The data is clear: most associations have not yet figured out how to appeal to younger professionals in their industry. And that’s a big risk with millennials set to make up 75% of the global workforce by 2025. To attract the next generation of members, associations must prioritize authentic, two-way communication and collaboration.
So, how do you actually do it? We invited Colby Horton, founder and CEO of Association Briefings, Frank Humada, Chief Business Development Officer at Association Briefings, to join Michael Hoffman, CEO and co-founder of Gather Voices, for a live, 1-hour conversation on connecting with younger professionals. They discussed:
- Hello, Gregory and Jessica and Dana and Allison, and Anesa. Going to get started in a couple minutes. All right. Hello, Cindy and John and Liz and Mark and Rachel and Randy. Welcome. We are going to get started in just a minute. All right. I see a lot of people are still joining, but we are going to get started, because I think we got a lot to talk about today. So welcome, everyone. This is what the next generation of members want to hear from your association. It's a conversation with me and Colby Horton, and Frank Humada, who are here with me. So, I'm really excited and let's jump in. So, if you don't know me, I'm Michael Hoffman, I'm the co-founder and CEO at Gather Voices. We're a software company that makes it easy to collect videos from your members, staff and other stakeholders really easily, and to use that content without being video experts. Before that, I ran a digital marketing agency working with associations and other nonprofits, and I've done some other things here and there. So, I'm really excited to have Frank and Colby here. Frank and Colby were with me last week actually, when we were at the ASAE Membership Conference in Washington. And that was terrific to see you there, but welcome. I'd love for you both to introduce yourself and tell us a little about how you got to be here on this journey of yours. So Frank, why don't you kick us off?
- Sure. I'm Frank Humada, I'm the chief business development officer for Association Briefings. I'm born and raised in beautiful San Antonio, Texas. I've been in the association space for about 15 years, and teamed up with Colby because I'm looking for a lot of ways to help an association share their voice. So, excited to be a part of this.
- Excellent. Colby?
- Yeah. Well, hey Michael. Hey, everyone. Thanks for having us today. I'm Colby Horton and I'm founder and CEO of Association Briefings. And I've been in the association world for about 20 years now, 22 to be exact. I joined a local association right out of college back when they were feverishly trying to collect email addresses because they had never sent out an email campaign. So, I was a part of that long time ago, but I've enjoyed the association world. I was with an agency prior to starting Association Briefings and I couldn't think of a better industry to be a part of. So, thanks for having us today, Michael.
- Yeah. Excellent. And will one of you just tell me a little bit about Association Briefings and the kind of work that you're doing?
- Sure. Consider us a content agency. We like to help an association tell its story through various communication channels. We really focus in on podcasting for associations and email marketing strategies, particularly on e-newsletters, being more data driven than just a pray and spray type of newsletter. But we handle a lot of content marketing initiatives for associations as well. Again, just to help build and tell that story from the association.
- Excellent. Well, we'll dive into some of those things briefly. Just a housekeeping note for everyone. If you're here for CAE credit, that's awesome. Stay till the end. The last thing I'll do here is do a poll of who wants CAE credit. And that is one of the ways that we know that you're here for CAE credit. The other way is that you participate. So, please share your experience in the chat. We're, I think Frank and Colby and I have talked before, we don't know everything. We're not doing everything. We don't have complete visibility into everything. There are really innovative, interesting things happening all over this community of nonprofits and associations. And we want to hear about yours and the things you're working on and the challenges you're having. So, please share those things in the chat and we will be in real time, be able to talk about it. That is excellent. So, I want to actually start with a quick poll to get us thinking because the topic for today is about new and younger members. And one of the things that I've learned that seems very clear, and this comes from a bunch of different data that we've seen. So, some of Tony Rossell's data in the annual reports that they do. Basically saying if you are growing as an association, it's because you're able to attract younger members. And that's the only way to grow. And if we look at the data of the percentage of millennials and Gen Zers that are in the workforce and the percentage of those people that make up association membership. There's this huge gap where we have not attracted enough of this younger generation to become association members. And that's, I think, dangerous for the whole sector. So, I want to just start with a poll where we can talk about that, because we're going to talk about this intersection of content and young members and thinking about how do we attract the folks that we want. So, you should see a poll now. Which is in your experience, which of these content qualities helps your organization resonate with younger professionals? I think of associations are like content factories, right? Like there's so much stuff that is needed to be shared within a trade, in a profession or a trade. And those are things that associations are really good at. But we have to do it in a way that really fits with the audience that we want to attract. And so I want to get to some of that. So, it looks like us that we have here. I'm going to end the poll. I know even though we haven't gotten everyone to participate. Give it another sec. Alright, we're going to end the poll. So, if you missed it. And I'm just going to share the results here. So, it looks like all of the above is the biggest thing, which is about authentic content, so real stories from real people. Interactive content, so enabling people to participate in content. And the idea of purpose driven content, so showing support for things that matter to them. Frank and Colby, what's your take on content that resonates in terms of these categories?
- I think they hit the nail in the head. All of the above makes a lot of sense because if you look at young professionals and what they're looking for within an association. They certainly want an authentic voice. They certainly want to be involved in the community in gathering and networking. And you know, they... I'm sorry, now I've forgotten the last point there. Oh, purpose driven. So, of course young professionals are joining associations to be involved in a purpose. So, if the content doesn't go along with each of those three things, then the factory, as you called it, isn't doing its job. So, I completely agree with the way it came out here.
- Yeah. And I'd love for the folks who have joined us in the chat to share maybe some of the specifics about what those things are. What kind of interactive content are you doing? What kind of, when we talk about authentic voices, what are you doing in that area? That would be great. Love some examples. If you have links to those things, put them in the chat also. I think your colleagues would love to see them. We'd love to see them as well. So, I want to start a little bit about just talking about that. When we think about these next generation of association members, what do we know about what kind of content works for them? What do we know? And how do you think about that?
- [Colby] Well, I think what we know. I'm sorry, Frank, you want to?
- Sure. They're digital natives. So, we know that from what servers are showing email, social media are ways they like to be communicated to. So, they're on their phones, they're in their inboxes. So, whether it be updates via that way, or just scrolling through social media to find updates that way. Those are some ways that they are getting their information.
- Yeah. I think with the challenge here is that it's always changing, right? The way they want to consume content, the type of content, the type of visuals. Everything is involved in communicating that message and it's constantly changing. But I think that as we watch where they are, we have to have that understanding that we as association professionals, we, as the association wanting to recruit and retain these younger professionals need to be where these folks are. Whether that's on YouTube, whether it's on Facebook, whether it's on LinkedIn, whether it's in their inboxes. We have to be there and our messages have to resonate in each of those different channels. So, it's always going to change, but we have to change with it.
- And are there... Do we need to segment things? Does the thing that appeals to the younger generation appeal to everyone, or do we need to have different modalities or segments or things that are differentiated for our different audiences?
- Yes and no. I think what you're saying is really important as we're having this discussion about how to attract and retain young professionals. We can't forget about the seasoned professionals that are over there. We still have to market to them. And there's going to be a lot of crossover, right? The seasoned professionals, they're also in their inboxes, the messaging might need to be different. Segmentation's always important. And I think what we're used to now from the big brands is all about segmentation. I mean, Netflix, Spotify, Hulu. All of those streaming services, Amazon. We're used to receiving communications from them that's segmented to us. They know who we are, what we buy, when we buy it, when we run out of stuff, what the next thing is we should binge watch and they're delivering these personalized experiences to us. Young professionals love that. Seasoned professionals love that. And in the end if the associations are doing similar strategies, it's only going to benefit them in the end, right?
- So, let's dig into that a little bit around what we mean by personalized experiences. Because I think a lot of us who've been around a long time or started in direct mail. Personalized means, you know, insert first name here thing. And I think we mean something different than that today, or maybe we mean that and something different.
- [Colby] Yeah. I think-
- So, it could be based around content preferences. So, let's say it's a newsletter, for example. And you have different items in there. So, based on what the subscriber wants to see, depending on what their member type is, different things to be sent to them based on those preferences set by the user or the association.
- Okay.
- Yeah. It goes back to the data, right? I mean, every association, if you're doing a good job on data, which is, I mean, that's a discussion in itself, we can get into that somewhere else. But you know what education sessions they've registered in the past for, you know what trade shows they've been to in the past. If you have different segments within your organization, you know what those are. Those should be flagged for your members. And that's where your content should come in as well. If it's true that we only get eight seconds to grab someone's attention and engage with them, then you sure as heck better, if you're sending an email message, it should have the information that they're going to be most likely to absorb and want to engage with. Not the extra stuff. So, personalization goes well beyond the, "Hey first name, bud.
- [Michael] Right.
- Glad you're here." It's more, you know, "Dear first name, you registered for a similar class two months ago, here's another one coming to your area." And it's very personalized. And personalized not only from the content, but from the creative assets that are in there as well. You see some of these big brands that, you know, clothing brands that come September might be showing visuals in the Northeast of people wrapped up in nice warm jackets, but us down here in Texas, we're still in shorts and flip flops for the next three months. And we want to see that in the marketing messages that come from those brands. And that's what the members wanna see as well. They want to know that you know them, and what their preferences are. And that comes through in all the marketing and communication pieces you put together.
- Yeah. And this is a theme, I think, through a lot of conversations I've had where good data is a foundational element. That being able to track what people do and to have records that are clean and to be able is a kind of prerequisite for a lot of the things you're talking about. But I also feel this tension, and I'd love to think about how you think about it between the data side, which seems kind of cold and calculating, like, "We're going to send this picture to this person because they clicked on this thing," right? And it's almost mechanical in a certain way. And the idea that content's really about creative and creativity and people's authentic stories we talked about, right? So, how do you feel about that? Like the difference between or the synergy, to use a overused word, between the data side of things and the creative side and when you create content. I don't know, Frank, what do you think?
- I'm going to pass this on to Colby actually.
- Thanks, Frank. No, I think data and creative, they have to work together. And I think the better the data, the more exciting the creative can get. You have marketers in the association space that want to do the same thing that the marketers in the consumer space want to do, and want to engage with their content. And data's what's going to drive that. This is going to be probably something that I'm not going to be liked about, but I think a good creative marketer and a good data driven marketer can be two separate people that work together, and the data feeds that creative piece. So, what you were saying earlier, Michael. I think data, yeah, it's that foundation of all of this, but I think it's probably one of the biggest challenges for associations right now. And I think that we're constantly drilling them with, "Oh, your data's gotta be great. Get more data. Make sure you keep your data clean and all this." And they're just drowning and well, what kind of data should I be getting, and how does that drive my message? Like I said, a completely different topic to talk about some other time, but I think that's a huge challenge for the associations. If they can grasp that, if they can start doing a great job with their data acquisition and their data retention and maintaining that data. Man, their marketing efforts are going to, they're just going to go through the roof, the engagement levels, etc. So, certainly a challenge. But if you can get it, man, you're in good shape.
- Yeah. That's great. There's a really interesting discussion going on in the chat, where Jessica mentioned the challenge of younger members and getting them involved and needing to show people exactly how you get involved for them to do that, right? We can't just assume that the knowledge, I think sometimes in associations, our committees that are very active in the associations, in the marketing committee or an outreach committee or whatever, the event committee. They're made up of veterans of the organization. They're made up of people with all this institutional knowledge. They know, you know, this is how things are done here, this kind of thing. And I think there's a certain bias that can happen where you're not really seeing things from the point of view of these people that you want to attract. Frank, you're nodding?
- I am because you're absolutely right. There are some associations that give young professionals a chance to be a part of the board, give them a chance to run different things. And you can't treat young professionals like kids, you have to be able to get them involved and learn from them. Something very simple is providing a survey to learn about them, what appeals to them, what are you doing as an association that is doing well or not doing so well in their eyes? So, they have the answers. It's a way for you to grow because you're going to need these young professionals to grow your membership base. And they have some valuable feedback that they would love to be able to share.
- Yeah. I think it was at the MMC Conference that we were just at last week, that there was somebody who said, if you're trying to do something for a group, if you don't have people from that group in the conversation.
- Yeah.
- You're not going to do it right. And so I think that's a really hard thing sometimes to think about. Well, in theory, you have to pay your dues to get to these positions, but then how do we have representation from the people that we're trying to attract and what are ways to do that?
- I think you're absolutely right. And, Dana in the chat is kind of bringing it up. It kind of goes down to this mentorship and identifying who should mentor to who. And for those senior leaderships who maybe don't think that mentorship is overly important. Well, it most certainly is because it is building the next level of leadership with the organization. But, news flash, the folks who are mentoring get just as much out of it as the mentees. So, I know that there's several associations that make sure they're at their conferences, have meet ups specifically for their YPs. Who also bring in some of the leadership as well, to just be a part of that. But to your point, if you're not involving them, then how do you know what they want or what is needed? Associations can no longer have that mindset where we're just going to make a decision because we know, we think we know what they want. Well, when you're talking these YPs and the Gen Zs and the next generation to come up. I mean, it's constantly changing, as I said earlier, if you're not getting their opinion, if you're not getting their input, how can you drive programs for those young professionals?
- Yeah, that's a great point. And I think this point about mentorship is an important one, actually. My wife works for a company called Mentor Collective, which helps organizations manage large scale mentorship programs. And I see through her, the impact of that is really powerful because it, and there's a learning that goes both ways, right? There's a learning of the world is changing rapidly and there are things that younger people have the pulse of that, you know, I wish I'd understand. So, that's great. I want to talk about when you, I think, Colby you were mentioning at the beginning social media, or Frank, I forgot which one. Just talking about different channels and how people want to engage. I think the elephant in the room right now is TikTok on that. TikTok is just grown faster than any platform ever. It's got parity with YouTube in terms of time on site and views and things like that, but in a fraction of the time. And it's super compelling. I mean, I think when TikTok started, it was all about the dances things or whatever, but there's every kind of content on TikTok. But I'm also hesitant to say to for associations to run after these things, you know, the shiny new object, right, that they can't necessarily execute well, can't maintain. And I think you have to be careful with that, right? And it reminds me, I've done a lot of work in the charity field and I've had many, many large nonprofit organizations say to me, "We want to get younger donors, and it's similar to younger members." And I'm like, "Well, let's look at your average donor today." And it's like, "Oh, your average donor is a 70-year-old woman who writes a $50 check. And you're telling me, you want younger donors. That's great. Let's go for the 50 year olds." Like let's think about what we have and where we need to move and be methodical about it. And again, not chase the shiny object. So, I'd love for you, both of you to address the general issue of how do we, with limited bandwidth and limited time, how do we do efforts we know are going to succeed or at least, or do experiments that don't take that much effort to know whether we can succeed? And then where does TikTok fit in specifically?
- I can start this one. I think the most important thing, especially when it comes to something like TikTok and jumping into, you know, new shiny things that are out there is again, you have to talk to the members, right? And I see that Jessica on here is like, she struggles to see how TikTok kind of works into the association space. And I think that's what we are all struggling with, right? It's not the latest dance. Dance moves isn't going to do much for you in the association world. So, you have to get together a group of young professionals and you have to say, "Hey. A, does TikTok work for our association, And if it does, how do we do it? What is it that we need to do here?" And it's going to, yeah, it's going to be different from association to association. A medical association on TikTok is much more of a stretch than an interior design or a student medical association or something like that and how they use TikTok. So, I really think it's, if we're going to jump into this, we have to have a strategy and who better to define that strategy than a young professional or a group of young professionals telling us how it fits into what our association does. We can't just jump into TikTok because everyone's jumping into TikTok because it may not be the best social channel for the association. And that's okay. But you gotta ask. I'm not going to make that decision on behalf of an association, whether TikTok's good for me, because I'm not a TikToker. And I could bring my daughter into the conversation all day long and she could probably let us know exactly how to do it. But you've got to ask these younger professionals. You've got to ask them if it makes sense.
- Frank, what do you think?
- Absolutely. I'm on TikTok. I think it's great. But for an association, there are a lot of benefits there, but I would definitely have some kind of committee, a person or a team of volunteers that are saying, "Hey, this is probably going to work. This won't work." Because you don't want to put something out there that's really not trendy, and it just completely flops. And then you have one post forever, and nothing really happens after that. I would definitely get the advice of young professionals to figure out what's the best strategy for promotion or just posting in general.
- [Colby] You also have to-
- Yeah. Barbara asks a really good question here in the chat, which is how long is, associations are not very quick usually in trying new things or getting new initiatives out and will TikTok even be a thing when that comes around? And I think, you don't need to be the first one in the pool, but sometimes being the last one in the pool and everybody's already gotten out is not a good strategy either, right?
- [Colby] Right.
- And I think part of the answer is experimentation. And, the idea of we need to try more things in a way that we're not making big commitments, but we're testing. And testing requires a scientific approach. And what I mean by that is you can't just do anything, and then say, "I tested." You have to have a hypothesis. You have to say, if we post x kind of content on TikTok, it could do y, right? Like you have to have a hypothesis. Then you have to try something and then you have to measure the results against your hypothesis, and then say, "What did we learn here?" And I think not enough associations think about that. The other thing that comes to mind as somebody who's worked with organizations around content for a long time, and this was true with YouTube as well. I've struggled with this issue forever, which is you have an organization that has this budget for content, right? Our associations are spending thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on content development. And there's some guy in his bedroom with 10 million viewers on their YouTube channel and they got nothing. They don't even have a professional camera, right? And I'm like, "Look at this gap. These people have all these resources and they can't do what this one person in their room can do." And I've struggled with that for a decade really saying, "What is it that's happening there?" And I think part of it is this individual personality driven thing versus organizational driven. And so you have an organization, the organization has a personality or lack thereof in many cases, right? But the organization has a personality, but that's different than an individual personality. And I think many organizations aren't necessarily wanting to set one person up as the personality of the organization, right? As the face of the organization that way. And so, that makes it tricky. And at the same time, I am certain that every association that's here today and every nonprofit has people in their network who are superstars. If you're the dental association, there's some dentist who is just hilarious and awesome and has great practice, information and whatever. And if you could find those people and if you could lift up their voices and leverage that, that could be really powerful. I don't know. What do you think, Frank?
- I definitely agree. And I do think that an association can humanize themselves by these TikTok videos. There was one association in particular that did somewhat of a compilation video of them getting ready for the conference. It was hilarious and the members loved it and it just shows that we are professional, but we're also a lot of fun as well. And it definitely is something that fits well with the TikTok environment.
- Yeah. Go ahead, Colby.
- Yeah. No, just my two cents on this too. Comes down to expectations as well. I mean, you talk about the guy who seemingly has just very elementary equipment and somehow getting tons of likes and followers. Well, from an association standpoint, we have to remember we're talking about a very niche audience. There's only so many people who are going to look at interlocking concrete, and be excited about watching a video on that. So, where this guy's getting 10,000 views and this association video is getting a hundred, but it's a hundred good, I'm going to call them qualified views. That's okay. So, we need to make sure that from an association standpoint, as we're testing, as we're looking at these new channels and determining if it works for us. We have to make sure that our expectations are aligned with the industry and all of that.
- I think that's a really good point, Colby. I think there's so much sort of vanity metrics like views, who cares about views. I have actually a great story. A client, a former client of ours got in when I was working in an agency, as a consultant. They got a celebrity in Hollywood to make a video for them. It was actually Judd Apatow. And not only did he make the video, he got a dozen A-listers like from "Seinfeld" and other people to be in this video, like, you know, and it would be the dream, right, of any association, any organization would be like, "Oh my God." So, they put this and the video was funny, and they put the video on YouTube. And the video got a million views in like a heartbeat. And I went later to the communications director of the organization. And I said, "That was incredible, what did it do for you?" And she said, "Well, the board was really excited, right? The staff got pumped up, it helped morale." And I was like, "And what else?" And she's like, "Nothing else." And I was like, "Well, didn't it increase traffic to your website?" Nope. "Did it increase downloads or interest or donations, or membership?" Nope. And so I think your point about qualified views is really important one, right? Is like, we need to address the audience we want to address and what is it that they need and that they want to see. And that's how we need to measure it. Not against the view, the random vanity metrics that we see from viral stuff.
- Right. Right.
- And yeah, Elizabeth says our membership generally is older and we're trying to appeal to the younger generation professionals. I think, Elizabeth I'd Love to hear how you're doing that. What is the way to do that? And we mentioned this idea of you need the younger professionals to help you navigate what younger professionals want. And part of that I think is also representation, right? Like when I go, if I go to your website and I see pictures, and the only pictures that I see are of middle-aged white guys, like us or old white guys, or whatever. Like I'm going to go, "Is this for me," right? Is this the place I want to be? Because people aren't just affiliating for the technical information, right? It's partly a social, there's an aspect that's about who do I want to be, who do I want to become? There's an aspirational piece to it. Is this the group I want to be part of. How do you think about that in terms of just being able to show. And I think this is important in a DEI context as well, right? If we don't show diversity and if people can't see themselves in it, are they going to think it's for them?
- And I think you're absolutely right. And everything that you just mentioned is certainly going to help with that. And not only that, but Jessica just brought up a point about making sure that before you start marketing young professionals, you have programs and services and benefits that benefit them. Same thing with before you start representing them on the website, you have something to give them. And I think the days of, and again, this is my thought, the days of marketing your association as a benefit provider that has this great printed magazine that you can put in your office space or what. Those days are gone. If you're looking for young professionals and creating programs for them and showing what they're doing on your website and everything. You go back to, again, those key points that we talked about in the beginning. They want networking. Well, that's somewhat easy to do. At your next trade show, have a networking event for your young professionals. Professional development. Well, most likely your association already has the professional development put together for that young professional to want to join. So, it's a matter of re-doing how you're marketing your association, how you're representing your association, as you've mentioned. And it doesn't have to be this huge five year strategic plan on how to get. I mean look into programs that you're already doing and how can that be re-purposed or re-marketed, or anything along those lines to those young professionals, because I guarantee you have what they're looking for. It's just a matter of now marketing and communicating what that is and how you do it. And that's really what we're, you know, a lot of what we're talking about.
- Some of this is about just kind of the modality of the communication, right? Who's the messenger and how is it being received? I just saw something, yesterday actually that I think "People" magazine is gonna stop printing the magazine.
- That's huge.
- And "People" magazine is like, if you said like what is a magazine.
- [Colby] Right.
- It's like that's the magazine that's been around forever. And we're at this stage where some of these models that have become very traditional and people become very invested in them, just aren't working necessarily the same way. And I think for some associations, that print piece is still worthwhile because of the very specific conditions of their membership maybe. But I see more and more it's what's that digital thing that we need to do, but how do we not just throw something on the website? How do we make it engaging and interesting? Frank, you've been in the world of print stuff, right? In navigating that world. I mean, where do you see that going, and the role of that? I mean is print something that there is interest in among young people in and is there a simple answer there, or is it something a little more complicated?
- I think for an association there still is a place for print, but if we're talking about young professionals, I don't know many young professionals looking to grasp that magazine, hold something and have the time to look through it. Young professionals, from what I've seen in the surveys, and even myself, considering myself a young professional in the tail end of being a millennial. You want your information very concise whether it be in a quick newsletter or finding social media, scrolling through some things. I don't know the last time I spent an hour plus reading through a magazine, nor do I know anyone my age are younger doing the same. So currently yes, keep it for the members that enjoy it. But as I mentioned earlier, surveying your members and finding out how they like to receive content. If you're finding that that number keeps dropping then you've got to figure out new ways to be able to appeal. And you probably have to start pretty soon if you haven't already.
- Yeah, that's interesting. I think that idea of bite size is important. We're seeing that, Dennis mentioned taking long form traditional professional development, pairing it down to micro-learning opportunities. I think that's really interesting. I saw some startup a while ago that was just doing SMS text-based learning. The idea that you're going to get some series of text messages that maybe with some interactive quizzes in it, and that's going to be a learning thing, right? That's totally different than the experiences, the more traditional experiences. Are you seeing that? I mean, one of the things we do is we'll do a conversation. Like this is an hour, but what we're going to do afterwards is we're going to take pieces out of this. The insights that have come out of this and try to distill them into shorter pieces that work on different platforms. And the same piece doesn't necessarily work on all the different platforms, right? You have to do some things to make them appropriate for the platform that that you're doing. Do you find that as a good strategy to create in depth content that then you can repurpose in many different ways for different audiences?
- Absolutely. And it goes to the investment in the content, right? And going back to what we were saying earlier, it doesn't only appeal to the YPs, it's going to appeal to your seasoned members as well. If you have a piece of long form content, as Dennis is describing, and you split it up into a quick video, a quick social media post, a blog post, a newsletter article, a magazine article. And you take this one piece of content and you're distributing it across multiple channels that I can choose that I'm going to read the blog post. Frank can choose that he's going to get the little video snippet. And we're all going to consume that content that you've invested in, both time and money. And it appeals to everyone. What we find when we do a podcast is same type thing. We have a 30 minute podcast that we put out. We put out social media promotion saying, "Hey, this podcast is coming out in a week." Then we announce that it's there. We create some Instagram and Facebook stories to put out there. A week later, we're going to take the intro of that podcast, we're going to turn it into an audiogram. That's going to go across our social channels. We're going to do a pull quote. We're going to put it on our LinkedIn to bring people to it. It's just this constant promotion of content. And someone said it in a chat earlier and it's so true. If you build it, they're not going to come unless you promote it. So, the idea of creating this great content, post producing it and putting it out there and saying, "Man, we did a fantastic job, didn't we?" No, now the hard part really starts. And it's getting the eyeballs, it's getting the people to come and really consume that content. And if you're lucky, share and disseminate that content in their channels as well. And then you become the authority within the industry. But thinking that you're going to create this great webinar and call it a day is not the right approach. And just those bits and pieces is what's going to make it successful.
- Yeah. I got to Gather Voices actually from a frustration, partly from doing really high-quality, really great video content for associations and nonprofits that nobody would watch. And you're like, "You could spend all this time on content and it can be objectively wonderful." It can even be impactful, but if nobody actually interacts with it, it doesn't have the impact that you wanted. And I think one of the things that we've learned in a really strong way is that if you include, the more people you can include in the content creation process, the more those people will lean in to the result of it. So, if you can have people who are attending a conference, share what they think the trends in the industry are, for example, and then play those videos at the conference. People are going to lean into that. If it's Black History Month and you ask black association professionals to share their stories and you share them out. Again, people are going to lean into that content in a way, you know, we see our clients doing it with events, with awards, with continuing education, basically saying, "Let's build some of this as a community, or let's take the professional piece we're doing and then layer in a foundation of stuff built by the community." Because people again will engage more and lean in more and be more a part it. And I think that we see that connected to this younger generation that we're trying to attract. And it actually connects to all those other things we talked about, like representation as well, it's like, Oh, you're not just seeing people like yourself. You're seeing yourself in there." And that's something that's powerful. I think Benjamin makes a good point about the idea of not alienating your current folks. Like if you took all your content, just like, "We're only doing TikTok now." That's all our content. So, you want to get your certification. Great. You've got to watch 5,000 TikTok videos. That probably wouldn't go over so well, right? We need to look at our community and understand where people are at. And how do you do that, Frank or Colby? When you work with a client, you're thinking about content creation, how do you think about assessing where their membership is at or where their community's at to think about what strategies are going to work?
- That's a hard question because it's different from each association. And I completely agree with Benjamin. I think we've said it numerous times. We can't just market to this group. If we can find a marketing piece that can stretch across all generations, that's golden. But that doesn't always happen. It's a matter of the association's over for us. It's a matter of the overall objective of the association. If they come to us and they say, "We need to reach everyone." All right, well, then that plan's going to be much more robust, but it's still segmented because there's not going to be one plan that fits all. You just now have multiple plans that we're going to put together. And if we're lucky, again, talking about content creation and dissemination, if we're lucky, we can find that good golden piece of content that can then be split to cater to the YPs and cater to the seasoned and cater to whatever group we're trying to cater to without having to say, "Okay, well, yeah, let's do a good TikTok video and put that out and cater to our young professionals, but let's take that same message and create a member testimonial video over here for those, the middle guys. And then let's write a great magazine article for the seasoned professionals." We don't want to do that. That's a lot of work. Bandwidth is short right now. But if we can find that good piece of content that can be split among the generations, even better. But it always goes down to what's your objective, what's your overall goal here? And let's make sure it makes sense for whatever tactic we go with.
- Yeah. I want to just go back to just quickly address, I think some structural challenges that organizations have sometimes to their goals around young people. I think one is membership, I've seen where if you have a trade association and one person can attend something, who's that person going to be? It's not going to be the young professional, right? It's going to be those senior leaders. And I've seen multiple associations change their models to allow for more people to participate in order to cultivate that younger generation. And I think like that's something that's really important, right? If you're sort of structurally set up to not have that. That's something that you might not be able to overcome with content because people aren't going to be able to afford it. They're not going to be able to be included. So, I think we have to think about those things as well, right? And not just the content we're creating, but are we making it accessible? The other area where that is true is leadership as well. I've seen organizations where you have had to have done all of this before you can participate in this thing. Which might be the right decision, but is if there's not some other thing that has as much status or stature or sense of purpose. You're again, not going to attract folks who feel like they don't belong. So, I don't know if that's something that you see in the organizations that you work with.
- It is and it's tough for young professionals because if it's surely based on tenure. And I'm joining as a young professional and see that, "Well, I have to be at that certain point for myself to become a leader." That becomes tough. And in certain situations it becomes a point where, "Well, now I've been with it for a couple years, but I'm not seeing my growth, so I'm going to find somewhere else."
- Yeah. Yeah. If anybody in the chat has experience around that or has changed their structures or their governance in any way to welcome young professionals, that would be interesting to hear about what you did there. I would be remiss. We don't have endless time left, but I would be remiss if I didn't talk a little about audio content. We're at Gather Voices, we believe video rules the world in many ways, and we see that with TikTok and everything else. We make video easy for organizations. But we also know that smart speakers and cars and there's lots of places and being on the train, or whatever it is. Like lots of places, people want audio content. And we've seen a kind of Renaissance of audio content through podcasting. Where are we with podcasting? Is podcasting for everyone? Who does podcasting attract? Has the podcasting bubble, you know, is it still growing or are, you know, where are we in the podcast world? I'd love to hear your take on that as an organization that really helps associations with their podcasting.
- Well, we certainly don't think the bubble's bursting. We think it's still blowing up. And really a podcasting perspective, this has been a slow growth that suddenly had this burst during the pandemic. I mean, if you look at the history of podcasting, the first podcasts were back in 2005, to be honest with you, just audio files, talking, conversations, etc. But it wasn't until the pandemic came along, that these things just really took off. And why is it? It's because they're so portable, right? I can listen to a podcast if I'm driving my kids to soccer practice, or if I'm working out, or if I'm going through my to-do list. I can have it in the background. And I don't have to look at a screen. Nothing wrong with video, video is the direction we all need to be looking at. But we've also been staring at screens for so long, over the last couple years that just to be able to separate, but still be able to be informed, or entertained or whatever through a podcast is what we want to do. So, the current stats show that 90% of Americans know about podcasts. The average podcast listener listens to seven, are subscribed to seven shows. And the associations should be a part of that. It's certainly growing. Now, to your point, is it for every association? No, you have to look at your key listeners, let's face it. Your key listeners to an association podcast is your members. We would love to say that a podcast can go beyond your membership, to all these industry professionals who want to listen to it. Again, going back to expectations. We hope that happens. And we think, residually you're going to get some additional listeners and depending on how you're promoting it, but it's your members who are your low-hanging fruit, they're going to listen. So, if you have a membership of a hundred, maybe it's not for you, or maybe it is, maybe it goes back to that qualified listener. A hundred, you know, ear, nose, and throat doctors learning about some new procedure that's going on is good listeners, as opposed to 10,000 people who might just run across it and get nothing out of it. So, the podcast bubble isn't bursting, it certainly is growing a lot right now, especially with smart speakers, just the ability for me to yell at my Alexa to play my favorite podcast is pretty enticing.
- Yeah. And I've seen, and maybe you do this as well, or have seen this where the podcast is recorded with video, but the audio track is used as the podcast, video clips are used to promote maybe the podcast or put on a different channel like YouTube. And so it's not necessarily one thing or the other, I guess.
- [Colby] Agreed.
- What do you think, Frank?
- Yes. And we do both and we actually recorded one today where you had a young professional interview the president of the association. So, we're talking about ways to incorporate young professionals. That's a great way. We have some as a panel interview, or just topics about young professionals of how to engage them like we're having today. So the topics of strategy, the host, the guests. You can incorporate them all around.
- I love that. The idea of having a young professional do an interview like that's so great because that's lifting somebody up and putting them on the same plane, right? And I also love the idea that young professionals might have different questions than other people. So, even just doing some initiative where you're asking young professionals, do it like an ask me anything kind of thing where young professionals are the ones providing the questions. One of the things we've done in variety of formats is ask people in advance to submit questions with video, and then play those videos during a webinar or during a conversation. Because then it brings people in, but it's not live. So, you don't have to worry about the switching. And everything's kind of in the can and it can be planned. But I love that idea of saying, "Hey, you're worthy of being in the conversation at this level." Allison says being that she is a young professional and feels that there are many out there with similar mindset. I enjoy personally when my boss asks me to do something like this or take on a leadership role. I think that's bright. It's like I recognize you and who you are and the work you're doing. And I want to give you opportunities. I do that. At our organization, I get asked to speak a fair amount at different conferences and events and to different organizations. And as much as I can, I will say to different people on our team who have never done that before, "Hey, I can't make this one. Can you do that?" And it helps people I think get recognition in a certain way, but also increase their skills and stretch, and all of that. And not every organization has that happening.
- I think, Michael, that organizations could be very surprised at who they have on their team. I think the biggest struggle people, association partners of ours have is when we say, "Well, who's your host?" "Well, geez. I don't know who's going to host our podcast." But they can go ask folks. And the young professional who just started the association a year ago, who's not even in the marketing or communications department, "Oh, she does a side podcast for her favorite college sports team. And she's very versed in podcasting." And so if you start kind of asking around and giving the opportunity, I think a lot of us would be surprised who raises their hand and says, "I'll get in front of the microphone, I'll get in front of the camera. And I'll do this." And then the young professionals, as you said earlier, sees themselves on their screen, hears themselves on a podcast or whatever. It's very beneficial. So, don't be afraid to look around you because you could be very surprised at the person who's willing to step in to take on the role.
- Yeah. That's a great point. And I'm smiling because you know what our clients are doing a lot at Gather Voices is they're embedding video questions into existing workflows, like registrations, member renewals, other things like that with the idea that it's not just we're gonna get videos we can use, but it's a kind of discovery platform. Like, "Who are these superstars out there that we don't know if they're out there." And the more we can ask people to share, the more we're going to find that, wow, this is a great story to tell, or this is a person that we want to go back to, or that we want to include on a panel or that we want to do something with. And if you're not asking people all the time to contribute, you don't have any idea who those people are. So, I think that's a really good point. I mean, Frank, have you seen that where there's just like the hidden superstar inside the organization?
- There's a lot of stars in the making. You gotta give them the opportunity. And they feel very valued when they have that opportunity where they become lifers because of that. And provided a opportunity to maybe have a segment in the e-newsletter about a spotlight on the younger profession or being a guest on a podcast, or even having a video on social media. They're going to share that with their network and that can lead to possible new members too. So, they're being excited about being showcased. So, let them show that off and see what comes from them.
- Excellent. Well, we are quickly running out of time. I want to take this opportunity to make sure if you're here for the CAE credit, if that's something that you want, I want you to tell us that. So, I'm just going to launch a quick poll here and we will track that for you. And you can let us know if you're here for that. Frank and Colby, are there any last points that you want to make? Anything we didn't cover? And I think one just good closing question is if you're an organization and you're like, "We need younger members," and you're not sure where to start. What are the things you'd advise?
- Yeah. I would like two things that I want to point out. I'll be very quick about it. A, email's still king, right? Let not mess that up. Whether you're a seasoned professional, a young professional, a Gen Z email is still it. It's what people want to communicate with. It's where there's a trust factor. Don't be afraid of email. Second, I think the idea of a young professional is somewhat being redefined right now. When we look at this great reshuffle, great resignation, whatever you're going to call it. Your industry is being introduced to new folks who have never been in it. And whether they're 22 or they're 45, they're still, we like to call them an emerging professional. Don't forget about those folks because in a way you're going to have to market and communicate to them. Like everything we're talking about from a young professional standpoint is still pertinent with the emerging professional. So, don't forget about them because there's a new segment of a membership that you can be pulling in who want the same things, the networking, the professional development, the industry knowledge that these young professionals have as well.
- Yeah. That's a really great point. How about you, Frank?
- I could not agree more with what Colby is saying. You have to provide that scenario where it's a welcome environment for these emerging or young professionals where they have that mentorship, where they have people that can help them advance in their careers. So, whether it be networking, webinars, in-person training. As much exposure as can get to meeting people within this space that can help them grow, do it.
- Excellent. Well, your contact information's here on the screen. I'm sure, if anybody wants to reach out to you, all your information is here. And I want to just thank you both for spending time with me today. I think it's a really important conversation and there's not obviously one simple answer for everyone. And part of it is getting a bit out of our comfort zones and doing something and taking that experimental approach, and being thoughtful about it. And sometimes we need help and I think that's why people need software like we have, and they need consulting like you have, and they need to be able to get help from each other, from peers in the chat like this and at the conferences that we go to where people can really interact. And so, thank you so much for being here today. And I hope that I'll be able to have you back.
- [Frank] Absolutely. Thanks for having us.
- Thanks for having us.
- All right. Everyone, thank you all for participating. Really great chat today. And look out for the recording of this coming soon and have a great rest of your day. Bye, everyone.
