No matter the size of your chamber, there never seems to be enough time in the day to get everything done. As a result, we tend to prioritize the most urgent tasks to be done first. This constant triage of tasks inevitably leads to certain tasks falling lower and lower on the proverbial to-do list. We may not notice the cost of procrastinating some tasks until it is too late. One of these tasks that can easily fall by the wayside is new member onboarding. This article will explain the benefits of creating an automation series to onboard new members.
Traditionally, many chambers of commerce will assign a chamber ambassador to help orient a new member on everything the chamber has to offer. I know you probably have fantastic ambassadors. Ambassadors tend to be those who are hyper-involved and want to be a part of everything the chamber is doing. This is great. These ambassadors also have businesses and families to run, and life to live. Your ambassadors are also human and subject to human error. Inevitably something will slip through the cracks, not on purpose, but missed nonetheless.
Email Onboarding
By creating an automated email onboarding campaign, you can drip feed relevant information to new members while also making sure all of the basics are covered. By setting up the expectation with your new members to be on the lookout for emails, maybe on a weekly basis to help them get the most out of their membership, then you have their attention.
As new members join your chamber, it is always a good practice to learn more about the reason(s) they decided to join and what their expectations are. Are they a transactional member or a transformational member? Should they be connected with your young professionals group or a senior service alliance? By gaining this knowledge, you can create an experience for them where you are connecting them with appropriate events, committees, and people. This information will also help you decide what information you send them in your onboarding email series.
Relevant Communication
Sara Ray from the Douglas County Chamber was a guest on the podcast a couple months ago and she dove in deep about creating relevant and personalized communication. If you are at all interested in this topic, I would highly recommend you going back to listen to that episode.
As much as you may disagree, not every member needs to get an email about your next luncheon or mixer. You should segment your email audience to only deliver the most relevant information to each recipient. Mass email campaigns run the risk of finding their way into junk or spam folders if there is not enough engagement by the recipients.
There are many software options out there for sending automated emails. If you are like many other chambers, then you are likely using Constant Contact, or possibly MailChimp. These have been the most common options that I have seen. Setting up an automated email onboarding series will require some dedicated attention to get started, but that brainpower and attention should only need to focus on this task one time versus creating a custom response every time a new member has a question. Your goal should be to put yourself in the new member’s shoes and provide answers to the questions that they have before they ever ask the question. I had once heard a quote that said something like “if you can define the problem better than your customer, then they will assume you have the answer”. Defining your member’s problems or needs before they ask will also build credibility that your chamber understands what their expectations are.
Learn to Automate for ROI
I am not the expert in creating email automation campaigns, but Sara Ray and the Douglas County Chamber have a great template. Google will also provide some great tips and resources to get you started. There are also online trainings available across the web that can help to shortcut your learning curve drastically.
“Associations with onboarding, orientation, or welcoming plans boost their new member renewal rates. Local/State associations show the biggest difference in new member renewal rates, jumping from 75% to 82% after similar program implementation.”
2017 New Member Engagement Study by Dynamic Benchmarking & Kaiser Insights LLC
Depending on the size of your chamber, a 7% increase in your membership renewal rate could be a substantial amount of revenue, not only from the increase in membership dues but also the non-dues value that comes from retaining these members for a longer period of time.
We now live in a time where AI learns our habits. Predictive text assists our typing by showing us the word or phrase that we were going to type letter by letter with a simple keystroke or tap on our screen. We have a curated viewing experience on platforms like Netflix. Our attention spans no longer allow for the extra clutter. No matter what platform you decide to use, it is important to your relevance to only send emails to your members that they will care about. This will result in building a more meaningful relationship with each of your members while freeing up some of your bandwidth.
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Jordan Clemons. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
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Brandon Burton 0:00 This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Voiceover Talent 0:14 And now your host. He has seen many great opportunities come out of LinkedIn connections is my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:22 Hello Chamber Champions. Welcome to the Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, and it’s my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
Our title sponsor is Harmon brothers membership sales solutions. Let’s hear Our title sponsor is Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions. Let’s hear from Tony Felker, President and CEO of the Frisco Chamber to learn how the Holman Brothers have provided value for him.
Tony Felker 0:45 One of the key benefits that we’ve realized from Holman Brothers it’s actually happened many years after we started using them. We just completed our new strategic plan and understanding those subtle differences between transactional benefits and transformational benefits. The companies that knew what they expect has been a key part in our strategic plan. And we really want to thank Holman Brothers for that.
Brandon Burton 1:06 You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting holmanbros.com.
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Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Jordan Clemons Jordan is a senior investor Development Manager at Greater Louisville Inc, the Metro Chamber of Commerce in Louisville, Kentucky. His role at GLI is to work with their 1700 Plus investors to facilitate connections and foster goodwill among the Louisville business community. In his role, LinkedIn plays a paramount role in developing new relationships and staying top of mind in the local community using LinkedIn Jordan as his primary prospecting tool. Jordan has exceeded his sales goals for 2021 and is on track to do even better for 2022. Jordan, I’m excited to have you with me here on chamber tap podcast. I’d love for you to take a moment to say hello to all Chamber Champions. and share something interesting about yourself so we can all get to know you a little better. Yeah. Hey,
Jordan Clemons 2:35 Brandon, thank you so much for having me. And it will come as no surprise to anyone listening after hearing that bio that Brandon not and I met on LinkedIn. So a testament to the platform right there. I’m really excited to get into this topic. I’ve been giving a lot of talks presentations I’ve spoken at the last two ACCE sales conferences in LinkedIn has been a topic that people ask about time and time again. So there’s a need for it out there and I’m here to try to deliver that knee but As Brandon mentioned, Jordan, I work at the Louisville Chamber of Commerce here greater Louisville, Inc. Interesting fact about me, I guess. I’ve got twin two year olds, twin two and a half year old boy and a girl. I’m looking at them right now on my desktop wallpaper. So when I think of interesting facts, that’s that’s my other job in life is being a dad to them, and they keep me extremely busy.
Brandon Burton 3:37 That will keep you running. I’ve myself, I’ve got four kids, but my youngest two were 14 months apart. And so like as one was walking, the other was crawling and was just constantly chasing one, you know, different directions, but yeah, keeps you in shape. That’s right. Yeah, that’s for sure. Well, tell us a little bit about GLA kind of size staff budget, just to give everyone kind of perspective. I mean, we know Louisville and being a Metro Chamber, but just kind of give us some perspective for our discussion.
Jordan Clemons 4:08 Yeah, absolutely. So Louisville is blessed to have a few chambers here. We’re sort of big, small town as far as Jefferson County goes. So we have a few neighborhood chambers here in town. But when you were thinking about goI critical voices, were the Metro Chamber of Commerce, so we encompass 10 counties in Kentucky, and five in southern Indiana. So if you’re looking at the map, and you put Jefferson County in the middle, it’s a pretty big circle around all of that. So that’s our MSA. That is the region that we’re working to grow. So we’re agnostic as far as Kentucky, Indiana County, we’re really just looking to bring economic growth to the region as a whole. So that’s sort of our thing growing the regional economy. at GE ally we have it hovers around 1700 to 1800 investors more on the on the top side and our staff is around 30. We do work in economic development, talent, workforce policy and advocacy, business development for our investors, which is the word the part that I work in the traditional chamber side. Budget, I think it’s 5 million plus somewhere around there. So as far as the categories of ACCE we compete and the top category for the awards and things like that, did that answer all your questions? Brandon, did I miss anything? Yeah,
Brandon Burton 5:29 no, that’s, that’s good. Sometimes people will, you know, have some added information in there. But yeah, I think you covered it all. So that’s it. It’s interesting with more of that regional focus, and to not be agnostic, like you said to Kentucky, but even focusing on some of those bordering counties in Indiana, and looking for the overall growth of the region, I think is great. It’s great approach.
Jordan Clemons 5:52 Yes, absolutely. I mean, what’s good for southern Indiana is good for us, too. We’ve really seen a big boom, over there. The last few years, Google has seen a huge boom as well. So it sort of bleeds across the river. And we’re more than happy to see development over there.
Brandon Burton 6:05 Right. So as Jordan mentioned, our topic we’re going to focus on LinkedIn, specifically LinkedIn for growing your membership at your chamber. And we’ll get into this discussion as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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One reason chambers are so overwhelmed is because they are stretched thin trying to be everything to everyone. Setting up an automated email series to help with new member onboarding is a great way to passively build your relationship with members. These emails will strategically drip the most important information for members, freeing up your chamber staff to focus on day-to-day operations without neglecting your relationships.
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Topic-LinkedIn for Membership
All right, Jordan, we’re back. So you came recommended to me it’s kind of a roundabout way that we we ended up connecting and like you said LinkedIn was our first interaction with each other which is very fitting for this topic. But the idea of using LinkedIn for membership, I think is an interesting thing. I don’t know that a lot of chambers have really dived in to exploring LinkedIn on this one. level, they might connect with some of their members. But I’m excited to learn some of these strategies that you’ve employed and what’s working for you. And let’s just jump in there and tell us kind of how you came around to using LinkedIn as a tool, and how things have evolved for you.
Jordan Clemons 10:18 Sure, yeah, I’m gonna get up on the soapbox. And if you need to knock down, please do it. But I spend a lot of time up here. And I’m very comfortable here. And I think that there’s a lot to say. So I’ll try to be as brief as I can. It was, so I wasn’t always working at Goi. I was previously a financial advisor before this. And when I started as a financial advisor, I had no experience in sales or networking, or talking to people over coffee, all of the things that are crucially important to sales and crucially important to the job I do now. So I was at a conference, and I heard this guy speak, his name is Kevin Canibal. And he’s this sales coach, the old school scale sales coach, and he gave this presentation on how to use LinkedIn, for financial advisors, financial advisors, traditionally door knocked people and cold call, you know, it’s a numbers game. That’s exactly what they did. And that’s the advice that I got when I started was go knock on some doors. So I did it for done. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I had to tell myself, I didn’t just totally ignore the advice. But I knew there was a better way to get people to know like, and trust you. So when I saw this talk from Kevin, this light bulb clicked, I took his course, it was sort of like an intro to LinkedIn, and just a way to look at it. But it was geared specifically for financial advisors. So I used his approach for years and years in that in that role, a lot less freedom, compliance wise, and everything like that. But when I came over here to goI three years ago, I had in place the perfect network, the perfect platform, the perfect strategy, to supercharge my efforts here and make myself known and seen and seen as a thought leader in the business community using this platform that I had gotten really familiar with, over the last few years. So now or I’ve gotten three years into this, it’s it’s, it’s exploded, it is.
It is my basically source 100% of my business, through LinkedIn, by just employing a very simple strategy every single day. And I can sort of go into that I can go into the philosophy of why it’s such an important place to be for someone in the chamber world. Let me just try to start there. Yeah, yeah, because I talk about the strategy sometimes. And I think it’s better to talk about the why, versus the how first, because if you don’t really understand what makes LinkedIn different from other social media platforms, none of which I’m a huge fan of, then it’s not really gonna stick. So LinkedIn is purely for business networking, you can caveat that with, it’s great to shout out your promotions on there. It’s great to humble brag about your community volunteer experience, all that stuff’s great. But the whole point of LinkedIn is to connect business professionals, and to advance your career. And both of those things are symbiotic because the more connections you have, and the more robust your network is, the more resources you have at your disposal, when you’re trying to climb the ladder, or make a lateral move, or whatever that is. So sometimes people get lost in understanding exactly what the platform is there for. It’s your online resume. It’s your online Rolodex, if that’s even a word that people use anymore. I have it’s my outsource brain. For business. I’ve got like 10,000 Plus connections, most of them are here in the market. And when I’m trying to recall how I know someone where they work at what we’ve talked about, it’s all there. It’s not in our it’s not in my CRM I use for sales at work, because that’s all manual data inputting. It lives on LinkedIn. And guess what, whenever you talk to people and they end up moving jobs, LinkedIn knows that if they update their profile, you don’t have to put that information in your you’re notified of it, even if you have that notification turned on. So for someone whose job is to be in the business community, to know what’s happening in the business community, to talk to people in the business community, to stay engaged with them and to be seen and known as a thought leader in the business community. It’s it’s like the perfect perfect platform. And it’s it’s it’s not hard to use, that’s the other. That’s the other piece that I think people get tripped up on, they might understand exactly what I’ve just said. And, you know, that might be copacetic with their way of thinking, but then they’re like, Okay, that sounds great. But I’ve got no experience using the platform at all. It’s, it feels weird and awkward and indifferent to me, but it’s really not it, you just got to kind of find your voice. And I did that over a number of years. And I hope people do that all the time these days.
Brandon Burton 15:29 Yeah. And I think that’s important to cover that, that philosophy and kind of the thinking behind it. And one of the things you mentioned is showing that you’re a thought leader in the space or in your community, what are in maybe I’m getting into more of the steps and strategy of how you do that, of how you go about using LinkedIn. But I want to make sure we touch on that part about becoming a thought leader in showing that you’re a thought leader. So as we go through strategy, let’s make sure that we cover that as well.
Jordan Clemons 16:01 Yeah, I mean, you can find a ton of people on LinkedIn that are doing this already, to, to great success, you know, you think of great sales, mentors, and people that have really carved out their niche. And the thing that they’re really good at, you can find them on LinkedIn and look at this content that they’re putting out in the post that they’re putting out, they’ve established themselves at this thought leader about whatever it is that they do. And when you work in the chamber world, your job is so dynamic, and you talk to so many people and do so many interesting things. There’s just an abundance of content that you can create. And it’s really, you know, creating content seems like oh, I don’t know how to use Canva. That’s not for me. No, it’s just writing about what you do and pulling out the amazing camera that’s in your pocket and your smartphone, snapping some pictures while you’re out. And then tagging people and sharing them. It’s it’s not super hard.
Brandon Burton 16:54 Yeah. That’s great. So let’s let’s dive into some of the strategy then about how to you. So you, I think you’ve established you need to kind of create a base show that you’re a thought leader, and what’s next, how do you go about making those connections? How do you decide who to reach out to? And how do you do it in a way that doesn’t seem salesy, you’re like you’re, you’re coming at him to strictly for a membership and come join GLA?
Jordan Clemons 17:21 Yeah, absolutely. So I’m glad that you position that last part, because that’s exactly the way that this strategy works. And, and I, every conversation that I have, is, is a warm conversation, there are no cold conversations like zip zero, none, I do zero cold calling, zero cold outreach to anyone, obviously, that’s like, that’s a crucial part of your, that should be a crucial part of your sales strategy. If you’re newer to LinkedIn or newer in your sales role, or not to say that it doesn’t have a place, but this is where it can get is what I mean by that. So I’m gonna, I’ll tell you the steps, and they’re just gonna sound super easy. I’ll go into each of them. Yeah. But it’s almost like they’re so easy. They’re the people who really don’t understand how to take them or they’re disarming. So this is what I do every day, I post once per day. preferably in the morning, I try to get it in at like 755 or so I found that if I post around eight o’clock, preferably right before eight o’clock, the post, my posts do the best. It’s like it’s 1026 on a Friday. And that’s not to say you can’t post them. But if you can try to get your posts out early in the morning, to post once per day. It some people are like, Oh, that sounds easy. And then some people think that’s a ton to do. It’s five posts a week, you can do it, I promise, verbally in the morning. Number two is reach out to those people who are interacting with your content. So every day I post something, and then my next step is to look at what I posted yesterday, and to see who was liking this post who was commenting on this post. And then I go through, and I look at all of these people, a lot of them are first degree connections, which means that we’re already connected, and we’ve already had a conversation. But some of them are second degree connections. So the second degree connections, that means they’re connected to someone in your network, who are interacting with your posts saw it because someone in your network reacted to it. You know how this works. We should all pretty familiar with this by now, as far as social media goes. But those are people that just saw your face and just saw your name and liked something that you’ve posted, you know enough to press the little button, either clap at it or thumbs up it or whatever you may have. So I always reach out to those people and request to connect. That’s the second step. So you’re posting content every day. You know, positioning yourself as a thought leader. So writing a business showing people the cool stuff you’re up to, I could talk strategy. And I’m like, which posts do really well for days and days and days. But the point is that you just do it. You do it every day, no matter what, okay, consistency is key. And then you harvest your engagement, and you look at who’s actually engaging with the stuff and it will naturally grow your network, by way of reaching out to these second degree connections, and connecting with them. You know, it’s, it’s totally fine. It’s not a cold connection, they saw something of yours, they’re familiar with you, they might have forgotten that they liked your post, who I mean, you can’t control that. But what you can control is reaching out to say, Hey, thanks for liking my post about so and so would you like to connect, that’s I literally write that out,
Brandon Burton 20:46 I was gonna ask if you include a message when you reach out, David.
Jordan Clemons 20:50 Exactly. That’s, that’s him. That’s him. That’s a little more granular, the details, but that’s exactly what you do. There’s a couple of reasons. Number one, most people don’t do that. So you’re going to stand out. And then number two, when you start doing this a lot, you’re going to be getting 2030 connections a day, sometimes I’m telling you, it’s it really, really ramps up. And when you connect with them, they fall in your little messages, area of your LinkedIn. And you there’s no way you’re going to be able to remember how you connected with this person, what caused this. But if you include that message, and say thanks for commenting on my post about such and such, then you’ll be like, Oh, that’s what it was. And then you can keep the conversation going from there. Literally Ctrl C, go to the next one, Ctrl V, enter, I’ve got this down to the minimal amount of time that it takes to complete this process, because it’s getting so busy. That’s the second step. So you’re gonna reach out and connect with people that engage with your posts, second degree connections, specifically to grow your network, but when you’re starting this out, when you’re starting this strategy out new, you’re not going to get a ton of second degree connections, you know, doing this at least, that’s my, that’s my thought. But look at all those first degree connections to, you know, like anyone connected to you on LinkedIn, if they’re not a member of your chamber, is a potential prospect. So even if they’re a first degree connection, is it someone that you would like to start a conversation with, if it is, that’s, that’s the prime time to do it, it’s just like, going into a coffee shop, seeing somebody that you know, oh, it would be great to pick back up on a conversation with them, but I really don’t have a reason to call them. And that might make you feel uncomfortable, say you just like saw them in a coffee shop waved at them and said, Hey, how’s the family and we’re on your way. Calling them after that is a lot less intimidating, and will probably lead to more success. If they comment or like something on LinkedIn, that’s the exact same thing. As far as I’m concerned, you know, it’s just the digital version of networking. Right? So well, I’ve
Brandon Burton 23:00 heard that explained is returning every handshake, you know, if they’re engaging with your social media, it’s like they’re putting out their hand to shake your hand. And if you just leave them hanging, you know, they’re not going to engage with you anymore. But if you return that handshake, it continues to build that relationship.
Jordan Clemons 23:15 That is, that is a perfect way to put it, Brandon, I’ve never thought of it that way. But what I do, essentially, I wish I could return every handshake, I wish. My posts get like 10,000 views now they always get like over 100 reactions or so it would literally be a full time job responding to every single person, something I wish I could but all the second degree connections, you better believe they get a connection request saying thank you. And then that leads to the third step. So what have we gone over so far? You post once per day in the morning, not not super hard. You reach out to people who engage with your posts. You know, this is just that the next step, if you just do this again, consistently, it will get you the results. And then number three, you once you connect with these people just start the conversation with them. You know if more conversations equals more sales, so I can’t tell you exactly what to say to folks. But when I talk to people on LinkedIn, if it’s someone I’ve never met before in my entire life, but I found them and connected with them through this process, then they’re going to wind up in my messages inbox. I’m going to see why they what what post it was that got us connected because I put it in that message right so that I can have that to reference. Then you can go to their profile and look what they’re about. Did you go to school with them? You can see common connection requests. There’s so much data on here to help make the sales process go much more smoothly. And think about that compared to looking at a phonebook and dialing a number of a person you’ve never even heard before and you’re on the phone and you have no Data to go off of whatsoever. That’s literally how people used to do sales or knocking on their door. And I mean, you have the benefit of, you know, being face to face there. So it’s a little more of a connection. But on LinkedIn, you can see everything professionally about someone that they want to share. And they have it on there because they want to share it. And you don’t have to think of a perfect response. Right? That second, as if you were on the phone or in person, you can take all the time in the world, I don’t suggest you do. But I’m just, I’m trying to highlight the fact that there’s so much potential here. But if I connect with someone, we just have a conversation I, we talked about what they liked, we or the post or whatever, you know, we talked about, if it’s one if it’s their business, and if I really don’t have anything else to say, I’ll just say like, Hey, this is the first time I’ve heard about insert whatever their business name is, can you tell me more, or whatever. I mean, if you’re a sales professional, you know how to do it, you ask open ended questions, you get people talking. But the point is, you can have conversations with people on this platform that you meet naturally through this way. And then get them to a coffee, and then do your normal thing, the exact treat them exactly as if you met them at a networking event. And, you know, ask them out to coffee. So that’s the whole thing. It’s posting once per day, preferably in the morning, connect with people who engage with you, and then start a conversation. And by doing that, I’m on track to hit my annual sales goal by the end of this month, that will be June. So it’s working out pretty well. It takes some time for this stuff to build up. Don’t get me wrong. But that’s why I believe in the platform so much.
Brandon Burton 26:44 I think there’s a lot to be said about that, as you can call it asynchronous, asynchronous. I’m not saying the word right communication are Yeah, you get that time you get a little bit of a buffer, if you need it to respond in a way that’s going to provide the most value, it’s going to answer their question the best that’s going to align them with the right people, if you’re helping them make other connections and and it’s not that immediate response need to give if you are talking to somebody in person or on the phone where you need to have that back and forth dialogue immediately. So I wanted to circle back on the posts that you do. So posting once a day. Couple things came to mind. Do you ever use any scheduler? And how do you decide when it’s worth tagging another person or business in a post?
Jordan Clemons 27:35 Yeah, so great questions. I don’t use a scheduler, I’ve tried to go down that path a couple of times. But what works best for me is I like when I’m out and about is um, this is so ingrained in my my process every day. Pictures are great for LinkedIn, if you’re at cold places, doing cool things, take a cool picture of it, people love that stuff. I just sort of bank them in my phone. Sometimes I’ll schedule what I want to post that day on the calendar. So I don’t forget, but I don’t put it in something like buffer or anything like that, you totally can. But I think you’re missing out on the ability to post about cutting edge like current things. You know, if you’re subscribed to say the business first publication of your area, they put that stuff out, it’s fresh, it’s like happening that day. And tying off to that and being a person that shares something that’s like, that just happened, there’s a lot of value in that. And not to say you still can’t do that. But you are missing out a little bit of that if you do schedule it. But if it would work better for you to block off time, on a Monday or Friday and like get all of these scheduled so that you know that they’ll go out at the right time. I think that’s a great strategy. And there’s tons of free tools to be able to do that. What was the second part of the question, Brandon, sorry. So
Brandon Burton 28:55 yeah, before. So using a scheduler, I’m wondering if if it’s a Monday afternoon, and you know what you want to post on Tuesday morning, but you’ve got a standing Tuesday morning meeting or something that still work the same as you know, to say, this is what I’m going to post I’m going to post a schedule, so it goes 7:55am and then not have to think about it. When you’re in your you’re standing Tuesday morning meeting.
Jordan Clemons 29:22 Yeah, absolutely. Whatever works best for you, like know yourself as a sales professional. There’s a ton of value in that knowing your strengths, knowing your weaknesses, know how you operate the best sometimes. So I go to the gym at seven in the morning, a lot of days, and it’s over like right before eight so I literally will get done with the workout and go sit on the bench and get on my phone real fast. And post something it’s not ideal. I probably be a little bit more strategic about it. But yeah, if I if I was more adept at using the scheduler, it’s just that Have a matter of habit for me at this point, you know, it’s going to have morning no matter what, for me. But if if if you think that that’s something that would help you achieve step one, because without step one, step two and three don’t happen. Definitely look into that some of them. I’m not sure if you can tag people, though, if you do that, which I think was your second part of
Brandon Burton 30:20 your question, it was yeah, some things are obvious where you tag somebody, but how do you give thought as to whether or not you tag a person or another business on the post? Well, I
Jordan Clemons 30:29 would say automatically default to tagging as many people as you can that’s related to your post, that’s going to increase the visibility of it, they’re gonna get a notification, their network is going to see it. Again, social media has been around for a little bit of time now. So I think we all understand that the more people you tag, the more visibility your post gets, which is what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to get as many people to see this as you can. You know, that’s the that’s the purpose of the post. That’s one of the purposes of the post. Not everyone has LinkedIn, but most people do. Honestly, it’s, it’s it’s kind of crazy that most people do not every business does. But most Well, I wouldn’t say most businesses do but more more than you would think do. So I would default to you know, if you’re taking a picture of a ribbon cutting your app, definitely post the the business or I’m sorry, tag, the business tag, the business owner, tag anyone that would be related to whatever it is that you’re posting, so that it gets as much visibility as it can.
Brandon Burton 31:32 Okay, the next question I have for you is, so I have the the alerts set up on my phone. So if somebody interacts with something with me on LinkedIn, I’m seeing a message or a icon on my phone, but I’ve got a new, new alert. How do you manage your time? Do you block out time specifically for responding to LinkedIn? And, you know, an hour to a day just to block for that? Or do you just respond as it comes? Or? What’s your strategy for responding?
Jordan Clemons 32:03 Yeah, great, great, great question. So if you’re asking my opinion, I would say turn off the notifications, and block time out every morning, the LinkedIn strategy is literally the first thing I do when I fire up my computer, I don’t open my email, I don’t do anything else, the link, LinkedIn comes up, I knock it out, and then it goes down. That’s how that’s how I think is the best way to manage this. I mean, when you’re when you’re starting out, you can, you know, check it a couple times a day depends on how busy you Davis but the beauty of the of the whole system that I just told you is that you you open LinkedIn, first thing you do is you you post your content, you have that it’s done, it’s gonna live there for the next however long. Second thing you do is go to your notifications, and their groups nice neatly is going to be everyone who’s responded to something you posted yesterday, or the day before content can live for a long time, there’s some times it only lives for a day, you know, the feed is is sort of different than other social media platforms, you don’t have like a page where you can well, you can navigate to see everyone’s posts, but you know what I mean? So you can post and then say, I’m done with that part, then you go to the notifications. And you can look at the whole list in chronological order, I literally right click on each one, open in a new tab, and then knock it out that way. So I don’t lose that page. And I’m done with all of those notifications, it’s very methodical. Once you’re done with that, you have harvested all of that engagement 100%. And you put all that out there, you’ve sent out all those connection requests, you put all of it in motion. And then once you do after that step through, you’re gonna go to your messages, and you’re gonna see all of those people that responded positively to your connection request yesterday, or the day before, or the week before, you never know how much someone uses LinkedIn. But you do this methodically, every single day, then whenever it is that they come around to it, you know, they’re either gonna get back to you or they aren’t, it’s not really anything you can do about that. But you just make sure that you come through this every day. So respond to all of your messages. You know, keep that going if someone responds back, or if it’s something that you really want to make sure you don’t let slip through the cracks. You know, if I have, I literally have 1000s of messages, 1000s of conversations, it’s, it’s crazy. So you can keep it open if if the dialog is going, but you don’t have to. So when you first start, when you first start out using this method, it might take 510 minutes, do this, and then like be on with the rest of your day. But if you’re worried about notifications, sidelining you all day long, just turn them off. You don’t need them. Like you’re saying that asynchronous communication. That’s the beautiful part about this is that no one’s expected to get back to you immediately. You’re going to be totally forgiven. If someone’s like, I want to join them. chamber today because we connected Can we do that? They’re not gonna do that, just because you responded to them the next day? Because you’re busy doing the rest of your job. Right. So that would be my answer to that.
Brandon Burton 35:12 Yeah, no, that’s I think that’s a good response. So one thing that I noticed as I engage with people on LinkedIn is the response rate is much better than, say, email or other methods of reaching out there. Do you see the same kind of thing? I see your head nodding?
Jordan Clemons 35:30 Well, um, I don’t know. It’s, I get that. I mean, I should really be saying, yes, absolutely. I guess I’m just trying to think I can’t really put my finger on that. I would just say, Here, cut that maybe cut that a little part of the answer out, because I could definitely a better answer than that. I would say yes, yes, people respond on LinkedIn, a lot more than you think they were. And they will respond to you on LinkedIn, a lot more than you think they will. If you’re genuine. With your outreach, if you don’t try to sell them, the moment they start talking to you. If you’re just easygoing, and work a normal sales process, it’s really not hard. Think about the messages that you’ve received on LinkedIn. In the past. I’m sort of outlier because I use the platform like crazy, but if you don’t, you’re probably like, oh, anyone who’s ever reached out to me is sent me a paragraph about how they want to secure my financial future or something like we’ve all been there, I get it. So you can either look at it one of two ways, you can say, Okay, well, that’s just, that’s a useless part of this platform, because that’s all anyone ever does. Or you can say, well, the bar is set pretty low. Actually, if I just provide someone a message, that’s not as sucky as that, then they’ll probably respond positively, which is what happens. The other part that I would add to that, Brandon is that, as far as responses and communication goes, in the messaging part, specifically, the people that are going to be good prospects for you, at least as far as this whole strategy works out, are going to be the ones that respond to you. And then the people that aren’t, are going to be the ones that don’t connect, and don’t respond. So what you’re left with is the people that are self selecting themselves in to your pipeline. And then the people that are going to be a waste of time, because they don’t use the platform a lot. And they’re just going to be difficult to reach in this way, are just going to let you know that by either not responding to your connection requests, or not responding to your message that went along with that. So you can totally forget about them focus on the people that are engaging with you. And then the pipeline goes down from there. If that makes sense.
Brandon Burton 37:52 It does. And what I like about this strategy is when you’re reaching out and engaging with people that are engaged with your posts, you know, their user of LinkedIn, because they were on there to make that engagement to begin with, then you reach out with that warm interaction, that warm handshake, you know, returning, your response is going to be much higher than just the cold calling and knocking on doors is a traditional membership salesperson. So I love you know, the strategies you’re implementing. I know we can go a whole lot deeper in a lot of different channels of this. But I wanted as we start wrapping up here, I wanted to ask if you have maybe one tip or strategy for Chamber Champions listening that they can implement to help take their organization up to the next level?
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Jordan Clemons 38:39 Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s gonna come no surprise, and I’m just gonna say, use LinkedIn, it’s such an I use the free, I use the free version. I’ve always forget to caveat that because when I give these talks, it inevitably comes up that someone thinks that you premium versions pricing, there’s a lot of bells and whistles with that you can do this with an account that you create today. And there’s I’m not, there’s nothing that’s gonna stop you from doing that. But I’m, I’m not a social media savvy person. All I’ve done is what I’ve told you here today for years and years and years. And here I am talking about it with people all the time. So the juice is worth the squeeze as far as spending a little bit of time every day, getting familiar with the platform, and finding your voice and figuring out how you can comfortably use it. But the best tip is just to do it, put it on your calendar, five minutes every morning. You know, it doesn’t take a lot of time I promise you. But there’s only so many networking events you can go to and the day and the week in the month LinkedIn lives on there and perpetuity people can secret shop you all day long. So if you don’t really put time and effort into just getting that off the ground then you’re missing the boat on a ton of sales. I promise you.
Brandon Burton 39:55 Yeah. I love that. You mentioned that use the free version. And because there is so much power that comes with that. And it reminds me of back in the day, if we can remember back when Facebook was a lot more robust. As far as you know, if you had a Facebook page for your business, you know, all your followers would see all the posts that you put out there because they followed your page. And then now Facebook, of course throttles it, they make you pay to get in front of your audience. So right now, there’s a lot of power in the free version with LinkedIn. Who knows how long that’ll last for before they put on, you know, a different pay barrier or whatever. So for anyone listening, I would say, jump on this now start building that network, because you never know how long a good thing is gonna last?
Jordan Clemons 40:41 Yeah, well, I mean, I have confidence. Microsoft purchased LinkedIn. A few years ago, I can’t remember exactly how much so I have confidence that it’s it’s like the last unpainted social media platform as far as I’m concerned. Right. So half of me is saying, like, shut up about talking about LinkedIn. But the other half is just like, This is so great. I can’t not tell people about it.
Brandon Burton 41:04 That’s right. So Jordan, I like asking everyone, as we look to the future and chambers of commerce, how do you see the future chambers in their purpose going for?
Future of Chambers
Jordan Clemons 41:14 Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I wish I had a correct answer. Or if there was a correct answer, I am 34 will be 35. In about a month here. I’ve been in July for three years, I’ve been involved in the community via networking and sales since 2013. So that’s, that’s my experience, in my view, I would say, chambers of commerce in the future. I don’t, I don’t know, membership based organizations, there are two types of members, there’s transactional members, and there’s transformational members. So transactional members want the value that is equal or greater to the amount of dues that they pay you. And the transformation or members are bought in for the vision and the strategy. And the goal of what it is that your chamber is out here doing, you’re going to have to have a mix of both of those types of members in order to thrive in the future. Obviously, younger businesses, I don’t know that they’re super familiar with a chamber of commerce, I’ve not started a business of my own. But if you’re young and upcoming business, I think of some of the other older organizations that you don’t hear about too much anymore. And I’m not sure who’s out here. Besides, you know, you and me and other young chamber professionals that are advocating for chambers for these smaller businesses that I have sort of a fear of that as we go in the future. So I think there just needs to be a lot of education around what it is that chambers do, which is literally what I do all day long. But that’s a long winded answer that probably didn’t tell you anything.
Brandon Burton 42:52 That’s all right. It’s all about perspective, you know, everybody comes to it from a different perspective. So that’s why I like asking that question. Because we can kind of aggregate those perspectives and maybe come up with some sort of a crystal ball as to what the future looks like.
Jordan Clemons 43:06 Yeah, I’ll say that, um, the future will be the future. And, you know, efficiency is what is where things go. And that’s, that’s economic. So I’m excited to see what happens there, change is a good thing. I don’t think change is a bad thing at all. So I’m, I feel good to be in the position that I’m in to help navigate whatever that looks like. So bring it on.
Brandon Burton 43:28 Right. So I wanted to give you an opportunity to share any contact information, because I’m sure listeners to this episode are going to hear this and think, you know, they’ve got their own questions they’ve got they need to connect with you on LinkedIn if they’re not already. And so how can they reach out and connect? Obviously, LinkedIn would seem to be the obvious choice, but what other ways and you know, opportunities are there to reach out and connect with you?
Connect with Jordan Clemons
Jordan Clemons 43:52 Yeah, just use LinkedIn. I mean, you can email me but I want less emails, rather than more honestly. Reach out to me on LinkedIn connect with me, and we can message it will help get you familiar with the platform. I’ll get back to you. And we can just have a one on one conversation there. It’s super duper easy. Go to LinkedIn search for Jordan Clemens, senior investor Development Manager at GE ally you can do it I promise you, you can find my profile, click that little Connect button. And then when it says do you want to include a message include a message say You know, you heard me on the Chamber Chat Podcast or whatever you want but that I’m coaching you on how to use the platform here, but I can help you from there too.
Brandon Burton 44:37 Absolutely. And I’ll I’ll put a link to your your profile in our show notes for this episode as well. So we’ll make it easy for people to find you and connect. But yeah, I’m all about making it easy. Connect with Jordan say Hey, I heard you on Chamber Chat Podcast help. So and Jordan is air with a wealth of knowledge Ah to be able to help you help your chamber through using utilizing these tools that he mentioned with through LinkedIn. So thank you, Jordan, for joining us today on Chamber Chat Podcast. And I think you provided a ton of value in the little bit of time that we had together. But hopefully it ignites in interest for those listening to explore the opportunities that LinkedIn provides.
Jordan Clemons 45:26 Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, Brandon. Sorry if I was a little long winded, but anybody that has any additional questions again, just send me a message. I’m here to help.
Brandon Burton 45:34 If you are a chamber professional, please subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple podcast, Google podcasts or Spotify. When you subscribe to Chamber Chat Podcast new episodes will show up in your podcast app each week as they are released. If you’re finding value in this podcast, please leave us a rating and a review in iTunes. But most importantly, please share Chamber Chat Podcast with your colleagues that are in the industry.
How does your chamber show up as a storyteller in your community? What types of stories do you tell? Our current social media environment shows us that people love to consume stories. Infact, some social media platforms are shifting from “social media posts” to “stories”. We often hear how Chambers of Commerce need to be storytellers. This is because we live in a world where facts and benefits about your organization are important but largely overlooked if you don’t have good stories to back up what you offer.
I have seen many chamber websites and membership brochures that list the key benefits of and reasons why a business should become a member of their chamber. While these “lists” have their place, showing the impact and value of your chamber is done much more effectively when done through stories.
Story Platforms
Your storytelling can take place face to face. Stories can be shared in newsletters, emails, or on social media in snippets. Some chambers may have a talented staff member who can shoot and edit video to tell their stories. As you might guess, my preferred method of storytelling is through podcasts.
When thinking of the stories you have to tell, think about who is the ideal audience you want to share the story with. Where are they? Where do they hang out digitally? Do they prefer printed text, pictures, video, or audio? Are your stories better formatted towards a specific media?
Many chambers like to go straight to social media to tell their stories. So do a Facebook Live video. My observation and opinion is that people open their social media apps when they are bored, tired, or stressed. Social media becomes a mindless activity to pass time without truly engaging on any kind of meaningful level. For this reason, I would strongly recommend NOT having social media be your primary medium for telling stories. By all means, use social media to magnify and perpetuate your stories but choose another medium to host and share your stories from. You may choose to repurpose some of your stories on social media as a teaser or an advertisement for the story in its entirety.
For most chambers, this would leave two primary content mediums, video and audio. Of course YouTube is the place to host any video content as viewers can subscribe to your channel to receive any updated content. For audio, podcasts are the place to be. I have a wholepodcast course to teach you how to get started with a podcast. Every iPhone comes with a podcast app already preinstalled. This makes it super easy for your audience to listen.
Storytelling Content
Once you know what platform(s) you want to focus on to share your stories, you can then dive into the content for story creation. I have identified eight types of stories you can tell through your podcast or YouTube channel. You can choose as many as you feel are relevant to your community or that would add value to your members or attract new members.
Member success stories or member spotlight. You can interview your own members and have them share how your chamber has helped their business find success. You can also go a little more generic and have your members tell you about their business or entrepreneurial journey. People love to hear a good original story and it ends up being a great commercial for your member business as well.
Impact of nonprofits. Identify and interview other local nonprofit organizations in your area to tell the story of the impact they are making. You can make the connection of how your chamber helps to support these nonprofits or ways you have partnered with them.
Community Partnerships. Community partnerships often need a bit more of an explanation for the general public to understand why the partnership exists and what the combined mission is about. There are often success stories that can go along with partnerships and the impact that is being made in the community.
Advocacy Efforts. In a very generalized sense, many of your members are still transactional members. They want to know what the chamber can do for them and if they don’t see it on their bottom line, then they don’t see any value. By sharing the stories of your advocacy efforts and the direct impact to each member of your chamber, you may sway some of your transactional members to become transformational members. Promoting your advocacy work also will show your community that the chamber is about business and what is good for business. The chamber is the sane center where both sides of the isle can come together for the good of your community.
Impact of Events/Initiatives. If you have people in your community who complain about why the city and/or chamber of commerce shuts down traffic each year for a festival that runs the whole weekend, then it might help to share why. Telling of the economic impact, increased sales tax revenue, and hotel occupancy in addition to the other positive outcomes of your events might help your community better understand what the chamber is about.
Staff Spotlight. Do your members and your community know your staff? Do they understand what the role is of each member of your staff? If they have a need, wouldn’t it be nice if they felt like they knew the person they were reaching out to? Doing regular staff spotlights will lead to building stronger relationships with your members which should help with your retention numbers.
Why Members Join. You are well aware that there are always businesses in your community who don’t know what a chamber of commerce is or why they should be involved. Collecting and sharing stories of why businesses join your chamber can help to tell a better story or what your chamber has to offer without producing a long list of member benefits. Remember, people have short attention spans and taking time to highlight just one or two reasons businesses join your chamber at each time will have the most impact.
Testimonials. A while back, I had Shari Pash on the podcast to talk about testimonial strategies. This is actually a very simple way of telling very short stories. Testimonials can be used in many ways. From reading a testimonial on a podcast episode to including a member testimonial in your email signature, you should be gathering and sharing testimonials all the time! Testimonials create credibility, social proof, and help with recruiting and retaining members. Feel free to leave a testimonial or review for Chamber Chat Podcast in Apple Podcasts and see how I might integrate your testimonial into my storytelling strategy. 🙂
You are now equipped with eight strategies for your chamber to be a storyteller. Now, you just need to lean into your medium of choice (audio or video) and then amplify your stories on your social media channels. You may find it beneficial to tell some stories over video while others are better on a podcast. If you utilize this strategy, you can also cross promote your platforms to each other and continue to grow your audiences.
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When it comes to driving the course for your chamber, you need to have clear direction. Can you imagine going for a drive without knowing your final destination or how to get there? You would end up wasting a lot of time and resources going in the wrong direction while you try to guess where you should be headed. I heard a quote a while back that said “you can work at 100 mph but if you are not clear on your destination, you will end up 100 miles away from your goal.” This is true when making business decisions or operating your chamber. You need to have a clear vision of where your organization should be headed.
Proof of Concept
About a year after starting Chamber Chat Podcast, I started having some chambers reach out to me about how to get started with their own podcast. At first I was answering their questions one by one. Then I thought it would be a good idea to launch an online course to take chambers through the steps to get started. But, before I invested a lot of time into creating a course, I created a simple downloadable Chamber Podcasting Guide PDF that I gave away for free to interested chambers.. This allowed me to test the market to see if there were more chambers who wanted to start a podcast. After I had about 150 downloads of this Chamber Podcasting Guide, then I proceeded to create the course and guess who I marketed it to first? That’s right, those people who had already expressed an interest in podcasting. This was almost a guarantee that I would get sales for the course.
When making decisions at your chamber, you should be collecting data along the way. Collecting and evaluating data will allow you to create more relevant content, programming, and opportunities for involvement by catering to what is important to your member businesses. Having a clear vision is important, but it also must align with your mission. If you are collecting interest for programs that are outside of the scope of your mission, you might be better served by partnering with another organization or handing the program off all together.
Ways to Collect Data
Let’s brainstorm on some ways to gather data and member feedback to help you make better decisions.
Understand what makes popular social media posts trend.
What are your most attended programs? What is the content about?
Ask new members why they are joining the chamber and what their expectations are.
Provide surveys after each event to collect feedback.
Ask your members what they value most about their membership with your chamber.
Record common questions that members ask your chamber.
Post polls on social media for future programming.
Survey people who attend community events.
A note about surveys…it is important to be clear about the desired purpose for the event or program you are providing the survey for. If the person being surveyed doesn’t understand what the intent for a program or event is, then their responses can lead you in the wrong direction. You should clearly state the reason you put on your community festival for example, the impact it makes throughout the community, and then ask your questions. This gives more context rather than having a person complaining about the festival because it was too hot that day.
I recently came across a chamber who surveyed their members about whether or not they should continue producing a community guide/directory or a map. The feedback came back that the members did not want the chamber to produce either publication any more. This chamber failed to mention the added value to each member of having their name listed in the directory and distributed throughout their community. They also did not inform their members about the non-dues revenue the chamber receives for their budget from these publications and how having a tangible publication can help with branding your community to newcomers and visitors. The expectations and reasoning was not properly laid out and for that reason, the members voted the way they did. With more accurate information, the vote likely would have been much different.
Interview with Aaron Nelson-Data Driven Decisions
In June of 2021, I had Aaron Nelson from the Greater Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber on the podcast to discuss how he approaches data driven decision making. He talked about how they go about collecting data after every event. They gather data about the venue, the speakers, the food, just about every aspect of each event that you can think of. This creates a very clear path going forward for their future events with the understanding that each event is a continual iteration.
What to do with Data?
One of the tricky aspects about collecting data and gathering member feedback is what to do with it. If you have a quality platform for your membership software, then this should be your hub for storing all of this data and feedback. I am partial to the Chamber Nation platform as it is a robust platform with a ton of added value that you don’t find anywhere else. It is also very affordable for even smaller chambers to adopt this platform. Many chambers even turn the Chamber Nation platform into a non-dues revenue generator within a few months. As you collect data and input it into the Chamber Nation platform, you are also able to produce monthly activity reports for each member so they can see the ROI of their membership. This is providing data to your members to help them make better decisions!
The key is to continually collect and record the data and feedback from your various sources so you can learn what is important to your members. Once you know what is important to them, you will have better engagement with your programming because you are providing more targeted value to your members.
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Have you had any formal training on how to develop a strong, diverse, effective chamber board? My guess is that most chamber executives who are reading this blog post have not been trained on board development. Many find themselves in the chamber industry by happy accident. What makes a chamber board effective anyway? While I am by no means an expert on board development or management, I will share what I have learned from experienced chamber professionals and non-profit board experts.
When it occurred to me how many chamber leaders find their career in chamber work by accident, it prompted me to do a survey to ask chamber leaders about their experience working with boards before starting with the chamber. The results were interesting. Only 27% of chamber leaders surveyed had worked with a board previous to entering the chamber world. 37% had no experience working with a board at all while another 37% had served on a nonprofit board. I think we could all agree how the perspective changes from serving on a board to being on the other side as the chamber executive.
To start, it may be helpful to understand what an effective board is. I would argue that an effective board is one that will engage in meaningful discussion which leads to action. These outcomes of these actions should support the mission of your organization and further build your community.
Chamber Board Selection
As I recently attended the MAKO (Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma) Chamber Conference, Dave Adkission was one of the speakers. Of the many topics that he covered in his talk, he spent some time talking about the unique qualities of a Chamber leader. He shared how you are often the only person in your city or town who does what you do. You may have colleagues in neighboring towns but you are typically the only Chamber Director/President/CEO in your community.
Dave also talked about how as a Chamber Executive you have a new boss each year, of course referencing your board chair. With this understanding, it is not very common in the workplace to have a say about who your next boss will be. However, in the chamber world, you can be intentional about building your board of directors with people who share a similar vision for your community.
When it comes to board selection, you may be tempted to look to those business leaders who can be a strong source of revenue. You probably want people on your board who are well connected. Oftentimes the people who make up a chamber board are some of the most influential business people in your community. This can lend more credibility and influence to your organization as a result.
On the flip side, by having your board filled with high level business leaders, there is a good chance that their time and resources will be stretched thin. They are probably serving on other boards in your community. They are most likely being asked for money from other organizations. They will likely notice that they are being asked to participate on various boards because they are well connected and have access to money which can change their perception of your organization.
You want to be very intentional about recruiting for board service as you build relationships with other leaders in your community. Be mindful of what mindsets and skillsets are missing or underrepresented on your current board. Have discussions with some of these leaders who you think would be a good addition to your board to plant the seed or idea in their mind about the value or perspective they can provide.
Developing Board Diversity
In the past, at least in the United States, most chamber boards were composed of older, white males. As demographics change, as social justice and awareness are more front of mind, it is important that chamber boards reflect the makeup of the community which they serve.
With chambers having a sharper focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, we are starting to see more of this shift in board seats. As there are more women owned businesses, having the voice and perspective of women on your board is important. As you develop your chamber board, notice if your community tends to have a younger demographic, you may want to recruit board members who represent your younger business owners. Your community may have a larger makeup of hispanic, African-American, Asian, or Pacific Islanders. This should be reflected on your board.
As a chamber leader, you are expected to know your community and to have a pulse on what is important to them. Should you focus on having more veterans on your board or people from the LGBTQ+ community? Although the development of your chamber board should be very intentional, you should be careful not to recruit board members simply because the check a box. Each board member should bring specific skillsets to make your board whole.
It is important as you recruit new board members to work towards filling seats with the people who can help move your community forward and not just who has the money and influence. Ultimately your chamber should carry the influence in your community that you are looking for. You should be leading the way in showing what is important to building a stronger community and why each segment of your population is vital to this vision.
A while back, I had Matt Morrow on the Chamber Chat Podcast. Matt is the President and CEO of the Springfield Area Chamber in Missouri. Matt talked about the lessons he learned from a book titled “The Wisdom of Crowds”. The main takeaway message was that more often than not, a diverse crowd of people can, together, come up with the most correct answer to problems than any one person or any one demographic can on their own. This is because the diversity brings different perspectives which help point to the most correct answers.
Setting Clear Expectations
Communication and expectations are key to a functional board. It may be tempting to complain about an underperforming board member. You might get frustrated when the ball gets dropped on certain action items that come out of a board meeting. Are certain members always late to your board meetings or not engaged? These board members may not clearly understand what is expected of them and how important their role really is.
From their perspective, they may be complaining to themselves, a spouse, another board member or a co-worker about how unorganized and unproductive the chamber board meetings are. They may not have clearly expressed what their expectations were from you as a chamber leader.
Either way, if the dysfunction is coming from the chamber side or from the board side, this will quickly result in a disengaged board. Have open and honest communication about expectations. Be intentional with the onboarding process for new board members so they clearly understand the importance of their role. While in your board meetings, try to spend the bulk of your time in discussion about things that really matter for your community. You will likely have some of the most influential leaders of your community in the same room so don’t waste their time. Find out how your board members prefer their communications. Do they want detailed drafts for each meeting or a simple outline? By defining expectations up front will save you a lot of frustration later.
Along with clear expectations, always be mindful of your board member’s time. These are often busy people who live by a schedule. Be as concise, yet thorough with communications and meetings to keep up the level of engagement. As soon as you notice any disengagement, have an open conversation to assess the load your board member is carrying and encourage adjustments with assignments as needed.
Board Unity
It is not abnormal to have very strong personalities among a group of business and community leaders. This is not a bad thing at all. Oftentimes, these strong personalities are what land these individuals in the positions of influence where they currently reside. However, some personalities can be like oil and water as they repel each other.
Be intentional about creating opportunities for board members to break down barriers and to get past personalities. This could be done by providing opportunities for these individuals to serve directly with each other and to learn from each other’s experiences and skillset. This is often facilitated through board retreats and training.
If you can build buffer time around your board meetings to allow for your board members to socialize for a few minutes before or after board meetings, you will see more ideas generated once they are outside of the formal setting of a meeting. A good signal of board unity is when you see several board members linger after a meeting to continue discussion ideas or even just getting to know each other better.
Continue Your Chamber Board Development
As I stated at the beginning of this post, I am not an expert on nonprofit or chamber board development. However, I have learned a lot as I have worked with chambers over the past 15+ years and as I have been interviewing chamber leaders on Chamber Chat Podcast for over 3 years now.
One of the best people I have interviewed on the podcast about this topic is Hardy Smith, author of “Stop the Nonprofit Board Blame Game”. I would encourage every chamber executive to read this book. You will learn key insights about managing your board that you have never thought of.
I would also encourage you to continue learning from others, whether that is through conferences, regional chamber meetings, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, or by reaching out to others directly who you admire and feel like you can learn from.
Chamber service and board development is a continual iteration as our tools become more refined and as the world continues to evolve.
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In today’s world, everyone has a smartphone with them at all times. Thanks to social media and text messaging, we all look to our tiny screens to pass time. If your chamber has not been fully immersed in creating a strong digital presence, then you are missing a huge segment of your community.
Mobile is Everywhere
Next time you are out in public, take a look at the people around you. Look at your own behaviors with your smartphone. Most of society are consumers of digital content. For some this comes in the form of social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram. For the younger generation the trend is currently TikTok and YouTube. Podcasting is the digital platform for audio content that people can consume while doing many other tasks at the same time. The gateway to almost everything digital today is done through a mobile app.
I have yet to come across a chamber in the last five years that doesn’t at least have a Facebook page. Most will also have a website. I would suggest that these are the most basic digital platforms to utilize and they also have the lowest barrier to entry. I once heard a quote that said “the lower the barrier, the greater the competition”. There is a lot more ‘noise’ at the lower barrier of entry levels. The Facebook page and website are important digital marketing tools. I believe tools are designed to leverage your efforts.
Leverage Print Media
For example, printed publications are still very popular in the chamber world. They are great producers of non-dues revenue and can often have a digital counterpart. The digital side of your printed publications should be amplified on your website and social media to further spread the distribution of your publications.
I would also encourage your members who advertise in your printed publications to leverage their advertising using digital. They can do this by sharing a picture of their ad in your chamber directory on their social media pages and tag your chamber in the post. You can take it a step further by encouraging them to use a specific hashtag to further promote the publication.
Repurpose Other Chamber Content
The same is true with other chamber content. Your website and social media pages should be used to amplify your message. Your digital presence will be much stronger as you identify ways to broadcast your traditional/analog efforts.
If you have a podcast, post each episode to your social pages. Tag any guests in the social media posts as well as their company. Your website could have a dedicated section that points to your past podcast episodes with show notes and links to relevant content and sponsorship partners.
If you have a YouTube channel, the same practice can be applied. YouTube will also allow you to have ‘in video links’ to other relevant content you have on YouTube. You can embed certain videos on your website and share your videos on your social media networks.
Blogs
As you get caught up in the digital craze, don’t forget the importance of the written word. That is by the way how you are consuming this content right now. Blog posts for longer form messaging can still be highly effective and could be a source of non-dues revenue with sponsorships. You can share your blog posts on social media.
I recently worked on a project with a homeowners association. This was a monthly magazine that was mailed to the homeowners. With a younger demographic moving into the community and in an effort to gain more advertising revenue we decided to leverage digital. We decided to repurpose the articles that were already in the printed magazine as individual blog posts. This allowed us to insert additional advertising content and it allowed the HOA to reach a new, younger audience.
Content Frequency
However you choose to approach your creation and distribution of digital content, it is critical to have a plan. Creating a frequency for digital content will help you stay on track. Oftentimes you can repurpose content in multiple ways. I would encourage you to create a content calendar to plot out how you are putting out content in a strategic way. Izzy West spoke about this in a past podcast episode.
As you create your content calendar, see where you can spread some of your content creation. Maybe staff members could be responsible for different platforms or types of content. You may be able to utilize a board member, ambassador, or another volunteer. One unique way of creating content is to use your members. Holly Allen talked about this in my interview with her as she talked about how her chamber was marketing the thought leadership of their members. Essentially, their members became the experts on certain topics that their chamber then shared on their different platforms.
Summary
I will share a personal thought. As you plan deliberate content, consider the platform. For example, people tend to turn to Facebook to tune out, not to tune in to a message from the chamber. However, a platform like podcasting and YouTube have active subscribers who tune into and subscribe to hear from people and organizations like you. I would not rely solely on Facebook and a website as your digital footprint.
The bottom line is that if you are not actively thinking about a strong digital presence, you will inevitably miss out on opportunities. We are living in a digital first world now where people turn to their phones for answers, information, and entertainment. How is your chamber interacting with people on their tiny screens?
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Below is an auto-generated transcription of my conversation with Sara Ray. Because this is auto-generated there are likely some grammatical errors but it is still a useful tool to search text within this podcast episode.
Feel free to join our Chamber Chat Champions Facebook Group to discuss this episode and to share your own experiences and tips with other Chamber Champions.
This is the Chamber Chat Podcast, the show dedicated to chamber professionals to spark ideas and to get actionable tips and strategies to better serve your members and community.
Voiceover Talent 0:14
And now, your host…He encourages chambers to collect quality data so they can better segment their lists.
He’s my dad Brandon Burton.
Brandon Burton 0:23
Hello, Chamber Champions. Welcome to Chamber Chat Podcast. I’m your host Brandon Burton, where it is my goal to introduce you to people and ideas to better help you serve your Chamber members and your community.
Well, Doug and Bill at the Holman Brothers have been a key ally in growth for my professional career working at three different chambers, a local chamber, a regional chamber and now a statewide chamber. And they’ve been the ideal solution, whether it’s a comprehensive training program, whether it’s working on individual sales growth, quarterly check ins with the team, the ability to grow members has meaning more assets for the organization, more assets means we can do more things to serve our members. They’ve really been the perfect solution for us, a trusted resource partner and a growth partner for us all along the way. So hats off to Doug and Bill for their great success. They’ll be a great partner for you as they are for us.
Brandon Burton 1:31 You can learn more about Holman Brothers Membership Sales Solutions by visiting HolmanBros.com.
Guest Introduction
Our guest for this episode is Sara Ray. Sara became the president and CEO of the Douglas County Chamber in April 2018. Sara has more than 15 years of chamber corporate and nonprofit leadership experience including UPS Yancey bros as Strayer University, the Cultural Arts Council of Douglas, and four positions at the Douglas County Chamber. Sara serves on the Regional Business coalition executive committee is Vice Chair for the WellStar Douglas hospital regional board, and as a founding partner in Elevate Douglas economic partnership, a public private partnership created in 2021. She also serves on the board of the Georgia Association of Chamber of Commerce executives Georgia Academy of economic development, Cobb and Douglas public health steering committee and founding member of keep Douglas County beautiful. Sara received her Georgia certified chamber executive designation in 2021, making her one of only 22 in the history of the organization. She is a graduate of the US Chamber institutes of organizational management in 2015, the US Chamber business leads fellowship Regional Leadership Institute, Georgia forward young game changer, leadership Douglas and is it active in these alumni associations. In 2019, Sara was named by Georgia Secretary of State as outstanding Georgia citizen. She was also named as the West Georgia livings 40 under 40 in 2019, and a top 10 Young Professional in Douglas in 2015 and 2017. Her service to the community does not go unnoticed. She was recognized as Volunteer of the Year for the Georgia Ovarian Cancer Alliance in 2010 and 2012 Spirit Award by the city of Douglasville, Sara received her bachelor’s from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. When she isn’t working to support businesses and Douglas in the metro Atlanta region. Sara spends her time traveling and being outdoors with their children, Anna and Avery. Sarah, I’m excited to have you with me today on Chamber Chat Podcast, we will take a moment to say hello to all the Chamber Champions and share something interesting about yourself so we can get to know you a little bit better.
Sara Ray 3:53
Yeah, well, thank you for having me today. I have thought long and hard about this question. But I think something interesting about me is while I was born and raised in Georgia, my parents are both from overseas. So I’m a first generation American. And my dad is from England and my mom is from South Africa. So a lot of times when people meet me they see you know, cute little you know, southern girl and they don’t realize you know that my summers were spent in Africa and in the wild so so it’s it’s people always kind of that’s kind of throws them off.
Brandon Burton 4:31
So you get together with your family to get a variety of accents going on.
Sara Ray 4:34
Yes, yes. My mom always joke that like when I was in preschool, I came home and the first time I said y’all, she just cried because I had a British accent until I went to school because that was all I ever heard. So
Brandon Burton 4:48
yeah, it’s funny. I can just see that British accent you know, saying Yo she’s like, where did my baby go? Well tell us about the Douglas County Chamber just to give us some perspective, maybe size budget staff, that sort of thing
About the Douglas County Chamber
Sara Ray 5:06
before we get us. Yes. So our chamber is 77 years old. We have about 650 members that are investors in our organization. And we are located in west, west, just west of Atlanta, we’re about 20 miles west. So we are considered the Metro Atlanta region, but still kind of close enough. We always say, you know, close enough to the city to be able to catch a baseball game with our, you know, world champion, Atlanta Braves. But also, we still have plenty of green space and amenities where we can explore and enjoy the outdoors. So yes, so our team we are, we have and we have an interesting kind of space, we are in the process of integrating staff with our economic development organization elevate Douglas, so we share staff, but our full team is about 12 Strong between both organizations. But as far as chamber employees, we have about eight, so I think it was there anything I missed?
Brandon Burton 6:02
No, I think that that pretty much covers it. And so it sounds like you’ve said that before. Yeah. how close you are to Atlanta. And notice you you mentioned Braves and the Falcons but that that’s okay.
Sara Ray 6:17
We got we got UGA we’ve been
Brandon Burton 6:20
you gotta get your highlights, right. Yeah.
Sara Ray 6:22
Falcons fan. I know. I still have like, you know, wounds from five ish years ago. But yeah, yeah. Yeah. We’ll definitely talk about the Braves all day long.
Brandon Burton 6:32
That’s right. That’s right. So as we get into our topic for discussion, today, we’re gonna focus our conversation around creating relevant and personalized communication, which I think is going to be something relevant for listeners as we try to figure out the best ways to communicate with not only our members but people in the community and really, you know, be in that that voice for business community. So I’m excited to get into this discussion with you as soon as we get back from this quick break.
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Topic-Relevant & Personalized Communication
All right, Sara, we’re back. As I mentioned before the break, we’re talking about communication, creating relevant and personalized communication. I’d love to hear what you guys are doing there at the Douglas County Chamber to do this. Yeah, you know, what, what spurred the thought for this to be the focus of our discussion.
Sara Ray 9:36
Yeah, so I think it’s probably best to start up I’m gonna say the beginning. You know, I’ve been at the chamber as, as you mentioned, for just around 12 years and took over SEO about four years ago. So I felt like I’ve seen a lot of different things and you know, experience different trends and marketing and communications. That was actually the role I started out in being at the chamber so then seeing it grow and evolve. But I would say the beginning of our journey to where we’re at now and how we have moved into a space of having more customized personal communications was like a lot of people during the pandemic. So, you know, as a, an organization that was primarily in person with our events, that leaned into that space we were very accustomed to, like, I would assume a lot of chambers are is casting a net at, you know, at all your businesses, you know, the more people the merrier in a room, you know, that that equated to a successful event. And that was very, very true with myself in spaces, but also with my team. So when we had to go into an environment where we couldn’t do face to face, or, you know, we were just trying to still cast that net, but not being able to have those one on one conversations, we knew we had to do something different. So I remember specifically, we had brought back, and it was probably like late 2021 of our after hours events, it was outside, you know, open air. And I remember, in our, in our after hours, events typically have about 75 to 125 people, this one, there were about 27 or 28 people, and my team was coming up to me, this is a failure, this is not great. This is you know, we’ve lost our you know, our our mojo, this is awful. And I just remember being like, you guys are missing the big picture, look around the room and see what is happening, I said people are able to not come into a space where they don’t know anybody, you know, or they feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed, because of the number of people that are there. I said, people are able to come in and have a conversation, they aren’t worried about working the room. And and you know, getting as many business cards out as, as they can, they’re able to sit and have actual conversations. And I was a perfect example of that. I mean, as, as our viewers probably know, chamber execs you’re out work in the room, making sure that everybody feels welcome and included. And I remember sitting down with one of our youth leadership students, high school junior, and having like a 10 minute conversation on their career path and their trajectory, and all of these different you know, like just actually getting to know them. And, and that was a conversation I had with my team. And I was I was like you guys are missing the big picture, like people are having more authentic intentional interactions with one another. And that fosters a relationship and a depth of depth to a relationship that we can’t touch. Like we can’t, we can’t touch that in an email or communication, not the way we’re set up right now. So we ended up working with an organization to do again. So we kind of looked at, we started shifting some our events, instead of being a catch all for everyone. And during the business after hours, we had targeted industries that we were networking with, we had, you know, different themes. So we started a minority business group, we started a women in business group. So we started out with our events, but then what we realized quickly was, how are we getting the information out to everyone in a way that they can, that it that it resonates with them, and that they find value in that. So we went through the process of doing a marketing communications analysis and looked at all of the different things that we were doing email, social website, how we were how people were getting the information, and that was members, and it was non members. So we were polling and surveying our business community at large. And one of the things that kind of came back to all of it was that people don’t like getting the emails that are that are sent to the droves, you know, email was definitely their number one choice for how they wanted to be communicated with and this is in my community could look different. But even with the way that you interact with people on social media, like it’s great that we were posting, you know, we had a content calendar, and we were posting something on wherever, every other day, and we had a process behind that. But people wanted the engagement, they wanted to see themselves they wanted, you know, they wanted to know the stories about people so so we’ve gone through the process of customizing how we communicate with our businesses looking at we’ve created like a preference center. So you know, what Brandon might want contact information on it might be leadership and events and I might want information on policy and economic development. So we’ve created a you know, an infrastructure in our in our communications and how we do our events, that it’s customized and catered to the individuals just so that’s kind of the high level, how we got there. So
Brandon Burton 14:30
I love this. I just in fact, it was a week or two ago, I actually wrote and shared out a blog post about this very thing. Well, when you’re talking about these mixers, it was about that very thing. It’s like you know, so many people show up at a mixer. They’re new to the chamber, right? They show up, got a pocket full of business cards, or they’re gonna get their drink and they stand there totally awkward. Yeah, they don’t know anybody. And then you know, 10 minutes later they leave because Yeah, nothing happens that they’re super uncomfortable and That’s one of the huge value propositions, you know, for joining the chambers and networking. Yeah. Well, if it doesn’t resonate for them, they have a bad experience at first time, how likely are they to come back. So being able to have these personalized, you know, relevant events for them to attend, and really make sure that they resonate with not only the topic, but the other people that are there. So it makes sense to communicate with them.
Sara Ray 15:24
Yeah. And it’s not just about like getting them to the event, it’s the before and after to like, we’ve incorporated pieces into the process where, when they register, it’s, Hey, thanks for registering. And it’s all automated through chambermaster. You know, and it just says, Thanks for registering before you get here, check out our speakers, and we have links to the bios, and then two days before they get an email that’s like, you know, get excited, these are things that we’re going to have here, if we have kind of upcoming announcements or things you need to know before you get there. And then on the backside, we have follow up emails that are thanks for joining, here’s the pictures, here’s the links to whomever was speaking, you know, share your experience, and we put in there literally a copy and paste of post this on so on your LinkedIn, and they just have to drop it in there. So it gives them a good way to engage with us outside of just the event. And we you know, we’ll put in there register for our next event. So it’s all about creating, we call it an engagement pathway. So it’s all about creating that it’s not ever a start to finish. It’s always the what’s next behind things. So
Brandon Burton 16:27
so how do you go about in your, in your database to segment your lists? You’d mentioned you know, what their interests are I, the way I’ve envisioned it is you have a conversation of sorts, and in some of these, you probably have to guess if they’ve been a member forever, and maybe they’re not super high, you need to make some guesses. But as you onboard a new member to be able to have a discussion of what’s your expectation from the chain? What are you joining for? Is that how you guys go about it? Or what does that look like to be able to Yes,
Sara Ray 16:59
I’m going to call I’m going to call it bite sized pieces, I’m getting an email about like this long, you know, like, four pages long, is very inundating and overwhelming for someone. So we’ve actually shifted to I would call it like a drip campaign. So when they get their first email, it’s, you know, Hey, welcome to the chamber, we’re so excited to have you, here’s your login, be on the lookout, we have this next thing coming up, your next email will be about XYZ and then the next email that they get is, hey, we want to learn more about you. Right, so talk to us about the things that interested you in joining the chamber. And we capture some of that through our member application. But then it’s getting more into the space of what did they as the primary contact one, the next email is, hey, tell us about your team, let’s make sure and add in anybody that you have that as a part of your team that we need to include in our conversations, because, again, Sara raise preferences, and Julia in my office, it might be different. And the things that they find value in as a member would be different. So we’ve shifted instead of it just being this one dump of information into small videos and and kind of little snippets, that cycle out, I would say at least once a week for the first month, and then we kind of lag it out a little bit. But that way, it gives them the information kind of on a consistent basis without overwhelming them. Because that was another thing people don’t want to read through, like I said, five pages of information. So we’ve we’ve just shifted to that kind of little bite sized piece of information. And then there’s some other things, we mail them some stuff too. So they’re getting that attention, we send we have somebody that does a phone call. So we have a whole process in place. But yeah, identifying their specific needs and interests, we do that some through the main contact through when they apply. But then it’s part of the process. And we just capture that through our CRM. And then we actually connect it into the campaign system that we use for email marketing. So and then you can go into if we’re getting super granular, like the tags and segments within your email marketing system. So then you can go through and kind of pick and choose and say, hey, I want to send this piece of information to people who are tagged that they like information about women in leadership, or it could be about policy. So we kind of lean on those different tools to to segment it out, because there is information you want everybody to get and know about your big signature event or your upcoming event or training that you have. But then some of the information, you know, might not be relevant to you know, a solopreneur that’s never that doesn’t need to hire anybody doesn’t necessarily need to have all the information on how to post a job on our on our job site. So yeah, it’s just trying to try to funnel down and fine tune that information to where it’s what they find this value in. And then you can track it all on the back end through analytics and see again, and we drive almost all of our activity, I would say all of it to our website so that we can track the analytics and know where people are going, what information that they’re actually likely looking at and learning from.
Brandon Burton 19:54
I love that and I think this is going to be one of those episodes that people go back and listen to or at least You know those last few minutes? Like, okay, take notes, and how did you do this step to the next day? So, simple question, what, what email platform do you guys use?
Sara Ray 20:11
Yes. So, we have tried a few, we use Constant Contact for a long, long time. I know as chamber people, we get it for free, which is great, but I and I mean, contact is wonderful. But there are other paid platforms that can give you more. So we actually investigated using Campaign Monitor, but then ended up going with MailChimp. So it integrates with chambermaster, which is our CRM that we use. So and has a lot of capabilities and even the visibility, the open rates are better with MailChimp than some of the others just because they don’t automatically pop into your junk folder and things like that. So we have some great partners that we work with, that are investors with the chamber that helped us kind of work through all that process, it wasn’t, you know, I don’t have a crystal ball. And I will say to that doesn’t mean what works for us will work for everyone. And Constant Contact has does have some great tools that are associated with it, if you’re on a little bit of a tighter budget, but that was we ended up moving forward with MailChimp was what we ended up going with.
Brandon Burton 21:11
So and I wanted to highlight that just so listeners when they talk about when they hear you talk about segmenting tags, and all these things like, Well, my software doesn’t do that, or where do you find that? So it’s within MailChimp that you’re doing those things. Yeah. So I love the way that you go about with that kind of introductory email, you know, here’s some things to look forward to. And then the follow up as to, you know, what kind of things are of interest to you? Where do you do you see, as people, you know, have a longer time with the chamber with their membership or investment where they learn about new offerings that the Chamber has and to be able to add that to their interest. So they’re getting those those pieces of information? How do you add that in along their membership journey,
Sara Ray 21:59
oh, you’re gonna laugh at this one, we have a nickname for how we do that in my office. So um, you know, we’ve used MailChimp for a lot of our you know, we use that for our I would say standard, we do a top five email that goes out on Mondays, you know, we have social that we post we did videos, those kind of things. If we are in a space, and we want again, because a lot of people just see chamber emails, and they’re like, Oh, I’m just gonna keep clicking through. So what we learned, and I honestly don’t remember how we got into the space. My team calls them, Hey, friend emails. And it’s literally me, emailing our entire database through chambermaster. And I write them just like it’s coming from, I mean, it is coming from me, but I read it just like I’m emailing you directly. And the tone and the language behind it is just as if I was writing to any, you know, any of my businesses that are members. And it’s, Hey, how are you very generic entry. Hey, there, and it’s, you know, I always try and make some kind of interesting subject line, like, got a second or one quick thing for you. And then I go into, hey, hope you’re doing great. Getting ready for the weekend, or whatever, you know, whatever, just some kind of little intro, but like, I just wanted to make sure, I don’t know if you saw the emails, but I want to make sure you knew about XYZ event or training or whatever that we’re doing. That’s coming up, I think it might be great for you. You know, we’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And we’d love to see, see your face at it. If it was an event or whatever. If there’s anything that you need from me, you know, I’m always here, have a great day. And I literally, that’s basically what are our response rate? And people like people have no idea? Well, some of them start picking up on it, they have no idea that it’s sent to 1000s of people. So I get responses from people. They’re like, Oh, my gosh, it’s been so long since we talked hope you’re doing well, thanks for checking on me, you know, so we call it Hey, friend emails in my office. And that’s a great way because then we’re able to go back. And if I get an email from someone, like I said, that I haven’t heard from in a long time or haven’t seen an event, and they’re responding to an event that we’re talking about, you know, going to our cap the state capitol, then I know that that’s piqued their interest in some space, if they’re choosing to respond to me, Hey, I hope I can make it please keep sending me the this this way, you know, would love to have this in a virtual format like we get we I get honestly I get better open rates on those than any other email platform that I do. And again, nobody knows what I mean. A few again, a few now know the secret, but for the most part, but that’s the bottom comes in. I have to be so let my team is there. There’ll be like, can you send a hey, for an email? I was like, I’ve already sent one this week. Like we’ve got to limit or they lose their hour. But yeah, so yeah, so Hey, friend, emails work really well. I actually had one of our state our congressional senators offices call me she’s like, I need to set up a meeting with you. She goes are those emails like really to everyone? Or is it just to me, because she said she forwards them out to her team every time and it’s like This is how we need to communicate with our business, you know, with our constituents, and it started as a random thing, but that’s kind of our, our secret sauce that you know, we have our templated emails. But if we need to pull a friend one out, then it works almost every time.
Brandon Burton 25:16
And I imagine that those Hey, friend emails are also going to help with your open rates and deliverability of the emails going out through MailChimp to see that those are getting delivered and opened and responded to, they’re gonna deliver more of those inboxes. Exactly. That’s, that’s awesome. But then, so you’re taking those manually those responses and saying this members interested in this and then updating their profile
Sara Ray 25:39
that, yeah, I have somebody on my team that I’ll just forward them to. And it’s also a great way to make sure we have bad emails that are coming through or bounces or changes in role, you know, because there’s lovely member info updates that we all try and send are only so successful before we have to get on the phone. So this is a good kind of consistent way to kind of work through that process. Yeah.
Brandon Burton 25:59
So one of the other things he had mentioned, I want to make sure that I understood it, right. It sounds like one of those follow up emails and member first joins is saying who else in your organization would be interested in XYZ. So you’re, you’re getting other contact information for each business, but then also able to further the segmentation to that person’s over HR versus, you know, over, you know, the CEO, as the company, they’re going to be, you have different interests, so you’re able to touch them on different levels at the same
Sara Ray 26:31
business. And I was trying to add something, we always add some language like, if this isn’t for you, please feel free to share with share it with somebody, you know, and make sure a lot of people and I know that you’ve heard this before, but they think that they’re the only person that’s a member of their chamber. I’ve had several conversations with our school district. I’m like, every teacher, every educator is a member of the chamber. So you know, like, use that leverage that leverage that bandwidth. Oh, yeah.
Brandon Burton 26:57
Yeah, no, I think that’s key. Yeah. They think whoever was the one that signed up to chat. Yeah, right. Yeah. Oh, crazy. Yeah. Or just the owner. But yeah, it can. And obviously, every chamber is a little different. But most chambers that I’m aware of is opened it. Yeah, buddy within their business. So good point. I think this topic is so important. I’ve mentioned this a few times. And I think it’s worth mentioning again, just with the topic is my background is in chamber publishing says I would go out and meet with different Chamber members. And they find out that I’m not actually with the chamber, but they open up to me. Yeah. It’s like, I’m a bartender, and they just start telling me, you know, this is this last experience, this last event was awesome. Or I get way too many emails from the chamber. You know, I’ll ask them, Did
Sara Ray 27:46
you get to see my, like, little chamber therapist?
Brandon Burton 27:48
Exactly. They’re like, I get so many emails from the chamber. I probably got it. But you know, yeah, I deleted or I just opened it moved on. So yeah, being able to segment make it highly personable, I think it’s so important. And that’s, that’s the age we’re in today. Anyway, I mean, if you’re just doing a blanket email, there’s, there’s a purpose for it, you know, at times, but if that’s your only communications, a blanket email, you’re missing the boat, and you’re missing opportunities to connect with members. So yeah,
Sara Ray 28:17
and our ultimate goal is to, for people to have value in what we do, right? Like the end game is for someone to say that they got what they were looking for out of their membership. And if you have simple tools in place to be able to pinpoint that so a year in you can say, Hey, you said you wanted information on policy, or you wanted us to go to bat for you, as the voice of business in our community, you can go back on that and say, You, this was what you you know, this is what you said you find value in here. Here is how we took that, like, let’s talk about that. So being heard is so important for businesses.
Brandon Burton 28:52
How do you use the information that you get? I’m calling it segmenting, just for maybe lack of a better term? How do you use that information to create content or plan future events? Do you ever look into it to weigh that into what you’re doing?
Sara Ray 29:08
Oh, absolutely. Yes. I mean, so think of Okay, so we’ve had events, okay. Our breakfast series is a great example. So we used to have a, you know, you know, just a networking breakfast. It was just putting people in a room together. And that was it. Like there was no agenda. I mean, we will get up give door prizes, you know, that normal kind of, Hey, everyone, thanks for coming. And we shifted that and based off of feedback from people saying, you know, what are you doing for minority owned businesses? Why can we have women’s programming we’ve done you know, we did surveys and focus groups talked with our board, of course, and then we’re able to create those events and then solicit feedback on Did you like this, what did you think? And then just continue to craft our programming to meet the needs of our members? You know, we’re a member driven organization as all chambers should be, and so meeting the needs of what our business is our and that looks very different than two years ago, it looks very different than 10 years ago. So just continuing, you know, I am, I am always a proponent of new and different, and sometimes I think exhausts my team. But at the same time, the things that were relevant, you know, three or four years ago are very different. Now, we were never in a space where we thought we’d be relying on Zoom to do, you know, a majority of our work for six or eight months, so. So I think just being open minded and nimble listening to your members, and then and then being okay with adapting and changing, you don’t have to go and completely rebrand your whole organization, you can do it in small spaces, do a beta test of something, try it out, see if people like it, get their feedback. And then you can look at expanding that. So we do a lot in that space of trying things with small groups of people before we pull it into a larger space.
Brandon Burton 30:49
Yeah. And I think as you gather that information on what their expectations are, as they join the chamber, you’re able to then speak their language. And then when it comes time to renew memberships, it’s very hard for them to say, you know, the Chamber didn’t do anything for me, I didn’t see any value out of the chair, if you’re sending them those direct communications and talking to them in exactly what they’re looking for. So yeah, I hope everyone’s taking notes. Yeah, and
Sara Ray 31:15
I think you one more thing, because you asked me about like sharing information, articles and things that you’re what we’ve what we do is we do a lot of alcohol, like inbound marketing. So sharing resources, I’ve always been a firm believer, we don’t have to be the doer of all things, or the creator of all things. So we have a huge focus on building partnerships with other organizations. So we have a great partnership with the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, right? We have, I’m going to call it a language barrier with dealing with our Hispanic business community, they are successful at that. So why would we sit and recreate the wheel in bringing that into the mix. So we have a lot of content that we gather from our members, subject matter experts, we partner with our colleges and universities, you know, they’ve great economists that work at colleges and universities, why not lean on them to do our economic development reports and things of that nature. So I think that that’s very important. Even with trainings and professional development opportunities for businesses, you don’t have to create things. It’s it’s even thought more highly of if you partner with others, so we have gone that direction. Our new our new tagline is where partnerships and businesses thrive, because that’s the environment that we try to create. So it’s a lot easier to than trying to recreate the wheel on things.
Brandon Burton 32:27
That’s right. I love that. So as we start to wrap up here, I wanted to ask you what might be one tip or action item for chamber champion listening that they could do at their chamber to help take them up to the next level?
Action Item/Tip for Chamber Champions
Sara Ray 32:40
Yes, um, so I would say, and this is a super simple Hey, friend, email that basically anybody can send out is send an email out, I did this, I tried to do it about once a year. But send out an email to your membership and from from your executive, or whomever you deem that you think would have the baby could even be your board chair, and ask them how you what, you know, kind of three questions What what are you getting from us that you love? What are some things that you need from us? And what can we do differently? You know, and just get that feedback from them. It doesn’t have to be this highly calculated survey. And again, if you go with that personal approach of how can I best support you? I guarantee I remember the first time I did, I got like, 300 emails back and I was inundated, but took the time to respond. And because it was coming from me, it wasn’t again, this, it doesn’t have to be this robust, well thought out process, just zap out an email, ask them how they’re doing how you can best support is there anything I can do to support your business? And you’ll be amazed at the results that you get, it’s super simple, but I promise you, like people find value in that kind of thing.
Brandon Burton 33:47
Absolutely. lets them be heard. Yeah, yes, that’s awesome. Then you
Sara Ray 33:51
can just make a list. And then you know, and you have your marching orders for the things that you can look at adapting and changing. So yeah, and listen and listen to them. And share that information back with your members is also important. Don’t just take it all and keep it in a dropbox folder somewhere, share out with people what, what, you know what your membership is saying. So,
Brandon Burton 34:09
for sure. So as we look to the future, how do you see the future chambers and their purpose going forward?
Future of Chambers
Sara Ray 34:18
Oh, um, you know, I’m sure you’ve chatted with my buddy Casey Steinbacher. Before. She is a great friend of mine. And, you know, she preaches a lot about going from being relevant to being essential. And I think that and I have others that have kind of lived in that space. And I feel like that’s the environment. The things that we have done in the past, as far as chambers go, you know, think 30 years ago, chambers used to be the place that did parades and you know, they might have done ribbon cuttings every now and then. And now we have chambers that are moving the needle in Washington DC advocating on behalf of businesses and helping businesses stay afloat, you know, during the pandemic. So I think I think where I see it going is just continuing to move into that space of being essential. And that looks different for every community. And for every business. You know, during the pandemic, I had a business that was it, they it’s like a kind of like a farm of like a petting zoo farm. And she needed to feed the alpacas on her farm. And the only way she raised revenue to do that was by having visitors and she couldn’t. So helping her figure out what was essential to her helped her us be essential to her. Does that make sense? So. So I think that where we’re headed is into a space of, I mean, it sounds silly, but it’s a space of humanity, it’s listening to people, it’s talking to them. It’s providing a space where they can have those open, honest, intentional conversations, whether that’s about diversity, or whether that’s about you know, growing a company, I think it’s just giving people that personalized attention, where they feel that there is not another option than to be a part of the chamber. I think that that’s kind of the direction that we’re headed in. And that looks different for every business, and it looks different for every community. Yeah, it’s been open to that, too, is important.
Brandon Burton 36:07
I love that you brought up Casey, and in her book, you know, relevant to essential. And if anybody hasn’t read it, it’s a it’s an e book. So look it up on Amazon. terrific book, but I mean, she talks about being relevant to your members becoming essential to your community, which really changes perspective, as you read through the book and read, you know, see the ideas that she shares in there. Yeah, changes perspective. So thank you for that. What would be the best way for a listener to reach out and connect with you if they have any questions about, you know, how you’re doing things their communication wise, or they couldn’t keep up with what’s the best way to reach out,
Connect with Sara Ray
Sara Ray 36:48
I get excited, and I talk fast. So I would say the easiest way is on LinkedIn. And it’s just my LinkedIn profile, you can search at Sara Ray. You can also get to us through our very snazzy new chamber website. It’s DouglasCountyGeorgia.com. Or I’m happy to share my information with you. It’s ray@douglascountygeorgia.com is my email where you can look you can look me up anywhere.
Brandon Burton 37:14
That’s right. And we’ll get all your contact information in the show notes for this episode, which will be at ChamberChatPodcast.com/episode166. But Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today and talking to all the Chamber Champions about this great work that you’re doing and really moving your your chamber forward with your communication channels, and really being more essential to the businesses in your community. I appreciate that.
Sara Ray 37:40
Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Brandon Burton 37:43
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