Facebook has announced a new update and is starting to roll out features to help users and businesses better connect with their followers. Here’s why it’s great for the membership sector.

For many membership organisations and their members, these updates unlock new avenues of connecting and sharing information with people who use Facebook more readily than other available platforms.

Messenger Rooms

Messenger Rooms enable your organisation to set up and host gatherings with members or people who have an interest in your offering without even needing a Facebook account. Rooms can be created quickly and easily from Facebook or Messenger and are a great way to host events, discussions and focus groups to enable members to share knoweldge, expertise and experiences.

These events and gatherings can be promoted on the Facebook News Feed, Groups and Events and are an informal addition to these already popular features. At no additional cost to your organisation, this feature will allow for targeted, yet casual gatherings online that could provide incredible insight into the behaviours and opinions of members and add value by placing your association at the heart of discussion.

It will also empower your members to feel included and involved in key discussions surrounding your industry and even your membership offering. With Facebook planning to integrate Instagram and WhatsApp into the mix, organisations will have multiple channels through which to invite and engage their followers.

For even greater interactivity and fun, participants who join using the Messenger app will be able to add backgrounds, AI effects and other accessories to inject creativity.

Facebook Live

From text to images and video to live streaming, content has had a particular lifespan around engagement. Brands continue to look to engage audiences faster and more effectively. Plenty of brands are starting to use Facebook Live for business, and for membership organisations, brand recognition and affirmation is paramount, particularly at the moment.  It solidifies credibility and necessity of services, and the more interactive organisations can be across social channels in promoting these, the further the reach of your content.

Facebook Live for membership organisations present a unique opportunity with its personal approach to content. The raw authenticity and immediacy of distribution may seem overhwhelming for anyone starting out unedited and unpolished video content is expected and enjoyed by its audience, saving time and resources on creating costly polished video content and overcoming social distancing hurdles to doing so.

Facebook is further developing its Live feature to better facilitate remote classes, seminars and gatherings. First on the agenda is the reintroduction of Live With, which will allow a Live host to invite another participanrt to join them in a session, a feature great for membership organisations looking to host seminars, training or share interviews with their following.

For businesses and hosts looking to monetise content, Facebook is planning to enable business pages to charge for access to Facebook Live events.

For non-profits, charities and fundraisers, Facebook have added the donate button to live videos, enabling real time support and coverage.

Your members

It is worth considering how your members could benefit from these updates, particularly as businesses start to plan for reopening. Familiarising yourself with the possibilities and opportunities presented by these updates could provide a great basis for training and upskilling your members, further demonstrating how reactive and current your association is in understanding the latest and greatest available on social media platforms.

Helping your members to identify ways in which these new features could boost their following and improve their outreach to their customers/clients will place your membership organisation in the suportive position it needs to be.

These updates will be available to all users over the coming weeks, with additional features being added all the time.  It is worth keeping a look out for any features that could elevate your member engagement and reinvorgate how you are connecting and conversing with members online and being confident enough to implement them.

How we conduct ourselves in the membership sector during this unsettled and unprecedented period will ultimately shape our future as normality will eventually be restored. It’s a great opportunity to explore the many ways your membership offering can adapt to new working arrangements and look to upskill and provide even stronger communication lines to reaffirm the importance of your membership offering during the pandemic and beyond.

CJ Association Management is an established, specialist association management company providing support services tailored for the membership sector.

Emma Burley
Emma BurleyMarketing Director, CJ Association Management