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Secrets to Membership Website Success

Posted on Sep 24, 2013 by Karen KuahMar 18, 2020

Woman with a finger to her mouthIs your membership website a ghost town? If so, here are 4 tips that led to website success for the Mount Pleasant Business Association (MPBA)!

Focus All of Your Website Launch Communications on How Your Members Will Benefit

Many website launch announcements focus on how the new website will benefit the organization. However, by connecting the launch to your members’ desires you will create much more buy in and excitement.

The MPBA achieved this by highlighting how the directory would help their businesses generate more business because now they had complete control over their profile. They talked about how the new profile would allow them to highlight all their products and services and not just be a traditional directory listing. They also addressed how using the MFM plugin fixed a number of past member frustrations, like not being able to pay online for events or not being able to sign up for membership immediately.

Recognize Members That are Actively Using the Website

Everyone loves to get more positive press for their business. This is especially true when it’s free! Utilize your social media, and newsletters to promote members who are active on your new website.

To get early adopters to join fast, the MPBA individually recognized the first members who had completed their profiles in their newsletters. This let members see the potential of their online presence with MPBA. It also brought out the competitive side of members who didn’t want to be shown up online.

Give Prime Time to the New Website at Your Meetings

Make time at your meetings to talk about your new website and guide your members through making their profiles. This will help members who are not computer savvy or have little time to create a profile, feel comfortable.

The MPBA made sure to talk to their members about the new website and how it would benefit them at the next two meetings after launching. They even created a sample profile and illustrated how having a completed profile helps members to come up more often in search.

If you have an internet connection and a volunteer you can set up a station to build member profiles right at the meeting. Utilize the member’s website to help you with pictures, logos and text.

Provide Additional Training and Resources for Your Members

Most members aren’t tech savvy. So, make sure you give them plenty of guidance on how they can use and benefit from using your website, along with the online tools from MembershipWorks.

The MPBA did this by actually creating a page dedicated to helping new MPBA members get the most out of their membership. It highlights building directory profiles as well as their events and photo gallery. It links to the corresponding website pages to make it easy for their new members to find all of the resources.

They also created their own guide to How to Edit Your Profile and How to Create a Deal to help their members through each step of creating their profile and online deal. They did this with both written directions as well as several videos that illustrate exactly how their members can get the most from their profile.

A Special thank you to Bruce Johnson, website committee chair at MPBA, for sharing these great website ideas and MPBA’s experience.

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About Karen Kuah

Karen Kuah has been involved with nonprofits for over a decade. She has served in a variety of capacities including executive director, employee, committee member and volunteer. Currently, she is serving as a board member for a local nonprofit. Karen utilizes her experiences working and volunteering with membership organizations in designing MembershipWorks features and services. She understands the unique challenges that face small to mid sized organizations and how the right technology can be a large part of the solution.View all posts by Karen Kuah

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