Collaboration is the New Association Content

What is the new black these days? According to Pantone, one of the fashionable new colors for this Spring is one of my favorites, an azure-like color called PANTONE® 15-4722 TCX Capri. So is Vibrant Capri/Azure the new black?

If Vibrant Capri is the new black, collaboration is the new association content.

Why collaboration? Most associations' content goes in a single direction. Newsletters, blogs, and webinars are all about telling, teaching, and training. Telling, teaching, and training are great—sometimes. Other times, our members want to be a part of the conversation.

They want to adapt the learnings to their specific context, get ideas from peers similar to them, and solve big, thorny problems. That’s where collaboration comes in.

Collaboration is also engaging. People skim articles, watch just a few minutes of a video, and multi-task during webinars. But collaboration requires complete and total, immersive attention.

Collaboration is also great for re-engaging your long-time members. Do your long-time members go to the conference but are not really at it? Instead, you can find them in the foyer, hallways, or at the bar chatting away. It’s because the topics are not all that interesting to them anymore. They have other issues they want to discuss, likely hard-to-solve problems that collaboration can help with.

Some associations are already creating space for collaboration. Sometimes, boards, committees, and working groups collaborate, but these usually are just a small subsection of members.

How can you get more members to collaborate more often? More ideas for creating opportunities to collaborate are coming in subsequent posts!😄