With 41% or membership organisations now having an online community (MemberWise Digital Excellency Report 2021/2022) it is increasingly important to have an online presence. Social media is a great way of increasing your online presence and engaging with existing and potential members.

Keeping on top of your association’s social media can often seem like a daunting task but with a bit of planning and creativity you can maximise your social media presence and keep your followers engaged. Here are some tips to help you achieve this:

Regular posting

Posting regularly keeps your followers engaged and ensures that you are regularly providing them with new content. Having a content calendar can make this a much easier and considered process; this can be a simple as using an excel spreadsheet or a social media planning programme. Planning your content in advance gives you an overview of your social media presence and ensures that you have content lined up for when things get busy! There are some great tools such as Buffer and Meta Business Suite which allow you to pre-schedule content and monitor its performance.

Provide value

Posting regularly can become a bit of chore and it’s often easy to fall into the habit of producing content that is similar or lacks real value. When posting content, it is important to ensure that is provides value; be it a useful service that you provide, an interesting news article, a short Q&A… Providing value is what keeps your followers engaged and brings in potential new followers.

Share content

Many of you members will have joined your association to share their interests with others and to grow their networks; social media can help you in delivering this to your members. Sharing content on social media from other organisations and individuals is a great way to supplement this and provides you with ready-made content that is valuable and relevant. One useful trick is to set up post notifications for profiles that provide relevant content so you know when they’ve posted something new that you can share without having to spend hours trawling through your feed!

Monitor your channels

There are various tools to help you track the performance of your social media and most social media platforms provide you with insights. It’s important to regularly check this to gauge what is performing well and what isn’t. There isn’t one single solution to make your content work, however tracking your performance gives you an idea of what type of content your followers engage with and how they engage with it. Use these insights to guide when planning and sharing content.

Need some inspiration? Here are some associations that post great content:

Dot-The-Eye is an Association Management Company (AMC), that has a proven track record in successfully supporting small to medium sized associations, societies and institutions in their core business whilst also giving them the opportunity to diversify by managing services that may be unique to their organisations. For more information contact [email protected]

Jorge Da Silva
Jorge Da SilvaDigital Marketing and Communications Lead