4 Million vs 200 Million
Following yesterday’s post about the 4 million members associations will acquire by 2015, I have another question:
If Facebook has 200 million members, why are associations only going to get 4 million?
Actually I have two questions:
If it only took Facebook 9 months to get to 100 million members, why is it going to take associations 5 years to add 4 million?
And if you haven’t seen this video about the growth of social media, watch it now.
Obviously, associations charge dues and Facebook doesn’t but both of them are fundamentally networking. Facebook is cool but may fade as social networking loses its place as the new toy. Maybe associations suffer from their status as the old toy—the much-loved but now sort of boring bunny with the fur rubbed off.
Maybe associations aren’t cool enough. Or maybe it’s the old one-to-many model coming back to bite them. I’ve been running around making speeches at association conferences and attending others hosted by clients. It’s always great to see people; conferences aren’t going away. But why do I have to wait till the association has a conference, fly to some sunny resort to sit in a windowless room and listen? Why do associations still insist on controlling the agenda?
Facebook is easy. Too often, belonging to an association is work.
There are still some stupid things on Facebook and YouTube. But when 80% of companies use social media to find new employees, job hunters realized pretty quickly that posting pictures of themselves doing keg stands was a bad idea. There are some intentionally silly things on social networks—did you notice the hilarious video about circuit boards and measles? But when the fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55 to 65 year-olds, i.e., the core of most association membership today, why aren’t members beating a path to your association’s own online network? Come on, if that guy can make circuit boards funny, surely you can do something to get people talking.
I look at a lot of online networks on association websites and since I belong to or work for a fair number of them, I get to see what the members see. Too often, it’s the association talking to itself. There are no comments, no questions, no discussions. This is true of association fan pages on Facebook and LinkedIn as well. Essentially, they’re posting press releases; social media is just a new channel for PR. That’s not a terrible use of it but it won’t get you 200 million members.
There is a tactic which I call “poke the bear.” I tried this recently on one of the online networks I belong to. I posted an intentionally controversial comment about a new cap and trade legislative proposal—not the sexiest topic in the world—and I unleashed the forces of rage. There were comments and rebuttals and rants that went on for days. Eventually, someone posted a comment that was better than my original: logical, well-written, well-reasoned. It was altogether the sort of profitable exchange I would expect to have at an association conference with a group of peers. If you poke the bear often enough, eventually the bear wakes up.
Associations won’t get 200 million members; they wouldn’t know what to do with them if they had them. But they are too timid in their use of social media, too afraid to make someone mad. It’s got to be meaty. It’s got to be worth doing—or I’m going to go back to Facebook and chat with my old college buddies.
