Does your organization have a whammy bar?

"Can it have a whammy bar?", The Harmonix (Guitar Hero) guys asked.
"Why, What would a whammy bar do?" the Huangs (investors) responded.
"We don't know yet, but it has to have a whammy bar", the Harmonix guys responded. "Because whammy bars are cool."

Does your organization have a whammy bar?

Guitar players get this allusion right away. For the non-musician, a "whammy bar" or tremolo arm, is the lever on a guitar bridge that allows the player to raise or lower the instrument pitch by pulling or pushing the bar while the notes are still fretted on the neck of the guitar. Jimi Hendrix is famous for his dive bomb and sky-high whammy bar use. And yes, whammy bars are cool.

What's cool about your organization?

I'll confess that I don't know what an organizational whammy bar looks like. It might be something Web 2.0 -- a Facebook page, a velvet rope social network, #yourconference @Twitter. It could also be a tool, a jobs board, photo sharing, geo-mapping, or a wiki. Whammy bars don't have to be digital. It could be something really cool that you do at your annual meeting that attendees talk about afterwards.

Whammy bars are about leverage and the fun you get from applying, expressing yourself, and being surprised and delighted with the result. What's your organizational whammy bar? I'd like to hear about your success stories.

Should you hire an SEO consultant?

Read the Google SEO Starter Guide. If you get tired or confused, then you need to hire someone. If it makes sense, but you are thinking it will be a lot of work that you don't have time for, then hire someone. If you think you can do it yourself, then go for it! Either way this is a must read.

Free, Fast, and Hot: Measuring Your Web and Social Media Footprint

Here is a list of free and paid tools from Dan Thornton for tracking Digital Marketing, with a particular focus on Social Media Marketing. Most of the standards are here. Of course, I'm a big fan of Google Analytics. Google insights for search is great as well. Try typing in keywords relevant to your association's core business.

A new one for me from Dan's page is Addict-o-matic. Tremedously fun. Enter your association name or acronym and see what pops up. How Sociable even gives you a brand metric. Free, fast and hot.

Email is Dead: Update

Doing some ego-surfing with the idea that my earlier post on "Note to Association Marketers-- Email is Dead" was perhaps the first reference to the end of email as a marketing channel. No such luck. A quick google search shows references to the death of email going back before 2002. OK. I'm not in the vanguard. A post in Social Media Today 9/17/08 The End of Email tells it better than I can--with reference to statistics. Social networks and trusted media are where it's at. If you are reading this for the first time from me, you are behind the curve.

3/16/09--Nielson reports that social media is now more popular than e-mail.

Note to Association Marketers—E-mail is Dead

Did you know people in their 20’s think e-mail is “old?"

This line from Stephanie Vance’s article Network Your Way to Advocacy Success—Online! Published in the November/December issue of The Association Forum of Chicagoland’s magazine Forum got me thinking.


Outside of work, 99.9% of the email that I get is spam. Granted, I have a couple of websites and domains so my spam bucket is fills daily with hundreds of unsolicited messages. The personal e-mails that were so much a part of my life have dwindled. New, richer communications channels have taken their place.

The messages that reach me, the conversations that I’m interested in, come largely through channels other than e-mail. These channels include social networks, message boards, blog comments, and listservs that I’ve chosen to subscribe to. This is my trusted communication network. I can grow it or reduce it.

Association marketers should pay attention. Marketing plans based on blast e-mails probably aren’t reaching as many customers as you think. There is still a place for traditional marketing activities, but if your association is still primarily cranking out postcards, flyers, and bulk e-mail – well, you are missing the party. And you are leaving money on the table. Associations are uniquely positioned to develop trusted channels and to leverage those channels for revenue through marketing in context and through community. More later.