Over the past three months we saw disruptions of our daily routines leading to a disruption in consumption of content. People are “Zoomed” out. Add in the news cycle and there’s more digital fatigue than ever before.
Organizations that continue to provide relevant, timely, and useful information will succeed in breaking through the noise and will be rewarded with returning customers – or members if you are in the association space – and acquisition of new ones. Organizations that are just making noise may lose their audiences forever and those who don’t create content at all will be mostly forgotten. It’s even more important now to stay relevant and top of mind.
The shutdown in March caused the first wave of disruption and re-opening is causing another. For the most part, industries were on equal ground when we shut down. It will be a different story as businesses begin to re-open. Associations will have to segment their members and partners using the following for communication purposes:
Essential / Non-essential during shutdown
Region/State/City and status of re-opening phase
Companies that never stopped and have momentum
Companies that slowed down and lost momentum
Companies that stopped completely and will have a hard time getting back up to speed
Companies that pivoted completely and started new ventures
Companies that shut down
Associations need to take stock of these members and partners and adjust segmentation and priority of each because the knowledge transfer will be different for each segment. It’s up to the you to sync up with them.
Continue to create content that is relevant, helpful, and make your members’ jobs easier. Some areas of content focus to consider includes filling revenue gaps for 2020, new skill sets necessary to succeed in the new normal, and boarder questions such as:
Where do we go from here and how do we become better?
How do we improve using the lessons that the shutdown taught us?
How do we forge new paths?
How do we make sure that we are inclusive and that we provide a platform for diverse voices?
How do we prepare for the future and make sure that we are more resilient when the next “wave” hits?
How do we move forward with virtual events for the foreseeable future?
Get organized and get better at building relationships, not only with members but also partners. This will allow for better sponsorship opportunities, customization, and a more creative and robust sponsorship inventory. This is a very exciting time for business, and especially associations, with a lot of room for innovation and creating better versions of ourselves.
Connect with Kseniya Martin on LinkedIn.