continuum.

Curious but Cautious

Hungry to Hear

Excited to Engage

Granted it is not highly analytic or scientific, but at the same time it’s a starting point! I like the fact that it provides guidance without being overly prescriptive. So how is your association doing? I know mine isn’t fairing that well, then again we are in the midst of a pretty large enterprise architecture project that should resolve much of our shortcomings. Even so there is definitely room to improve.

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