The 2010 New Media Summit will take place on June 8th in the Association of Fundraising  Professionals’ Training Center in Arlington, VA.  We’ll welcome in person attendees as well as live webcast attendees from all over the nation for this fun day of collaboration.  We’ve lined up some great presenters and contributors for the day including association executives just like you, Jeff De Cagna of Principled Innovation, Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer of SocialFish, and other association technology experts.

Our goal for the day is to foster a conversation – to allow us each to contribute and learn from each other about what works, what doesn’t, and what we can do tomorrow to lead our organizations to success.  Some of the topics we’ll cover throughout the day include:

• What’s hot now in online learning and what are the upcoming trends?
• How mobile and portable devices fit into the 21st century association.
• How does new media change our role from “educator” to “curator”?
• A “three is the magic number” framework and how to implement it in your association.
• What revenue generating opportunities are available via online learning programs?

To find out the answers to these questions and more, make plans to join us on June 8th.  I look forward to seeing you there… in person or online!

In recent posts by Ken Molay, of Webinar Success, and Tim Bourquin, they each discuss how challenging it is to sell webinar recordings and archives. Our clients who offer online continuing education programs know the same thing!  We even have seen this trend developing with Knowledge Communities… the trend is this: if you market something as available 24/7/365, your audience will never do it. They don’t have a reason!  Even if they benefit from this dramatically, they will likely not do it unless you give them a specific deadline and timeline.

The Knowledge Community observation is the most interesting to me. We’ve found that even communities with good steady flow of content, often don’t get the participation they seek until they schedule a webinar, or rebroadcast, or even a Tweet-up-like chat session (where you schedule a time for your forums and message boards to be active).

While they can be, the triggers don’t have to be expensive, high production events. The point is that it is a scheduled “event” from a reputable organization. That’s enough to get at least some attention and participation.

Here are some Triggers we have used at Peach with clients with some if not great success:

1. Rebroadcasts – schedule a time to replay a live webcast or live webinar as a “Pre recorded” webinar, but the key is to have your experts online and ready to handle live Text based Q&A.  It is likely that the presentation wouldn’t have changed anyway… just the Q&A.   So take your well-produced content and schedule it to happen many times over the course of a month. It works.
2. Live Webcasts – even a simple video from a studio or conference room can be enough to entice people to your site.
3. Mandatory CE deadlines – of course these are great triggers when they come from large governing bodies. However, if your organization offers certification programs, consider the deadlines for the CEU’s for these programs as great ways to get large audiences of people online and “doing something” on your site. Be ready for the push, and plan to upsell and promote anything you have that is relevant to this segment.
4. Webinars – tried and true. Enough said! You should always be doing webinars. We do them for ourselves, and they work.  Believe me, they work!
5. Tweet-Chats – during your in-person conferences or active times of the year, schedule times when participants will be online chatting on Twitter using your hashtags.

My goal with this post is to simply get you thinking about Triggers with your online content, regardless of what it may be.  If you have more ideas, post them below in the comments section.    Now, I’d be happy to come visit your site to see what you have, but when is your next scheduled web event, exactly?

Here is the wave:

1. I have to guess what keywords to use… over and over again.
   Every time I look on Google for content I know is out there, somewhere, I have to guess what keywords to use.  IMHO, this requires a superior act of skill and patience because to get the good stuff, (you know, the paid research studies, the articles by industry experts)… well, to get that stuff you pretty much have to know the lingo.
2. I find the results page overwhelming.
   Too much text, not enough substance.  I’d rather have 5 very targeted, reliable resources to read than thousands of unknown junk competing for my attention.
3. I can’t filter the results.
   Within both of my vaccine searches, it’s pretty obvious that there are subtopics to tackle… where to get it, who’s on the preferred list, latest or breaking news, how it started, etc.  Want any of that stuff?  No such logical groupings or filters are available.  Search again.
4. I believe the resources are unreliable and inaccurate.
   When reviewing the search results for “swine flu vaccine”, I noticed that Wikipedia out-ranked the CDC as a resource.  Seriously.  Don’t you think the CDC a more qualified resource to talk about swine flu facts than a bunch of wikipedians?  How am I to know if someone adding the content on Wikipedia is an expert, is a doctor, or is my next-door neighbor’s 16-year-old kid?

   Note: This is not a slam against Wikipedia, which does have some good content.  However, when I’m doing research, particularly for something that impacts my health or my business, I want to know who that person is, where they’re from, how I can reach them, what makes them an “expert”, etc.  Google offers none of that.

5. I find sponsored links are often irrelevant and just add clutter.
   I got a chuckle checking out all the people trying to make a buck off of H1N1 and swine flu…and yeah, you can bet Google’s laughing all the way to the bank.  As a prize to the most irrelevant ad, I’m providing a link to it.  The winner is: Dr Weil’s swine flu ad for antioxidant and multivitamin package.
6. I do not care about content type, I care about quality.
   I don’t care if the content is an image, video, blog, or book.  My concerns are that the content is reliable.  Videos of news clippings about H1N1/Swine flu vaccines are very relevant to my search.  Why don’t they appear in the results listing?

Bottom line, Google’s not a good research engine.  Tune in for part two, “Why niche Web sites are better than Google”.

“From my experience, a successful webinar depends upon many things. One of the most important is the engagement of the speaker. Are they passionate and knowledgeable about the topic? Are they a relaxed speaker? Can they talk to the audience and not at them? And of course, the topic is very important. Are the expectations of the audience met by the presentation/presenter?

Other thoughts:

Actual program needs to cover the advertised topics
Provide real-world examples
Provide actionable suggestions, tools, and next steps
Know the audience. If multi-national, be prepared to offer country-specific resources for information.
Avoid self-promotion or sales pitches
Have handouts that list sources for additional information for easy reference
If appropriate, pull up actual websites that may be helpful or provide screen shots
Use polling questions to engage the audience
Use the annotation tools to provide additional visual stimulation

And most importantly, have some fun. It comes across well to the audience if you are not too serious.”

Every day I hear from Association Executives and business owners that they want to do {fill in the blank with choice of social media tool}. Usually it’s because they have found some connection with that particular tool or they know someone else who is doing it. What are lacking in most cases are a strategy, a plan, and measurable metrics to identify if your plan is working.

Well, this is part 2 with a few more tips: (see previous post for first 2 tips)

3. Create a blended solution – Create a goal, strategy and id your tactics
Not everyone learns best from whitepapers, or podcasts, or webinars and webcasts. Some like short snippits and sound-bites to keep them informed and others want a video clip as it may be more stimulating. There are a number of tools out there you can utilize create a blended solution for your community. And surely the right mix will help appeal to the right people interested in your content.
It may be easier to pick out the tools if you start thinking about your goals. What do you want to accomplish? Once you know that, you can figure out how you’re going to get there. That’s your strategy. And then of course what tactics you’re going to use along the way. This is a complex process and probably a good blog post in and of itself. But this is the start to identifying the tools best for your online community.

4. Speak to the people and for the people – no jargon – keep it personable
Remember, you’re probably not writing a whitepaper or a commercial. This is a community. It’s the neighborhood around your specialty. Talk to me like a person, not a commercial. Leave the big words out of it. Save the big words for professors, pharmaceutical companies and rich people!

5. Provide valuable content in a pyramid structure – start simple and lead to depth
Think about content like a resume. I think the best resumes are 1 page. I’ll bet Ronald Reagan had a good 2 page resume, but imagine his one page resume!?! Tease people into getting more information. Don’t go crazy with content. Keep it simple and short.

More to come….