A Manifesto/Rant – Why Are Association On-Line Communities So Unsatisfying?

Warning to new casual readers -- past readers will know that I am a bit of a renegade in the association technology community. For example, see my post A Manifesto for Associations to Survive Disruption or my e-book lamenting the state of Association Management Systems, The AMS as We Know it is Dead. We are also a somewhat crazy association that is trying to make Hubspot the core of our business.

Beyond all this, I am more engaged in social and community technologies than is probably healthy. Certainly, more than my wife finds tolerable. My personal and professional experience of over 30 years in the association space and as an ASAE member -- plus the experience of my own association with our own online community – has me asking this question:

Why are Association Online Communities so Unsatisfying?

I know, a somewhat provocative question.

Before delving into this, a few comments on some of my own daily social activities, not so much as to socially strut (OK, maybe a little), but to demonstrate why this topic is so important to me:

1. I check, post, and like on my personal Facebook feed multiple times per day, and try to pay particular attention to posts on our own (AIIM’s) Facebook page.
2. I check, post, and RT on my personal Twitter account multiple times per day,
3. I get a potpourri of digests (mostly weekly) from myriad LinkedIn groups of which I am a member. Most of these I delete without reading because the volume hose is too big, and the content value is too marginal. I do try to keep track of discussions in AIIM’s main group and comment on them.
4. I check Prismatic and Nuzzle for news 2 or 3 times per day and repost/share, mostly on Twitter.
5. I get daily digests from three ASAE communities. I try to scan, but truth be told, in the rush of work most days, I mostly just delete.
6. I get instant updates on our own AIIM community. I try hard to act/comment on these.
7. I get way too many eNLs, some on association topics, some on content/document management topics, and some for reasons that are long lost.

There are many rewards that result from the above activities. I have made connections and gained insights that I would never have without these activities. But from the perspective of being a MEMBER of a community important to me (ASAE) and also someone trying to run a community for my own members (AIIM), I don’t feel that these activities are anywhere near as satisfying as they COULD be.

At their core, associations ARE communities. Why, then, is it so difficult for us to create online communities that are engaging, interesting, intuitive, easy to use, attractive to young people, and have sustaining professional value? In an era of exploding Information Chaos, why is it so difficult for associations to fulfill their destiny as the ultimate trusted curator of professional and industry knowledge?

Here are some issues I think we need to all think creatively about in the association community. I think there is an enormous opportunity here for associations to sustain their role as trusted curators and community organizers, but a role that is dissipating by the day unless we start thinking about this issue differently.

My Online Community Manifesto

1. Online communities should be open and easy to join.
2. Online communities (there are some exceptions) should NOT be gated by membership. They should NOT be the place we send members after they are converted, but rather the place where we find new members. That doesn't mean there isn't a place for premium, gated member-only experiences. But the default should be open.
3. Given this, we need to figure out new and different places to put our tollbooths to remain financially viable.
4. The user experience should be as simple as Facebook. If it isn’t, it’s a waste of time. The threaded discussion forum format, typical of many association communities, feels dated and rigid and based on participation, often feels like the place where conversations go to die.
5. Online communities should not be some weird walled-off ghetto pasted onto the sides of our web sites.
6. We’ve got to create an approach that is so compelling that members of our profession or industry will come to us multiple times per day – on their phones – to find out what is going on.

Given the above, many of my peers with whom I speak (me too, for that matter!) are thinking about bagging the goal of an association-specific community and just using LinkedIn for that purpose. But I fear we will rue the loss of control of our destiny through this course. We will be only one step away from a capricious change of terms by LinkedIn that will make us irrelevant to the very communities that we have created.

And beyond that, we still will have not solved the core question:

How can our online communities become the single and best one-stop experience for curated and trusted information and conversations relevant to the professional lives of all those (not just members) whom we serve?

A tall order, I know. But we need to start asking for it. Let’s think much bigger.

And so the last elements of my Manifesto:

7. Our objective should be a mobile news feed that combines as many of my personal items above in my 1-7 list into a single news feed.
8. Our objective should be an infrastructure that allows conversations and comments in all of the above 1-7 items to occur in a single place, and not have to go chasing these conversations hither and yon all over the internet.
9. Our objective should be a single intelligent news feed into which my association identifies and curates the best information flows relevant to my profession or industry.
10. Our objective should be an intelligent news feed that is prioritized based on the information my association knows about me AND based on the people whom I respect in the industry.

Wouldn’t that be grand? As they say on those TV and radio ads, “just a thought, not a sermon.” OK, maybe a sermon.