By Terry Terry, Message Makers

• Who reads the content you write for your members?
• How do you know?
• Do they see the issues you describe as crucial to your field?
• Does your turn of phrase turn them on or off?
• Are they reading all your messages, or just marking them all as “read”?
• How do you know?

Think Like a Reader
Quick exercise: Grab your latest publication and a timer. You have 5 minutes to put yourself in the place of one of your members. You, busy member, want to know before the timer rings what this document has to say that matters to your work—and if anything is interesting or useful enough to be read in depth.

• Did the articles get to the point? 
• Did they make it easy for you to get the summary on a quick skim? Was there an executive summary? Headings? Key information bolded, called out or in a list?
• What stood out enough to draw you in? Why?
• What did you skip over entirely? Why?

This “imagined reader” exercise is useful as a tool to hone clarity and organization—and to make your content more valuable and useful to your harried members.

Reminder: Avoid information overload. It can be more valuable to make fewer, simpler points in a clear way than to present many details and obscure the points that apply to a local situation—and interfere with your readers retaining the content.

There’s another step to take, though, for optimal content.

Gather Data
As an association, you know your members. You may gather demographic information to create a detailed picture of your membership. Even if you don’t, you definitely know where they are (where you send their mailings) and that they share your broad area of interest.

But what do you know about their specific interests? 

• What do they think of the content you’ve run lately? 
• What grabs their attention in what you’ve produced lately? 
• What issues do they wish you would address?
• What content do they care deeply about, enough to read carefully and refer to later?

The best way to find out? Ask them. Gathering feedback costs little except your time to ask.
We regularly produce training events of 1,000 attendees for an association client of ours and use a 3-question evaluation to get their open-ended thoughts on how to improve the events. One subset of attendees aired an interest in more content focused on their specific role, leading us to propose and develop a new training track for this role that became one of the most popular at the events!

One simple feedback mechanism: taking a few minutes of face time at events to gather feedback on your association’s member content. But there are other opportunities available year-round.
It’s easy to create short surveys using services such as Survey Monkey—or your own Google Spreadsheet form. Promote your survey link, wait a bit, and end up with a spreadsheet detailing who cares about what.

Another way to find out what they’re thinking: What are they saying about your organization or your area of interest?

You can’t eavesdrop in their meeting rooms, but you can investigate what shows up online in their blogs and social media.

They may already be responding to @you or #you, making it easy. If you’re interacting in the realm of social media, pay attention to what topics your members talk about.

Google Alerts on your name can help to see what’s being said about your brand in other areas.

You Create Value—That’s Your Brand
The member content you provide supports your members’ work in deeply important ways and helps to build your association’s brand.