My aha for the day (maybe the week or month!): associations are approaching social media the same way they approach chapters and other components.  The aha came out of reading an insightful post from Scott Gould on How I Profile A Community’s Participation To Inform Next Actions. About four paragraphs into what Scott warns at the start is a long post, there is the statement that triggered by aha: Relationship is participation with one another.

There have been so many good reads that I've been reading somuch more than blogging. Here are a few I think you might like:

• Leading Change: Getting Your Organization on Board with Social Media
• Learning to ride the leadership rollercoaster
• Good is no longer Good enough
• Best Conflict Tool Ever: Ladder of Inference
• Leadership Skills: Curiosity (this is 3rd in a series -read them all!)
• On Mobilizing Your Evangelists
• The White Magic of Listening
• Federal Report Finds US Volunteer Rate Increased over 2 Years
• 50 Power Twitter Tips

There are so many more ... check out my Delicous bookmarks! And tell me where your's are so I can follow!

Of all the responses I received to my request for help in setting an agenda for 2010, the one that gave me most pause was from Jeff De Cagna (like I was surprised?):

In 2010, association leaders need to ask a fundamental question: how can we make everything we do more social?  This question is not primarily a technological consideration, but a strategic and human one.  The challenge is to look beyond the tools at the diverse relationships they enable and the deeper meaning they nurture.

I crowdsourced my 2010 action list and received a great reply from colleagues. The ideas included “quick actions” which I shared in my first post, tips for listening, several thoughts on integrating social media (which will come in future posts) and this checklist for building relationships from David Nour, author, speaker and consultant. 

In the waning hours of the Aughties (or Double Ohs??), I sought advice from a cadre of friends and colleagues to help me set some goals for the fresh decade. I tweeted to about 30 peeps:

peggyhoffman pulling together a new years list for social tips/to do for 2010 - let me add one from you ... dm okay?

Come to think of it, this was a most appropriate exercise to end the Search Decade (so named by Micheal Kruse in his article in the St Petersburg Times). The responses back were all over the board and yet all on the board. I’ve since spent the first couple weeks of the new decade pondering this advice.

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.

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.

SMACNA Sacramento Valley Chapter won the Social Media Make-Over at the ASAE Annual Meeting as part of the Adding Power to Member Communities with Social Media session led by master CRP* KiKi L’Italien (Optical Society of America) and me. Here's the make-over!