Fear Itself

What are associations so afraid of? Can somebody tell me?

Blogging is a way to be opinionated, give the association’s or the blogger’s point of view and start a conversation with members that complements all the other programming. But associations, in yet another example of their aversion to risk, first, won’t have an opinion and, second, don’t want to allow members to comment.

Associations have gotten used to never stepping on anyone’s toes—not just used to it, comfortable with it, preferring it. Someone might quit. Someone might pull an ad out of the publication. Someone might, heaven forbid, disagree. As if they don’t already.

Members quit all the time; advertisers drop out, people disagree. Look at it this way: You can choose to just let that happen or you can try to find out why. Blogging can help you do that.

This is a more substantial conversation than an irritated call to member services. The comments and feedback to a good blog should tell you what people really have on their minds. This is not just a complaint—“I don’t want my membership fee to go up and I’m angry about it”. This is a two-way conversation that helps you anticipate what’s going to happen before it actually does. 

But to have that conversation you have to get over the fear of stepping on someone’s toes. If you don’t say anything worth saying in the blog, you won’t get anyone to comment. In the immortal words of the late Governor of Texas Ann Richards, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road except road kill.” If the blog is so middle-of-the-road that it doesn’t take a stand on something, what good does it do?

Then there is the fear of comments. What if they say something bad? What if they want to actually talk about it? What if they expect a response?

There are, obviously, resource allocation issues attached to this but, I presume, that you wouldn’t be blogging if you couldn’t support the effort. You wouldn’t put up an 800 number if you couldn’t answer the phones, right?

What you want is an engaged membership. That’s what everyone wants. That is really the only way to retain members. If you don’t want them to talk to you, why are you in business?

I usually hate rhetorical questions—my editors know that they are the first things I’ll delete in a manuscript—and there are lots of them in this post. But I’m genuinely confused. If all associations are afraid of is stuff that’s already happening, well, how do they think they’re going to survive? People are going to find a place to talk about the things they care about. Associations are either part of the conversation or they’re not.

So I ask again, what are they so afraid of?

Rent a Member

This morning Digital Now brought Jeremy Gutsche, founder of www.trendhunter.com, to talk to a group of association executives who don’t spend much time thinking about “looking for the cool.” You can talk about passionate members and commitment to the mission, rich media-enabled Websites and great take-up in a new standard but cool… not so much.

Gutsche looks the California hip part–spikey hair, baggy jeans, blazer over T-shirt–and he is so out of the box that even mention of the box is irrelevant.

One of the trends he spotted is the idea of the rented experience. You can rent designer handbags, for instance, this week a Gucci, next week a Louis Vuitton. You can rent a pet: play with the puppy and send it back before it messes up your rug. You can also, it turns out, rent someone to pray for you. If you would like to intercede with the diety but you don’t have time to do that personally, you can rent a pilgrim to make a pilgrimage on your behalf. Makes you wonder how big a problem you have if you can’t make your own intercessions.

The question this begs is: are we actually renting our members? We’re not buying them. We have them for a time. We can lose them at any moment. this is a renewal-to-renewal relationship.

Or maybe they’re renting us. If they’re not really bought in, that certainly implies rental. They could send us back just like the inconvenient puppy. They could decide that we don’t have the features they want and they’d rather try another model.

Maybe the way to really look at it is rental with an option to buy. If a member rents for a period, they’re still just trying you on. It might work out and they’ll become a committed member. And that doesn’t mean that they have to be super active but that they’re loyal. Or it might not and they’ll go to Affinity Labs www.affinitylabs.com instead.

The option to buy exists in a lot of places. Renters can decide to exercise it or not. You can probably figure out how many renters and how many purchasers you have. The trick is how to convert–not so easy to figure out.