Beyond the recent hype of Web 2.0 is a genuine revolution. Your members now expect to meet each other, collaborate and form communities quickly and easily online. The truth is if they can't do it on your website, they have the option to do it on their own with any number of social networking sites available today.

So, the question is: how can you make social networking work for your association?

Contact Us to find out how easy it is to start providing social networking to your organization.

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View the May 08 Webinar on Social Networking.

What is social networking?

It's called by many names right now: social media, web 2.0 and social networking. We like to call it “member networking”, because within our industry that's what it truly is.

There are many popular social networking sites today:

1. LinkedIn
2. Facebook
3. YouTube
4. Digg
5. MySpace

Some of the interactive tools on these sites include:

1. Member profiles
2. Blogs
3. Wikis
4. Profile matching
5. RSS
6. Online communities
7. Podcasts

You can do different things on these sites, but the common thread is that the content is user-driven, community-oriented, and collaborative.

What can social networking do for you?

Associations can leverage the power of social media in many ways. It can serve as a great value -add for events. Member networking increases the duration of an event by offering pre, during, and post sharing and collaboration. People can meet up and share ideas and thoughts about the conference anytime. It's also a great outlet for speakers to post info and entertain questions before and after the conference.

Associations can also use member networking as an extension of what they as organizations are designed to do naturally: Build community and communicate with like-minded people about topics that are important to them. What's extra great about building this type of website for your association is that you can bring all your members right into the network. Unlike other social networking sites, you don't have to wait for people to sign up to get it going. And it brings a very high level of personalization to the user experience which is something a lot of associations are looking for.

Member networking is a great outlet to share documents, pictures and videos, which could include collaborative sharing of best practices and the like. By providing such interactive tools it also gives associations a leg up in retaining and gaining new membership.

Most importantly though, before you commit to a member networking tool you need to think about how it fits into the strategy of your organization. Is your membership open to the concept? Is it something they would find valuable or maybe something too “state of the art” for them to use? Technology for the sake of technology is never the best approach. Be thoughtful of your members' needs and proceed cautiously to ensure you don't commit too many resources to something that won't stick.