{"id":8358,"date":"2018-12-11T17:44:27","date_gmt":"2018-12-11T17:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.naylor.com\/associationadviser\/?p=8358"},"modified":"2020-03-02T17:39:09","modified_gmt":"2020-03-02T17:39:09","slug":"top-10-individual-communication-channels-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.naylor.com\/associationadviser\/top-10-individual-communication-channels-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"The Top 10 Individual Communication Channels for Associations in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year, we ask association professionals who take our Association Communications Benchmarking Survey<\/a><\/strong> how much they value individual member communication channels. It\u2019s a measure of how well a given medium works for reaching members with association information.<\/p>\n

Every association is different, of course, and one way of communicating might work well for one association but not another. However, our survey finds plenty of commonalities among our respondents.<\/p>\n

Here are the top 10 individual communication channels from our 2018 survey:<\/h3>\n

\"Top<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not much change in the top five from 2017\u2019s list. In-person events, printed member magazines, eNewsletters, webinars and leadership development events (typically held in-person) retained their same rankings from last year. But events for young professionals moved up a couple spots in importance while Facebook was demoted to No. 8. The decline in Facebook\u2019s attributed value may be due in part to the level of mistrust in the social network Facebook users are reporting<\/a> this year. It\u2019s also a time burden for communicators:<\/p>\n

\u201cShiny objects catch our attention the most, and the fast-paced, highly addictive nature of social media makes it a shiny object for associations wanting to listen in on their members, their peers, and their competitor organizations,\u201d said Sarah Sain. \u201cSocial media can certainly be an effective way to engage members, but because it can suck up so much of your time, associations must approach their social media use with defined outcome and time-oriented goals that justify its use,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n

\"NewThree channels are new to the top 10 this year: printed member newsletters, printed show guides and private online communities. Associations are telling us that while print has never really gone away for them, they\u2019re putting extra energy into reviving printed items like member newsletters and show guides because their members enjoy the simplicity of holding a printed piece of information in their hands, learning from it, and keeping it for future reference. Sure, with about 77 percent of American adults carrying smartphones, email and Web-based communications are convenient. But the texts, updates and notifications that constantly ping at us from our smartphones are distracting. Sometimes, a member wants to focus on the story or show floor in front of them, and association communicators are happy to help them do that.<\/p>\n

Rachel Brown spoke with a couple associations about the benefits of print in a digital world in her article last month<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Private online communities are gaining prominence because they can be a secure space for members to gather and talk about topics important to their work without the distractions of traditional, \u201cpublic\u201d social media networks. (Finding ways around distractions seems to be a sub-theme of this year\u2019s Top 10 Communication Channels list!) Wondering what a private online community entails? We recommend referencing this guide<\/a> from Higher Logic.<\/p>\n

How do these communication preferences compare to your association? Do your members value the same or similar ways of communicating with your association? Or does a medium wildly different from the above work better for you? Let us know in the comments below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every year, we ask association professionals how much they value individual member communication channels. Here are the top 10 communication channels for 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":8360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1589,31,12],"tags":[1238,485,495],"class_list":["post-8358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-benchmarking","category-features","category-marketing-communications","tag-association-benchmarking","tag-association-communication-benchmarking-study","tag-association-communications"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Top 10 Individual Communication Channels for Associations in 2018 - Association Adviser<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Every year, we ask association professionals how much they value individual member communication channels. 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