Membership

Social Media Roundup: Why Your Process Matters

How inconsistencies can lead to major headaches when dealing with member data. Also: one association's approach to advocacy on social media.

Your staff is a team working together toward the same major goals. But when one person is doing one thing and another is doing something else, it can feel like nothing is going right.

Your process matters. Some advice on how not to screw it up in today’s Social Media Roundup:

Smooth Out the Kinks

What do your internal processes say about you? Even processes that aren’t front-facing, such as member data retrieval, can affect how well you serve your members. At Effective Database Management, Wes Trochlil writes about everyone’s least-favorite process ever—going though airport security—and how a miscommunication about whether travelers should take off their shoes led to an organizational disaster. Trochlil brings the experience back to the association world this way: “Now look at your organization, and how you process data. Do different staff process the same data differently? If so, not only is it going to slow down your data processing, it’s also going to lead to errors. You need to [keep] your processes consistent, and then you need to document those processes so everyone is doing it the same way.” (ht @ThadLurie)

A Social Refresher

Speaking of building processes, social media is a major part of the advocacy diet these days, but if you’re not careful, things could go wrong—fast. That’s why it may be a good idea to check out the American Association of University Women’s (AAUW) resource page on social advocacy. It includes several tips for developing a social media plan, as well as best practices for using each platform. There’s a ton of common sense throughout. “The people and organizations that follow you on social media have certain expectations about the type of content you post and the way in which you engage with them,” AAUW notes. “If you stray too far from your objectives, you will lose the trust and attention of your community.” Do you have a resource of your own or anything you’d add to AAUW’s advice? (ht @sjreeves)

(iStock/Thinkstock)

Ernie Smith

By Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now. MORE

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