One of my last group projects in college was to develop a PR strategy for a new major on digital communications. Naturally, one tactic discussed by each group was to develop an online presence. During my group’s discussion, I mentioned that creating Facebook accounts and online forums was one thing…getting people to come and participate was another. One classmate said that getting people to the sites wasn’t our problem. After all, we can only put it out there; we can’t force them to come. My response was…then what’s the point?

Peter and I led an energizing discussion at ASAE's Great Ideas Conference last week and I'm still digesting the good ideas. The session was on embracing the unofficial volunteer leader. Who is this person you say? Well it's the hell-raiser and the quiet saint. It's the person who is doing work for the profession and maybe even the association -- but unofficially. By ignoring these folks, you could miss out on some good work or inadvertently fuel a disruptive force. Here are two examples we talked about where associations embraced the unofficial leader.

When your association surprises you - in a good way - they've remixed their membership. When your association does something worth modeling in your own organizations - they've remixed their membership. When those two things happened to me, I just had to pick up the phone and find out more. Check out my SmartBlog Insights posting for the rest of the story on how an association shifted how they looked at the membership cycle and rethought engagement.  Love to hear your feedback!

I had the opportunity to speak with three different groups of volunteer leaders this week and in each case we talked about the challenge of increasing member engagement. What struck me was that the focus of engagement is on the “big ticket items” of event attendance or volunteer leadership (read serve on committee or board). It will be difficult if not impossible for us to increase engagement if we keep this focus so narrow.  And there is a lot at stake.

It surely seems odd that a public relations professional chapter wouldn’t be an early adopter of the new media. But we weren’t. Our members were – and are – curious though. It’s that curiosity that gave us the platform for entering into social media sphere.

• We needed a new newsletter editor. The call was answered by an innovative, exciting member … who also happened to be a blogger. Our cumbersome e-letter morphed into a blog.
• A Facebook fan started up an ISES DC group.
• She was on Twitter but didn’t see the chapter so offered to be the ISES DC Twitter voice.
• Driven to organize the planning and execution of the chapter’s major expo, the chair opened a Google Group, loaded up the documents and ran the first meeting using those shared items.

KiKi L’Italien, Delcor Technologies and I had a great conversation at ASAE Social Media Workshop. KiKi shared her awesome story about the Optical Society of America student chapters and I shared the ISES DC blog and story. Here’s a quick recap of our key points and you can check out our shared bookmark smw09 for more resources.

About one year ago, the Maryland Recycling Network gingerly began its foray in social media. We followed the best advice we found and marched confidently forward … right into failure.

Actually the failure was on the engagement front. The initiative succeeded in that it provided a valuable lesson. From the lesson is emerging a second – and we trust a more successful – launch. As we move forward here’s the lesson we learned from part 1.

Public Relations Society of America Maryland Chapter has tried it all – FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging. Success happened when they focused these on a specific event.

International Special Events Society DC Chapter found success when it followed its members – rather than leading.

Maryland Recycling Network is on Plan B. Plan A, a wiki, fizzled. That was probably good news because it led to a different path that wasn’t even in our minds.

We’re all asking for the secret to building engagement in our social media initiatives.  The path to success is littered (quite literally if you consider the many “ghost communities”) with failures.  I see the failures as being the secret to success. Our missteps have actually driven Mariner and our association management clients to learn lessons about members, grow closer to members in that process, discover new technologies, and improve with each attempt.

Associations Now is offering an opportunity and a case study with its latest crowdsourcing option. By logging in you can submit content ideas, vote on others, add comments and throw your name in as a contributor. At least check it out as a sample of how you can engage members even if you don't allow yourself to be drawn in and engage.