IABC Leadership: The silence is maddening!
Posted by: Tom Keefe, in IABC, blogging, communicationsAs a professional communicator and a member of the International Association of Business Communicators, I’m growing increasingly frustrated by a lack of communication from IABC leadership on two subjects.
The first subject is the IABC’s own international conference, set to open in just about a month (June 24-27, 2007 in New Orleans, LA, USA). I’d think that the association would have been promoting the conference for some time now, but with just weeks to go before the event starts, we’ve heard barely a word.
The last mention of the conference on IABC’s official blog, the IABC Cafe, was one I wrote related to a planned crisis communications preconference workshop. That post was on April 18. It was followed by two weeks of silence from the rest of the Cafe bloggers, until 2006-07 Chair Glenda Holmes, ABC, wrote a brief post on May 4 on an unrelated topic. No one has posted on the Cafe since then about…well, about anything.
No update either on In Session, the “official blog of the IABC International Conference.” IABC staffer Chris Grossgart told us in a May 4 post to expect weekly podcasts, insider information and more from two well-known podcasters and a team of bloggers. Chris did state that the blogging wouldn’t begin until the start of the conference. My question is: Why wait? Don’t we want to generate interest in the conference in the weeks leading up to the opening sessions?
The second subject that has remained undiscussed online by IABC is the emergence of opportunities and challenges created by social networking sites and ad hoc event planning. Professional organizations including the IABC historically have provided their members with a package of services and benefits that have added value to memberships. Join and receive networking opportunities with other members, proprietary research and opinion relevent to the member’s profession, and the opportunity to attend events developed and managed by the member organization.
As proven by MyRagan, the social networking site for communicators that recently was launched by Ragan Communications, Inc., people are willing to look elsewhere for the products and services that used to be tied to professional associations. When you toss in the fact that these social networking sites don’t charge for membership and basic services, you beg the question that has remained unaddressed by IABC and other associations: What is the business case for professional associations in this new world?
I can think of some answers, but like I said, it’s time for IABC and other associations to join the conversation.
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May 24th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Tom–
I know that the purpose of headlines is to grab attention, and your headline certainly grabbed mine, but I am afraid that your statement that you have barely heard a word about conference is not accurate. Or maybe it is accurate to say you haven’t heard anything. That does not mean that IABC has been silent about our upcoming conference.
And since you want us to speak out about this, I will take a detour from my response to mention that the New Orleans conference is less than a month away. The registration fee goes up on Tuesday and the hotel rate goes up after today. So there is no time like the present to sign up.
To date, we have sent out three issues of “Countdown to New Orleans,” our pre-conference e-newletter to IABC’s 14,500 members. CTNO provides detailed news and previews of the sessions, speakers and special activities.
The newsletter is in addition to the conference news that we’ve included in our regular member communications, including our monthly “What’s New at IABC,” CW Bulletin, Communication World and in our communications to chapter and regional leaders.
Last year, we did do more pre-conference promotion on the In-Session blog, but frankly, it did not generate much interest until the conference started. Instead, In-Session will kick into full gear once the conference is underway. We’ve already assembled a great team of bloggers who will report from New Orleans to capture the highlights of the content and other happenings of interest for those who can’t be there or those who are but don’t want to miss anything good. Our ConferenceCast podcasts will build on the program through interviews with speakers and attendees.
I don’t know what your definition of silent is, but from where I sit, I feel like we are doing lots of talking about conference. We intend to keep the conversation going.
And the subject of conversation brings us to your second issue–social networking and what IABC is doing about providing a social networking site. I admit that there is a lot of buzz about social networking, with new sites popping up every day. I am sure other members are wondering why IABC is not doing its own Facebook clone. We might. But before we launch a new program, it always has to be based in what our members need. As you know only too well, the IABC Cafe and the Communication Commons have had limited participation from our members. Is is the content? Is it that most of our members do not have the time or the desire to chat on-line? We need to find that out before we rush to copy what others are doing. In our next issue of “What’s New” and also at the conference, we will start to take our members’ pulse about their interest in an IABC-sponsored social networking site and what features they are looking for. We don’t intend to take forever to make a move. But we also don’t want to jump in without making sure members with use it.
I have seen a lot of mention of first-mover advantage this week. When I hear first-mover advantate, I think Compuserve, Prodigy, Betamax. IABC would rather be Microsoft.
Thanks for bring up these issues.
Julie Freeman, ABC, APR
IABC President
May 24th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
I think Julie has a real legitimate point here. The association needs to figure out what members want from their own social networking site before they plunge in. They may not want one at all.
There has been a lot of talk about whether our modest site spells the end of associations as we know it. I think this issue is really overblown. My friend and colleague Shel Holtz featured this topic during a recent podcast.
Here’s my view: MyRagan offers good content through the integration of its 23,000-strong article database, its columnists and its insight into the lives of communicators. It is also a customer service tool that Ragan conference attenders and readers can use to swap information before, during and after our events.
But these communicators will always want and need live contact with others like themselves. IABC thrives on its local-ness, I believe. It has a passionate, loyal following because people regularly get together offline and socialize, swap ideas and form deep lasting relationships. Even as the owner of MyRagan I know that we can’t replace that need for real human contact. Nor do we want to.
MyRagan is simply an additional tool, a different one, hopefully an ever-improving one. But it will certainly never threaten an organization like IABC.
May 25th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
Julie,
I’m glad that you’ve responded. It is, no doubt, upsetting to read a post like mine–particularly as you and other IABC staffers work diligently on the event. I’ve reread my post, and would only make one change of note: I wouldn’t say that it has been a total lack of communication, but it has been nearly that.
Maybe this is a case where you are so involved with the behind-the-scenes planning, that a day doesn’t go by without someone talking about the IABC International Conference. My experience, on the other hand, as an internal communications professional in a company located in the suburban Midwest, is that I haven’t heard anything from IABC that provides a preview of what is to come, and why I should participate.
As I wrote earlier, the lack of preconference interviews or news items related to the conference has been frustrating to me. I remember some of the pre-event publicity that IABC produced last year, and it has been missing this year.
You and Glenda Holmes have produced six Cafe2Go podcasts since last December, and none of them covers the association’s single largest event of the year. (I don’t count the “changes to the Gold Quill program” piece). The IABC Cafe has been dead for months, and no one from IABC took the opportunity to add comments regarding the conference on the two posts that I added there.
I don’t doubt that you have provided some print copy for the conference in the IABC publications that you mentioned in your comment, but I haven’t seen them. I went back through every issue of CW from the November-December issue through the most recent May-June issue and did not see a single article focused on the conference. I saw a spread advertisement in the January-February issue that provided only basic conference information.
As I mentioned in a comment on Shel Holtz’s blog post (where you also joined the conversation), I only noticed the third issue of “Countdown to New Orleans” when, by chance, I looked through my Yahoo SPAM folder prior to deleting the messages. I get other emails from IABC, and have no idea why these emails were considered SPAM. Nevertheless, I assume that a portion of the other 14,500 members never checked their SPAM folders.
You sent information to regional and chapter leaders, which, in my case, has not filtered down. I receive regular email updates from IABC/Chicago, and the focus is on local events.
I know you are excited about the group of bloggers who have agreed to report from New Orleans. In the meantime, the official conference blog, In Session, remains outdated and stale. Why not ask them to write something before the conference?
Julie, I respect the hard work that everyone at IABC put in; if I hadn’t been hearing grumblings from other communicators for months, I might have thought that I was being unreasonable.
Perhaps the most important comment I offer is that, as IABC weighs the opportunities and challenges of additional communications methods and technologies such as social media sites, you take a “walk before you run” approach. Is the struggle to produce regular content and member participation on the IABC Cafe, the IABC Communication Commons and MemberSpeak a sign that people are tired–and rather than run, they are preferring to sit on the sidelines and huff?
May 26th, 2007 at 9:24 am
Tom, I suspect I’m partially responsible for your pre-conference information dissatisfaction after forwarding you several of the mesh07 conference blog e-mails (arriving since February), which detail the program and speakers: http://www.meshconference.com/blog/
One significant difference is that promotion (and community building) for mesh continues to be 100-per-cent online/word-of-mouth marketing (just like the inaugural offering last year). I don’t believe the founders (the five “meshies” as they like to call themselves) created the mesh experience as a significant revenue generator (because the two-day program registration price is extremely reasonable and includes so many value-adds); rather, they saw a need in the industry to offer a targeted “Canadian web conference” (although note that it does attract/involve registrants and speakers from other countries).
The other thing the meshies do extraordinarily well is responsiveness to their community. If you offer up a suggestion or concern (either personally or through the blog), they are very welcoming and accommodating. Rather than ignore or marginalize feedback, they implement good suggestions whenever possible or offer you the (reasonable) rationale why something can’t be done. I know that an offline concern/suggestion I expressed this year was acted upon. The end result is that I am even more prepared to champion this wonderful conference through word-of-mouth marketing (which I don’t need to do anymore, because mesh07 has reached its sold-out registration cap for a second year).
I’m sure mesh will be offered next year (because the community is so enthusiastic). Perhaps you should put in a request to have your PD conference budget increased for next year, so that you can attend mesh08, too!
http://www.meshconference.com/
Cheers,
Judy
May 26th, 2007 at 10:59 am
Judy, I look at the mesh conference publicity as something to be admired, and certainly not a cause of dissatisfaction or envy. My dissatisfaction is based more on an impression that IABC has not communicated to me, as a member, in the ways that I am most attuned.
Print is far from dead, but I spend a fraction of my time reading print publications. I scan their tables of content and look for whatever article strikes me as important to read at that time. Then I stuff them into my Lands End “man bag” and carry them around for weeks before looking at them again–if at all.
Blog posts, podcasts and brief emails (that escape my SPAM filter) have a much better chance of coming to my attention. I could see social networking sites assuming a greater role, but MyRagan is still new, and Melcrum’s Communicators’ Network is just launching, so time will tell.
You mention word-of-mouth. If I were new to the IABC International Conference, I would rely on opinions of trusted colleagues before deciding whether to invest my company’s money (and my one “big trip of the year”) into the IABC event. For the past two years, I had already made my mind up to attend the IABC conference long before the first publicity arrived. I am seriously considering trying a different event next year. It will have to be one where I will benefit as a seasoned internal communicator.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
May 26th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Mark,
Thanks for adding your thoughts on this. As Julie pointed out in her comment on Shel’s blog post, IABC already offers some of the tools that are part of your (Ragan Communications’) social networking site: Memberspeak, an online discussion forum; and the IABC Cafe and Communication Commons, two blog sites.
It can serve the association well to consider the question of why those tools are languishing for IABC, and flourishing for Ragan. It isn’t that IABC members don’t want to communicate online–a visit to the MyRagan forums and groups can attest to that. Is it the marketing of a suite of products, like when Microsoft Office and Corel first had some of us drooling a decade ago? Is it the “non-exclusivity” of opening the community to all?
Perhaps it’s neither. We still may see that people’s limited time and energy will lead to certain places gaining prominence in terms of visitors and participation.
May 27th, 2007 at 3:21 am
Tom,
The answer to your question, why are MyRagan’s conversations flourishing, is pretty straightforward:
1) IABC puts their conversations behind a firewall. You have to be a member to participate. MyRagan is open to everyone, and it’s free. Just that fact alone ensures more activity.
2) Most of the conversations and activity on MyRagan are user-generated. And there is no moderation before the post. For example, of the three dozen groups now on MyRagan, only one or two were started by Ragan staff. The rest were launched by users. The only time we get involved is if the group looks or has the feel of being too commercial.
3) Finally, Managing Editor Dave Murray’s job is to keep conversation going by highlighting the hot topics being discussed on the various inside pages. In addition, we send weekly bulletins to MyRagan members telling them of free content available at the site. This tends to bring people back.
So there are many reasons MyRagan appears to have more activity than IABC. On the other hand, I was on IABC’s Member Buzz site yesterday and I saw a healthy number of recent comments by posters there.
May 27th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Mark,
1) No doubt, a greater number of participants would statistically increase the odds that the number of conversations correspondingly would be greater. But that would favor IABC over MyRagan–unless MyRagan now has more than the 14,500 members that IABC claims? The firewall point wouldn’t apply as a reason, because every IABC member has access to the content behind the firewall. And you can’t blame the requirement that IABC members have to provide a login name and password, because we have to do that on MyRagan as well.
2) The IABC forums, MemberSpeak and The IABC Buzz, also allow any member to create posts. Any member can add a comment without moderation, just like MyRagan.
3) David Murray is doing a fantastic job, and I continue to appreciate his insights and questions. No counterpoint about that one! I like the weekly bulletins from MyRagan, and if IABC staff believe that this is something that could be adapted to their situation, it might help to generate some traffic.
You mentioned that you visited The IABC Buzz and saw a healthy number of recent comments. I agree that both The IABC Buzz and MemberSpeak continue to draw traffic. I personally find MemberSpeak to be of more value to me as an IABC member, because The IABC Buzz tends to be dominated by announcements of job changes, self-promotion (”I’ve written a book!”) and who are the latest people to earn accreditation. Nothing wrong with that–I believe that was the intent of the forum, and it clears that kind of stuff out of the other forums.
MemberSpeak, along with its counterpart on MyRagan, are examples of a piece of this pie that needs a little more baking. Not to generate participation, because the long strings of topics indicates a healthy desire to engage in conversations. The trouble that I have with the format of them is that it is sometimes difficult to accurately tell the nature of each topic, without opening up the post. That is time-consuming, as the long list of posts would indicate.
Without the ability to see an abstract of each post, and possibly some of the replies, we are left to figure out which posts should draw our attention. I’ve found that I can’t judge a post by its number of replies OR views.
Anyway, thanks for keeping the conversation flowing.
May 28th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Tom.
You are right that the Forums and Group section of MyRagan “need some baking.” We are constantly evaluating and upgrading features as we learn from our users.
For example, you may have noticed that users now receive a notification at their private e-mail address if someone has sent them mail at MyRagan. We didn’t have that before, and some of our users complained that they didn’t know they had mail there.
Even more exciting, you will soon see a new homepage that allows users to submit Feature Articles and displays them prominently in a column on the right-hand side.
These social networking sites demand constant attention to what works and what doesn’t, but they are also quite fun….and, at times, poignant.
A few minutes ago, there was a new profile on our site from Paull, a young Australian PR professional on his way to New York City to start his career. In his profile, he links readers to a very moving video honoring the country he was leaving.
This is what makes it all worthwhile.
Mark Ragan
http://www.myragan.com
May 29th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Regarding word-of-mouth marketing and brand ambassadors, here is a nugget from One Degree that Bill Sweetman posted yesterday:
15 Cool Things I Learned at the 2007 CMA Annual Convention
I had the privilege of attending, and speaking at, the 2007 Canadian Marketing Association Annual Convention in Ottawa earlier this month. Here are a few fascinating tidbits I gleaned from the many excellent talks and presentations I attended:
* Marketers need to learn how to ‘outsource’ the marketing to the consumers.
* Marketers need to develop mechanisms to detect and nurture the brand ambassadors (i.e., those consumers who will willingly act as promoters).
* Mass advertising for the iPod didn’t happen until 9 months after the product launched; until then it was all ‘word of mouth’ marketing by brand ambassadors.
(Source: Dr. Joe Plummer, Advertising Research Foundation)
For Bill’s other Bright Ideas, visit http://www.onedegree.ca/2007/05/28/15-cool-things-i-learned-at-the-2007-cma-annual-convention
Note: the Canadian Marketing Association’s various conference/sessions and certificate programs have taken off like gangbusters over the past couple of years. Two of the education leads are (volunteer) colleagues of mine, via the Learning Resources Network, Christina Polzl-Greenberg and Gabriele Janes. At our inaugural LERN association education symposium held last November in Washington, DC, Christina and Gabriele presented a really informative and useful session on how they instituted the CMA’s professional marketing certificate programs for working practitioners. Additionally, their website/collective blog won an international award of excellence at the annual LERN conference: http://www.canadianmarketingblog.com/