Happy Friday! I’m currently gearing up for an exciting weekend at my alma mater’s homecoming festivities, so needless to say, things are busy at the office! What are you doing this weekend?

Before heading out though, here are five of our favorite blog posts from the week!

1. David M. Patt asks a simple – yet tough – question: As association professionals, what’s our role? Who do associations belong to? And should members be allowed to take some matters into their own hands?

2. Maddie Grant shared a fantastic interview with Mandy Stahl, the community manager at ASAE. There are some great insights into what goes into managing a community and how an association the size of ASAE handles scale. Mandy’s role at ASAE was brand new when she began!

3. Wes Trochlil shares results from a recent survey that indicated 70% of workers at the nonprofits polled were unsatisfied in some way at their jobs. Does this reflect job satisfaction at your small staff association? How do you keep your employees and staff members engaged?

4. Eric Lanke discussed “Race for Relevance,” a hot book among association professionals. He highlights five big changes the book outlines and asks if they are truly “radical” changes as the book indicates. Are the changes possible to implement in your association? Are they radical to you? Why or why not?

5. At the Association Tech blog, Lowell Aplebaum writes about social media and the chapter-leader connection. Should members be able to upload their personal photos of association events to the owned social media channels? What is a chapter’s role in a member’s life and how does social media play into that?

Happy Friday! I hope everyone has a productive week. We’ve been staying busy here and are starting to gear up for the holidays! Are you dressing up for Halloween?

It wouldn’t be Friday if we didn’t share a few of our favorite blog posts with our readers. Be sure to chime in with your own in the comments!

1. How does your organization think about volunteers? Jeffrey Cufaude advocates “thinking of volunteering as something everyone should do because it is one of the most significant ways to build a strong professional network, to connect more to the professional community in general.”

2. Joe Rominiecki links to a great Seth Godin post about the difference between stupid and lazy. Not doing something isn’t the same as not wanting to do something, and association execs should be careful to not make excuses with the word, “can’t” when they really mean “won’t.”

3. Has your association delved into the world of virtual presentations? How successful have you been? Jeff Hurt shares a few things to keep in mind, and how to best plan your presentation. After all, he reminds us: “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

4. Everyone has a different way of coping with conflict. Some people straight-up avoid it, but David M. Patt doesn’t recommend that. Putting off decisions to avoid conflict is not the sign of a good leader. Don’t be afraid to compromise.

5. Shelly Alcorn shares a Dilbert cartoon from last Sunday and challenges association professionals to avoid the common pitfalls of thinking creatively. Don’t insinuate that anyone’s ideas are awful. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you’ll sound ignorant. Don’t be afraid to suggest risky ideas.

From everyone at MemberClicks, have a great weekend!

Happy Friday! This week has completely gotten away from me! I’ve been busy catching up on all the great association-related blog posts from this past week, so I’m finally getting around to sharing my five faves with you all. Which ones resonated the most with you?

1. I’m glad Tom Morrison has been blogging more because he has so many great insights to share! His latest post discusses how it’s not as hard as you may think to interact with different generations. How has your small staff association engaged with younger professionals in recent years?

2. I shared this post this morning on Twitter, but it seemed to get a great response and I wanted to share it again: cell phone etiquette. David M. Patt shares a story about a colleague taking not one but TWO calls during a meeting and placing a third call on his own. Is this standard etiquette for meetings now?! I hope not.

3. Silos, as pretty much everyone knows, are frustrating. But Jamie Notter reminds us that silos are often in place for a reason. There are lots of stakeholders in associations, and silos can help keep things organized. I don’t think small staff associations necessarily have as many issues with silos as larger ones (for the obvious reason that there are fewer staff members), but this is still a great post for association professionals.

4. Shelly Alcorn used Occupy Wall Street as the inspiration for her latest – awesome – post: Associations are the 99%. Associations were designed to protect the 99%. They have a long history in the United States. Is the message of Occupy Wall Street resonating with your small staff association?

5. You may have heard about a little device called the iPhone 4S and its accompanying new operating system. Android, Blackberry and iPhone fans alike have been buzzing about it all week. Well, it turns out that mobile social web use is on the rise, according to a new Nielsen report Lindy Dreyer shared. Take a look and ask yourself how your association can improve its mobile presence.

Email newsletters are a great tool for distributing news and information to your members. MemberClicks has been sending out our monthly newsletter to customers since 2004, so we picked our own brains to come up with some good tips we rely on to deliver compelling content to our customers. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way towards building a base of regular readers.

1. Create Relevant Subject Lines
It’s often treated like an afterthought, but the subject line is one of the most important components of any email newsletter. It’s the first thing a reader sees when they open their inbox, and if it doesn’t grab their attention, it’s likely to cause them to delete the email or, even worse, mark it as spam. Use words that draw from or describe your content when forming your subject line. Avoid using bland, generic subject lines like “March Newsletter.” If you have branded your newsletter, you can include the newsletter name, but bolster that with a very brief description of the issue’s content. Keep in mind that some email clients will cut off long subject lines, and users may not be able to see all of them. Use active and interesting phrases or even summarize your top content in the subject line, and you’re guaranteed to grab your reader’s attention.

 
2. Balance Length With Frequency
The purpose and content of your newsletter should help you determine how often you send it out. While some newsletters go out daily, this is rare, and you should be careful not to send out your newsletter too often to keep interest high. You should use the frequency with which you send your newsletter to determine how much content to include with it. In general, the more frequent the newsletter is sent, the less content you should include. A weekly newsletter should have shorter, more concise content than a monthly newsletter. By balancing the length of content with the frequency with which it’s sent, you can keep readers interested. But no matter how often you send out a newsletter, you don’t want to send too much content. What “too much” means depends on your organization and your content to some extent, but since readers are reading your content in an email client along with their other emails, you should aim to keep it brief if you want to keep their attention.

3. Decide Between HTML And Text
While plain text newsletters are still regularly sent, you should consider whether an HTML version of your content would capture interest. Designing HTML newsletters can be tricky due to the many inconsistencies between different email programs, but it can also add a visual touch that makes your content more attractive and easier to read. If you decide to create an HTML version, always create an web page version and include a prominent link to it at the top of your newsletter. Often, email clients will have images turned off by default, so when your nicely-designed HTML newsletter reaches the reader, they’ll see nothing but your text and a lot of empty boxes. You can alleviate this issue by hosting your newsletter on a web page, so that readers can read the newsletter in their browser instead of their email client. If you have an elaborate design, the only way to display it consistently across all the
different email and webmail solutions out there may be to make the entire newsletter an image. However, this is risky, as you run into the possibility that readers won’t see your content at all if they can’t see images. Again, you can alleviate this by including a prominent link to a web page version of your content.

 
4. Make It Scannable
When it comes to your content itself, you not only want it to be brief and to-the-point, but it should be easily scannable as well. Many people will glance through an email, stopping only to read the highlighted portions of text in order to get a feel for the content. Make sure you use catchy headlines that adequately convey the content of each story. Keep paragraphs short – 5 sentences or so is a good guideline. Use bullet points and lists when applicable to segment out your content and make it easier to read. Make your text snappy and put key points in a bold or italic font. Most importantly, try to condense as much of your content as possible into a small space – you don’t want to bore your readers by going on too long or repeating yourself.

5. Optimize For The Preview Pane
Finally, keep in mind that many people use email clients like Outlook or Thunderbird that show the emails in a “preview” pane. Many people use the preview pane exclusively to read their emails, never opening them full-size. To optimize for the preview pane, you want to use a dynamic width or keep your fixed width to a small size, so it can be seen entirely within the preview pane. Use a table of contents at the top of the page to quickly summarize your content so that readers can jump to articles of interest. And place your most important, compelling content as the first story – you want to grab the reader’s attention with it as soon as the email appears.

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Happy Friday! Just another friendly reminder that Small Staff Appreciation Month kicks off tomorrow! If you want your small staff association to be featured on the blog, please email me at shannon@memberclicks.com! Before October officially starts, though, let’s take a look at five of our fave blog posts from the past week.

1. Facebook announced some pretty major changes at its F8 developer conference last week. For more info about what these changes mean for brands and nonprofits, check out a re-post Maddie Grant posted at the SocialFish blog. It’s extremely thorough – but don’t freak out about the changes right away! These are exciting times for brands in social.

2. Where does organization come from? Who spearheads it? It takes a LOT of organization for a large group of people to come together. Who turns your ideas into actions? Joe Rominiecki’s post on the Acronym blog points out that organization is never easy and encourages associations to seek as much organizational support as they can.

3. In a very poignannt post, Cindy Butts shares five lessons for association executives from the late Wayne Syphers. My personal favorite? Today is going to be a good day. Your attitude can truly determine your output, and going into each day with a positive attitude can make a huge difference.

4. You’ve probably heard about the Netflix price changes and the announcement of the upcoming Qwikster DVD service. A very vocal majority of Netflix customers are angry, but Jamie Notter takes a different perspective: Netflix is simply acting human. Definitely read the comments on this one; there’s a great conversation.

5. Do you employ honesty when hiring new staff members? David M. Patt advocates being up-front about salary from the stat rather than initially focusing on qualifications. This tactic will earn you better employees, and no one will feel “tricked” about their salary.

From everyone at MemberClicks, have a great weekend!