I just ran across an older posting - a challenge sort of - on Acronym where Lisa Junker, one of the bloggers behind Acronym asked us  to take 5 minutes to spread the word about our association. She was prompted by a very cool conversation with Andy Sernovitz of GasPedal who’s a word-of-mouth expert (and three-time association CEO) in which he offered up a few idea starters.

It all started with the Lindy Dreyer’s feature in January issue of Associations Now “Get your members talking! Word-of-mouth expert Andy Sernovitz tells you how.” Catch more of Andy's WOM insights in his book Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking. The idea goes that in a down economy, word of mouth can make all the difference.

• 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.