I am big on milestones. I love making a big deal about my birthday, the anniversary date of launching my own business, or my seventh NAR Association Executive Institute! It is in this context that I announce nSight Marketing is approaching a milestone. We will soon begin work with our 100th association.
Early in the morning, when the coffee is hot and no one else is awake, I’ve pondered about how to celebrate this particular landmark in the communications business.
nSight Marketing has had the chance to work with a lot of you and I’ve observed that one of the big elephants in the system of communications is redundancy: repeated messages from multiple sources resulting in unintentional “competition” for your members’ attention. No one means to do this but with multiple staff at state and local levels, plus the occasional leadership messages getting tossed into the mix, the communication roles tend to overlap.
So here’s my thinking: if the state association and its local associations would be in sync and clearly aligned in their respective roles in their communications, I think the result would be more members nodding their head in understanding and saying “Now I get it.”
Many of you are doing the right kinds of communications projects:
– Member surveys and focus groups
– Strategic planning
– Goals that include communications
– Non-member recruitment
– Value proposition to create your very own message of value
– Focus on writing to help staff convey a more consistent message
– Communications plans that include a strong, talented gate-keeper
While not every association has invested in doing all of these activities, as I look at the results, I realized there was one step missing. While your communications may be excellent, they get diluted because of so much other communication around it.
I don’t believe the adage “members don’t read.” Rather, I believe they read what is relevant, clear, and easy to understand and/or is compelling to them. If you agree, then welcome to Mission: CONNECT, a pilot project funded and sponsored by the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) to find better ways to connect with members.
Thinking of this milestone and the hurdle I want to help you overcome, I proposed this project to NAR and they thought it was a good idea: exploring – with no predetermined solution – how a multi-tiered association can examine and then re-think its communications. We aim to remove redundancy and make communications part of an association’s value to its members. Thank you NAR for this investment in finding a new answer.
Let’s put our heads together to find better ways to communicate. Let’s take the advice of renowned scientist and inventor George Washington Carver and “do the common things in an uncommon way” [so to] “command the attention of the world.”
If you are a state or local Realtor® Association and would like more information about Mission: CONNECT or you’d like to apply to be the beneficiary of NAR’s support and funding for this pilot program, learn more at nSightMarketing.com/MissionCONNECT.
To previous and current association clients and to those who are hearing the name nSight Marketing for the first time, I hope you’ll consider applying. The online process is very straightforward. I am already looking forward to the day when I join the state/local association team selected to for this first Mission: CONNECT program in celebrating a milestone of your own!
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