How to Use Video to Increase Membership Engagement
It’s no surprise that video is the most efficient form of communication in 2019. With videos being shared 1200% more than text and images combined, it’s time that your membership association jumps on the video content bandwagon.
Sure, posting a video seems like a great idea to increase your engagement on social media, but what should the video be about? Associations typically don’t create videos because they don’t know where to start. Here are a few avenues to go down to get the creative juices flowing!
It’s no surprise that video is the most efficient form of communication in 2019. With videos being shared 1200% more than text and images combined, it’s time that your membership association jumps on the video content bandwagon.
Sure, posting a video seems like a great idea to increase your engagement on social media, but what should the video be about? Associations typically don’t create videos because they don’t know where to start. Here are a few avenues to go down to get the creative juices flowing!
Here are four ways to use video to increase membership engagement:
1. Introduce Yourself as an Association in a Video!
Use video to welcome your new members with a warm greeting and show them that you’re an organization that cares about their members. Try sending the video in a welcome email, or even try to send it through a personalized inbox message. Not only is this a great first impression, but it’s also a piece of content that your members are going to remember and encourage them to engage with your organization.
It’s said that 59% of executives would rather watch a video than read text. With loads content being pushed from so many organizations and brands, you need to stand out from the crowd. Try pinning your welcome video to the top of your social media pages. It’s a fantastic greeting to receive anytime someone visits your page.
2. Educate and Explain the Benefits of Being a Member.
Show your members the value that you can bring them! First, you’ll want to answer some key questions:
What all can you offer members?
Where can they find more information?
What upcoming events do you have planned?
Why do they need to be a part of your association?
Why does your association standout from the crowd?
First and foremost, you’ll want to educate your members. Cut to the chase – what do you do as an association? And then answer why they should join or continue to be a member. Answering member questions helps them develop a personal connection to your organization, which will encourage them to get more involved.
Make sure to stay on top of answering key questions that your audience may have, too. Engage with your members on social media and see what their pain points are - this will help guide you to answer questions that may be on various members’ minds.
Related Post: How to Engage Association Members with Email
3. Benefit from User Generated Content (UGC).
So many associations see engagement on social media as likes, shares and retweets (which it is!). However, there’s nothing more engaging than hearing the opinions and voices of your members.
Ask your members to upload their own videos of themselves answering industry questions or maybe giving opinions on current topics. While this is giving you content to share on your own social media platforms, it’s also creating a conversation.
That’s engagement.
Hearing testimonials is also a beneficial video content. In fact, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from others, even people they don’t know, over branded content.
Get your members talking – let them speak on the value that they’ve gotten from your organization. People are starting to crave stories, connections and interactions with others. Try not to push informative video content all the time – let others do the talking for you.
4. Excite Members for Upcoming Events with Video.
Events are a marketer’s dream – it gives you an opportunity to hype up your association. Create buzz. Promote a sense of urgency to learn more.
Video gives you so much opportunity to create excitement: fun background music, the intense movement of text and imagery, the inspirational voice-over. Video opens doors that images, GIFs and text can’t do.
The social media engagements will start rolling in.
A great idea to promote your association’s event is to ask for video testimonials from past attendees. Again, not only are you receiving video content to use, but you’re also given more credibility as an association. Sometimes it requires hearing from someone new to have some serious FOMO (Fear of Missing Out!)
Whatever you end up creating, remember to keep it short! 1/3 of viewers stop watching videos after 30 seconds – so, try to create your video two minutes or shorter. Get your message across in a quick, yet efficient, way!
At the end of the day, you’re trying to tell your association’s story. When creating video content for your association, remember to answer all three questions in the golden circle:
WHY are you doing what you’re doing?
Very few organizations know why they do what they do. The WHY is your core purpose or belief. Let the ‘why’ be what dictates ALL content creation – reiterate why your association is impactful to its members.
HOW are you doing it?
Explain how you’re different from the competition. What makes you standout?
WHAT are you offering?
Most importantly, you need to tell your audience what you can offer them.
So, let’s recap on how to use video to increase membership engagement. Ideally, you’ll want to create a shorter video that’s inviting (think 15 seconds to a minute), exciting and educational. While you could go the route of creating your own video content, your association can also encourage current members to contribute to a conversation and post their own videos. Either way, engagement is vital to increasing membership awareness.
It’s obvious that members are engaging more with video than they ever have before. Now, the question is, how are you going to integrate video to create engagement with association’s members?
Download our guide to up your digital marketing strategy
Creating effective social media content to share with your target audience is a crucial part to your marketing strategy.
Using our expertise in content creation, we’ve created this guide to help you cultivate a more engaged audience and, ultimately, help you grow your business.
In this download, you’ll receive:
The steps you’ll need to follow in order to create social media engagement.
4 essential elements to add in every content piece.
Information on different types of graphics your business can post for brand awareness and engagement
Key strategies for lead generation
How to Re-Engage Lapsed Members with Your Organization
So, it happened. Your member lapsed and there’s no sign of them renewing their membership anytime soon.
What do you do? Do you just let them leave without engaging or do you figure out how to re-engage lapsed members?
With current or previous customers being easier to convert and more profitable (increasing customer retention rates by 5% has the potential to increase profits by 25% to 95%!), you simply can’t afford to let your lapsed members walk without trying to bring them back into your organization.
So, it happened. Your member lapsed and there’s no sign of them renewing their membership anytime soon.
What do you do? Do you just let them leave without engaging or do you figure out how to re-engage lapsed members?
With current or previous customers being easier to convert and more profitable (increasing customer retention rates by 5% has the potential to increase profits by 25% to 95%!), you simply can’t afford to let your lapsed members walk without trying to bring them back into your organization.
Identify why members have lapsed
The reason why members haven’t renewed their membership isn’t always something that the company or organization did wrong, but more so the events and aspects of their lives. Tailor the approach to maximize the potential of re-gaining them from the information that you capture. Then, reward them with a discount or incentive for returning or purchasing a membership again.
By understanding why a member has lapsed, you not only get a chance to re-engage them and offer them an opportunity to re-join your organization, but you also learn valuable information to make memberships better! – Victoria Chernikovich, Account Growth Specialist
Custom Audiences
Facebook and LinkedIn allow you to upload a file of your lapsed members and serve targeted ads directly to them. We recommend that you first share content of value – videos, blogs, podcasts, etc. that don’t have a call to action centered around becoming a member.
Your mission is first to engage your lapsed members and remind them of why they became a member in the first place – networking, knowledge sharing, etc. Once a lapsed member clicks an ad to view a piece of your content, Facebook and LinkedIn both enable you to re-target them and serve another ad, this time with a more sales focused call to action. This progressive social media strategy works! – Sarah Nelson, Marketing Manager
Related Post: Create a Hyper-Targeted Campaign on LinkedIn
Personalized Messages
Millennials are much more likely to respond & interact with messages that are personalized to their needs! Blast emails, irrelevant messaging can damage your brand. Take the time to understand their preferred channels of communication & personalize your content to match their interests. – Cory Carney, Account Growth Specialist
Related Post: How to Attract and Engage Millennial Members in Your Organization
Offer a discount
A great way to re-engage lapsed members is to offer a discount to bring them back in the door. Run a promotion for a set number of days offering something unique that hasn’t previously been available! Send them an automated email sequence that also corresponds with a LinkedIn campaign or Facebook marketing so they see the promotional discount wherever they are online! – Ashley Bricker, Client Growth Specialist
Target and re-activate them through multi-channel
Begin with re-engaging on the channel that they initially came to you from and create your value proposition. From there, reach out and show how them why their support has been critical to your mission. People love to know where their donations or contributions went to, so if you can share information on what a yearly membership can do to make a positive impact toward your mission, they are more likely to feel valued.
Phone, email, direct mail and social media are key to reaching these members in the way they prefer to be contacted – Lauren Gill, InceptGrows Senior Account Executive
And just like that you’ve figured out how to re-engage lapsed members with your organization! Now you’re on your way to an even more engaging organization!
Download our guide to up your digital marketing strategy
Creating effective social media content to share with your target audience is a crucial part to your marketing strategy.
Using our expertise in content creation, we’ve created this guide to help you cultivate a more engaged audience and, ultimately, help you grow your business.
In this download, you’ll receive:
The steps you’ll need to follow in order to create social media engagement.
4 essential elements to add in every content piece.
Information on different types of graphics your business can post for brand awareness and engagement
Key strategies for lead generation
How to Attract and Engage Millennial Members for Your Organization
Millennials seem to be a group of confusion when it comes to marketing to them. And if you’re confused on how to attract and engage millennial members for your organization, we have you covered.
Whether your goal is to grow your membership or engage with your current millennial members, these tips will help you make your organization better!
Millennials seem to be a group of confusion when it comes to marketing to them. And if you’re confused on how to attract and engage millennial members for your organization, we have you covered.
Whether your goal is to grow your membership or engage with your current millennial members, these tips will help you make your organization better!
Provide Social Proof
Millennials are not impulse-shoppers. More than any other generational group, they like to research their purchases. This research comes in many forms, but member reviews and social proof are two top sources for this information.
By running a Facebook campaign targeted at ‘Friends of people who like your Page,’ your organization can deliver targeted ads with instant social proof. When someone scrolls past your ad and sees that 13 of their friends like Nike on Facebook, that social proof is likely enough to convince a millennial (me) to purchase a pair of sandals for my son. A staggering 91% of millennials buy based on recommendations from friends so this type of campaign is extremely powerful. – Sarah Nelson, Marketing Manager
Focus on Your Online Presence
Many millennials can’t remember a time before the internet. Keeping your website and social media accounts fresh and up to date will make it easier for them to find you. While it’s easy to say that your organization should be all places online to attract and engage millennials, you should spend most of your time and resources on the social media platforms that your members are already on. – Ashley Bricker, Client Growth Specialist
Optimize for Mobile
It is so uncommon to come across a millennial that doesn’t have a smart phone. In fact, more than 92% of millennials own smartphones and 85% of millennials use social media. Therefore, most of their time spent engaging with your organization will likely be through their hand-held device.
Giving them a way to purchase and/or sign up via a mobile device would engage them and allow them to take the next steps without having to find a computer or make a call. – Victoria Chernikovich, Account Growth Specialist
Personalized Communication
Millennials are much more likely to respond and interact with messages that are personalized to their needs! Blast emails and irrelevant messaging can damage your brand, since your millennial audience is more likely to unsubscribe or unfollow more quickly if they don’t feel the content speaks to them.
Take the time to understand their preferred channels of communication and personalize your content to match their interests. – Cory Carney, Account Growth Specialist
Multi-channel Approach
In this highly technological age, millennials expect for a brand to connect with them across a variety of platforms, from YouTube video ads to email marketing. Regardless if you re-purpose content for different platforms or create slightly different creative, your messaging should always remain consistent across anywhere you show up.
Your multi-channel marketing to reach your millennial members also should blend together rather than remaining in silos. Whatever your members tell you in an email survey can be used on social media and vice versa. - Amanda Blakeman, Digital Growth Strategist
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How to Choose the Right Social Media Platforms for Your Business
Social media is no longer just the future; it’s the present. With over 2.34 billion people worldwide on social media (and that number is expected to grow to about 2.95 billion by 2020), your business simply cannot afford to not have a presence online.
Our goal is to help your B2B business be successful, whether that be in-person or online. Because social media is highly intertwined with everyday life, we want to help you choose the right social media platforms for your business.
Social media is no longer just the future; it’s the present. With over 2.34 billion people worldwide on social media (and that number is expected to grow to about 2.95 billion by 2020), your business simply cannot afford to not have a presence online.
Our goal is to help your B2B business be successful, whether that be in-person or online. Because social media is highly intertwined with everyday life, we want to help you choose the right social media platforms for your business.
Identify your business demographic
The first thing you need to do is nail down is your target demographic, which if you are already familiar with who you’re targeting to increase sales, this won’t be too hard!
The reason you need to determine your demographic is because different people are on different social media platforms! If they are on multiple, they typically use them for different purposes. Sprout Social has an informative report detailing the demographics on the top platforms, and depending on the type of people on the platform, that may sway your decision.
Determine what social platform(s) your target clients are on most
Whatever social media platforms your target audience is already active on are the places your business needs to be. Meeting them where they’re at will make them more likely to engage with you! Choosing the path of least resistance to potential clients will allow you to make the most impact without spending the most time and money.
You can easily gather this information when you send your welcome emails! In your survey to get to know your audience better, you can ask what social platforms they are currently on.
Want to take online engagement a step further? Follow people in your target industry; like and comment on their posts! When you show you care, they’ll care and engage with you more in return!
Identify your social media goal
You should know how you want to interact with your target clients prior to solidifying your decision. What is it that you want to accomplish online?
Do you want to show off your employees and how they’re helping businesses? Maybe you’ll create detailed posts on Facebook and/or LinkedIn and explain how your business can help other companies.
Or is your goal to educate? Maybe you create a plan to utilize Facebook Live or Instagram Live to engage with your community in real time.
Do you want your current and potential clients to see you as serious, funny, inspiring, or any specific trait? While you can make any reputation work on any platform, it will shape the way your organization shows up and how your clients engage with you.
Do you plan to utilize ads to create a hyper-targeted campaign or a Lookalike audience of your current clients? All of these points are essential not only to choosing what platforms you use and how to show up online, but to your marketing efforts as a whole!
Determine your resources
After figuring out where your target audience hangs out online and your social media goal, it’s time to take your resources into consideration! Maybe your B2B business has determined that being on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram is important and you also want to incorporate paid advertising on these platforms as well.
The size of your internal team will determine what platforms are most important and will be tackled first. If you have a smaller team, you might need to pare down your social media list a bit, or consider outsourcing organic and/or paid social media management.
Even if you just start with one social media platform for your B2B business, a start is better than not being present at all!
Download our guide to up your digital marketing strategy
Creating effective social media content to share with your target audience is a crucial part to your marketing strategy.
Using our expertise in content creation, we’ve created this guide to help you cultivate a more engaged audience and, ultimately, help you grow your business.
In this download, you’ll receive:
The steps you’ll need to follow in order to create social media engagement.
4 essential elements to add in every content piece.
Information on different types of graphics your business can post for brand awareness and engagement
Key strategies for lead generation
Increasing Online Engagement with the Right Graphic
Nowadays people are scrolling through social media in a slightly distracted way – sometimes for only a few minutes at a time. So, the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” has never been more accurate.
It’s true – our brains were built for visual information. In fact, humans recall information 55% more efficiently when it’s paired with a graphic. This means that, as marketers, we have the responsibility of creating graphics that drives engagements and brings brand awareness.
Here’s a quick guide to better understand the different types of social media graphics that can have a powerful impact on your brand and skyrocket membership engagements in your organization.
Nowadays people are scrolling through social media in a slightly distracted way – sometimes for only a few minutes at a time. So, the saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words” has never been more accurate.
It’s true – our brains were built for visual information. In fact, humans recall information 55% more efficiently when it’s paired with a graphic. This means that, as marketers, we have the responsibility of creating graphics that drives engagements and brings brand awareness.
Here’s a quick guide to better understand the different types of social media graphics that can have a powerful impact on your brand and skyrocket online engagements in your business.
GIFs
If you’re in marketing, you’re aware of the high social media engagements that GIFs produce. There are limitless creative avenues you can go down with them - they have a wide variety of uses. Here’s a list of possible GIF concepts that your brand name could benefit from:
Branded GIF
Show your product off! It’s an easy and graphic way to present what you have to offer.
Try creating a contest that challenges your customers to make a GIF of them using your product! Not only will you be creating both employee engagement and customer engagement, but you’ll also have some great content to share. Everyone will want to showcase their own creativity and potentially win!
Reaction GIF
Incorporate some excitement about your brand in a fun and recognizable way. Many reaction GIFs are short bits of videos that are looped together. These are typically used when commenting back to people – stray away from normal responses with emojis…people appreciate a good GIF response!
A fun and easy way to increase your social media presence is to ask a question to your community and ask them to respond with a GIF. Social media users are GIF crazy!
Cinemagraphs
Is there something special you want to show off about your business? This is a unique way to reveal specific qualities by using a still image with a section that continuously moves.
Video
It’s no surprise that video is the leading source to creating social media engagements. In fact, views of video content have increased 99% on YouTube and a whopping 258% on Facebook between 2016 and 2017. Twitter has also seen the benefits of video with video tweets being 6X more likely to be retweeted than photo tweets. While, when used correctly, photos and words can be great marketing tool, it’s clear that videos communicate feelings and messages most effectively.
In regards to video creation, make sure that you’re testing different types of marketing strategies when it comes to messaging. Do your customers engage with emotional videos or comical videos better? Maybe your followers prefer to watch testimonials. After you’ve figured out which type of content to produce, figure out how long the video should be. This depends on the platform you’re using. Here are the ideal video length times broken down:
Facebook: 1 minute
Instagram: 30 seconds
Twitter: 45 seconds
YouTube: 2 minutes
Another area to be aware of is that 85 percent of Facebook video is watched without sound. This could alter the route that you take with video creation. If you have a message that can’t exactly be given without words, we urge you to add subtitles. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube make it easy to add subtitles manually or upload and SRT file.
No matter which platform you’re utilizing or what message you’re trying to communicate, remember – putting time and resources into video content will drastically increase your business growth and bring great brand awareness. Having trouble knowing where to start? Read our blog about the marketing steps that you need to follow when creating your content.
Related Post: How to Use Video to Increase Online Engagement
Photos of team
It’s always welcoming to show visitors who you are as a company and give them an inside scoop to the office’s daily life. Helping your customer feel a part of your brand gives them an even better understanding of what the your company is all about. Not to mention, on Instagram, pictures with faces have a 32% higher chance than other photos to receive comments.
Try snapping pictures of employees during fun themed weeks to showcase your office culture or get employees in their natural habitat of working. Don’t forget to brand the image with your logo so that viewers correlate the laid-back atmosphere to your brand.
To really get your customers to engage with you, show them that you’re more than just a company trying to sell them something – you’re a team who is passionate about their work and culture!
Quotes
Graphically presenting a quote is a great way to back up your brand’s message without being too pushy. Using someone else’s words helps to switch up the typical verbiage, and ultimately reinforce the importance of your marketing message. After all, you want people to be engaging with your graphics, so really try to find quotes that emphasize the point you’re trying to make.
You’ll also want to stray away from long quotes – you want to get your brand’s message across as quickly as possible. Also - Including the author is a must, and if you use a quote from someone well-known, all the better! (Using a quote from a professional in your industry will get you major brownie points!)
At times, it can be confusing to know which colors, fonts, and visuals to add to content pieces like these. Thankfully, we made a blog post that helps you choose the perfect visual combinations!
Visual tips
Educating customers is one of the major aspects to marketing, so why not do it in a creative, graphical way? Giving tips on how to use your product or explain why your service is important is a great way to communicate with your community. If they find the tip or advice useful, they’ll share it with others which ends up bringing you even more brand awareness. Take a step back and think about your audiences’ pain points.
What are common questions that they seek answers to?
What are their core needs?
Giving small, graphic tips on your social media pages will help viewers remember your brand in an effective and creative way!
Infographics
https://visme.co/blog/best-infographic-examples/
Do you have an important point or statistic that you want to share on social media? Try using infographics to simply get a message across. They help break down information that is difficult to digest. Again, people remember what they saw more than what they read.
Not only are infographics attractive to look at, but they’re also shareable. The simplicity that they bring encourages viewers to share the information that is on it. Did you know that search engines prioritize infographics when displaying results? This is great news if you’re trying to make it on the first page of search engine results and increase brand awareness. Overall, the simpler, the better. People are more likely to engage with content that is quick and easy to understand.
Visual Statistics
In today’s world, numbers have a big influence on people. Creating and sharing a visual statistic is an effective way to get a point across. Is your company on an upward trend with sales? Show it graphically! Is there a statistic that emphasizes why your product is going to be useful for them? Create a simple chart, graph or table to display your facts! Customers are much more interactive with visuals than they are with words – developing eye-catching visual statistics will increase your brand’s engagements.
Series or Theme
Consistency is key. Have you ever considered making your posts a part of a theme or series? Unifying your content allows you to create excitement and generate momentum. Not to mention, viewers will start to easily recognize your association after seeing such consistent posts. Also, designing a template saves you time when it comes to content creation. (Score!) You could even try making a theme out of any of the graphic types that are listed above - get creative!
So, which content ideas are you going to try? Remember – give your testing a bit of time. If you’re testing your new content ideas as ads, let them run for at least 3-4 days. This way, you can gauge whether your audience are engaging in the right way. Also, look at your analytics to identify any trends occurring. Creating solid social media content and keeping an eye on what’s driving engagements will end with a successful content marketing strategy.
Download our guide to up your digital marketing strategy
Creating effective social media content to share with your target audience is a crucial part to your marketing strategy.
Using our expertise in content creation, we’ve created this guide to help you cultivate a more engaged audience and, ultimately, help you grow your business.
In this download, you’ll receive:
The steps you’ll need to follow in order to create social media engagement.
4 essential elements to add in every content piece.
Information on different types of graphics your business can post for brand awareness and engagement
Key strategies for lead generation