New research by Heidrick & Struggles shows that Fortune 500 boards are more likely to favor experienced leaders over demographics when bringing on new directors. One demographic that’s been left out in the cold by this trend? Hispanics, who are sharply underrepresented on boards.

Roughly one in six Americans is Hispanic, but you’d never know it by looking at the average boardroom.

According to a new study by the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, just 4 percent of new directors brought onto the boards at Fortune 500 companies have been Hispanic, a sharp contrast to the 17 percent of the population that Hispanics account for. The statistic is also a decline from 2014, when 5 percent of new board members were Hispanic. In raw numbers, the total stands in even sharper contrast: Just 16 Hispanic board members were appointed this year, out of a total of 399 added across Fortune 500 companies.

In a news release, Bonnie Gwin, vice chairman and co-managing partner of Heidrick & Struggles’ Global CEO & Board Practice, addressed the long-term failure of the executive world to reverse this trend.

“The percentage of Hispanic directors appointed to boards has not improved over the past seven years,” Gwin said in a statement. “We live in a hyperconnected world, and global and domestic markets are changing at a rapid pace—the boardroom needs to reflect that level of change, too.”

The trend is just one highlighted in the latest edition of the Heidrick & Struggles Board Monitor, which noted that the number of filled board positions added this year was the largest since the study was first launched seven years ago. A few other key highlights from the report:

While the number of newly filled board seats grew, the overall number of board seats fell to 4,698 in 2015, a drop of 300 seats from 2014. Of the seats that were filled, most went to people with top-level executive experience—54 percent were current and former CEOs, while 19 percent had CFO 

experience.

In most industries, companies prefer board members with backgrounds that match their industries, with industrial (61 percent) and consumer (54 percent) most strongly leaning toward board members with specific industry experience. There is, however, one major exception to this rule: the financial industry, where backgrounds tended to come from the consumer (28 percent), industrial (27 percent), financial (21 percent), and technology (14 percent) sectors.

On other diversity fronts, the results were somewhat better for other demographics. Women, who make up 50.8 percent of the U.S. population, made up 29.8 percent of new board members. While that number still highlights a shortfall, it has improved every year since Heidrick started its study. African-Americans (9.3 percent) and Asians (4.8 percent) were each within 25 percent of their proportional demographics in the U.S.

So what’s creating the demographic imbalance in the boardroom? According to Gwin, it’s the tendency for new board members to be current or former CEOs.

“The focus on board candidates who are sitting or retired CEOs slows the advancement of diversity in the boardroom, because the pool of current and former CEOs is not sufficiently diverse,” she stated in the news release.

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now online and was written by Ernie Smith.

News of economic weakness shouldn’t unsettle associations, it should prompt them to think more about what’s worth investing in to weather the storm.

When economic times are tight, does it make more sense to take a risk or is it time to circle the wagons?

To be clear, times aren’t tight according to the broad economic indicators, yet. The U.S. GDP is still positive, but it’s slowing; the unemployment rate is low, but so is the labor force participation rate. And according to a recent report by McKinley Advisors, association leaders are generally upbeat, but a growing proportion is more concerned about what the near future holds for their organizations. As Associations Now reported last week, 13 percent of respondents said they experienced a worse year financially than they expected, and 13 percent said they were “very pessimistic” about their association in 2016.

Time to panic? Nah. But those are higher numbers on the doom-and-gloom side of the ledger than McKinley’s report has delivered in a few years, so it’s worth starting the conversation about how associations can lead through the next economic rough patch.

The immediate tension that arises in such situations boils down to investment. Looking into new markets or revenue opportunities can give associations a cushion in a downturn, but boards can stop short of investing in new ideas if the economic picture isn’t sunny. “Most boards are real risk averse,” says McKinley Advisors’ Jay Younger, FASAE. “And they don’t want to have events unravel on their watch.”

But Younger says there’s a potential missed opportunity for association to begin considering what strategies might or might not work in the next few years. “You don’t have to have iron-clad plans,” he says. “But what assumptions are we making about our business that we might want to question?” The upside for many associations is that they’re well positioned to do that questioning, given how well reserve portfolios have performed in recent years. And though you’re planning for bad times, the vision can still be optimistic. “You need to be thinking about not only the kind of more negative scenarios that might unfold, but also what can we do now that we’re in this strong position to really make something meaningful happen on behalf of our members or our mission,” Younger says.

There are some hints in the McKinley report that associations are already thinking this way. Five years ago, according to the study, the bulk of associations’ organizational priorities were on member acquisition and retention. Now, however, no one goal dominates, and associations have ambitions beyond those standbys: “Generating nondues revenue” (26 percent), “Developing new methods for member engagement” (25 percent), and “diversifying membership/attracting new audiences” (19 percent) are also part of the mix now. And two-thirds of respondents say that they will or are likely to expand programs and services.

But if associations seem to recognize that planting your head in the sand and doing nothing is a nonstarter as a business strategy, unconsidered investments aren’t a bright idea either. As a hint of how to think about managing that issue, a brief history less might be helpful. In 2009 and 2010, as the country was just pulling out of the Great Recession, ASAE conducted a series of surveys of association leaders about how they responded to the downturn. One thing the studies looked at were associations’ predictive power in terms of which programs would succeed and struggle.

For nuts-and-bolts association activities that leaders had long experience in, the predictions tended to work out well, for instance, the proportion of leaders who expected publication revenues to slacken matched the proportion who actually experienced that slackening. But those same leaders could be overly optimistic about new tools like online education and meetings, in 2009 60 percent of respondents said they’d expected a revenue boost from virtual get-togethers, but in 2010 only a third actually experienced it.

That’s not to say online education is a bad idea, six years later, it’s de rigueur at a lot of associations. But in difficult times, it can be tempting to overestimate the economic boost of a new idea. Associations can survive a downturn just fine, but not through one magic bullet. Planning ahead of economic worst-case scenarios (or even bad-case scenarios) is always wise, and it’s worth taking a chance on a new idea. But those moves should also be driven by a frank discussion about what your expertise is, and what counts as a realistic expectation for the success of your efforts.

What does your association do to plan ahead of financial trouble, and how do you discuss risk management in your planning? .

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now and was written by Mark Athitakis.

A group of professional videogame teams, players, and other industry leaders formed the World Esports Association to help unite and standardize the sport.

The world of electronic sports (esports) and video gaming has grown into a $400 million industry with tons of devoted fans, and now there’s a new association to oversee it.

The Electronic Sports League, an organization that runs gaming tournaments, announced last week the formation of the World Esports Association to standardize competitions and function as the governing body.

“The formation of WESA is a critical milestone on our way to grow esports globally, and we’re incredibly excited to work with some of the world’s best professional teams,” ESL Managing Director Ralf Reichert said in a statement. “Their continuous support to the formation and structuring of the association only further cemented our belief that esports is well on its way to become the leading source of entertainment of gaming fans around the world.”

The group, a coalition of teams, players, and event sponsors—aims to coordinate tournament scheduling and player contracts, prevent use of performance-enhancing drugs and gambling, introduce revenue sharing for teams, and implement standardized regulations.

Teams that have already signed on include Fnatic, Natus Vincere, EnVyUs, Virtus.Pro, Gamers2, Faze, mousesports, and Ninjas in Pyjamas.

“We have to professionalize everything,” Interim WESA Commissioner Pietro Fringuelli told the San Francisco Chronicle. “This is a $400 million industry, but there’s not one law, one policy, or one regulation that applies to all. It’s grown so much and is attracting so much interest from lots of different parties (that) we feel it’s time to regulate it.”

Players will also have a voice in the body through the Player Council, which will be composed of elected players who can then advocate for topics such as league policies, rulesets, and player transfers.

“WESA offers many opportunities to the member teams and their players, but we’re most excited about the esports’s first official player representative finally becoming a reality,” Team Virtus.Pro player Wiktor “TaZ” Wojtas said in the release. “For the first time in the history of esports, players will come together to organize themselves, and that will enable all of us to get a real say in decisions that directly influence us. With a Player Council sitting at the table with the rest of the decision makers, we’re going to continue to improve the tournament and league organization.”

This announcement comes as the esports industry continues to grow in popularity. For example, the number of spectators who view videogame tournaments online and in-person in large arenas is estimated to reach 1 billion this year, and Atlanta’s Turner Sports is building a 300-seat esports arena in its studio that will allow the network to broadcast tournaments online and on live TV.

This summer’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will be the first professional esports competition that will be played under WESA regulations. Since the competition is being put on by ESL and WESA doesn’t yet include many other leagues and teams from around the world, there exists some skepticism that the new organization could further fragment the esports world, but WESA hopes to bring structure and a standardized umbrella governing body to the growing industry.

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now and was written by Alex Beall.

When it comes to selling online, there are two very dangerous traps that many modern day marketers fall into.

One is the ditch called, “Push, push, push” where all you do is push your product. This is the ditch filled with old-school marketers who think advertising is the only way to get people to buy.

The other is the ditch called, “Sit back and let the business come to me.” Many inbound marketers take this path, expecting their hard work to bring a flood of interested customers their way.

Then there is a path between the two ditches. This path combines the methods of both types of marketers, leading directly to more sales. The key to staying on this path (and the key to generating massive sales online) is to create balance in your message. That requires you to fine tune your marketing for each stage of the customer lifecycle.

What is the Customer Lifecycle?

The term ‘customer lifecycle’ is a buzzword used quite a bit in the marketing industry. Even though it’s used so often, it tends to shift meaning depending on who you’re talking to. This makes it hard to nail down what specifically the customer lifecycle is.

Wikipedia says it well:

“Customer lifecycle management is the measurement of multiple customer related metrics, which, when analyzed for a period of time, indicate performance of a business.”

This can, and does, encompass a variety of key points. For example, some people use the term ‘customer lifecycle’ to represent the time from when the customer buys through when they become brand advocates. Others use the term ‘customer lifecycle’ to talk about the various types of customers that buy throughout the lifetime of your product.

I think of the customer lifecycle as the time from when a person becomes aware of your product to the time she buys and beyond. Here are the five stages:

1. Awareness;
2. Consideration;
3. Selection;
4. Satisfaction;
5. Retention.

Let’s dig into each of these more closely and look at how you can dominate at every one of these stages using smarter online marketing strategies.

1. Awareness

Before a person can buy from you, she needs to know your product exists. This is common sense, which is why it makes up the crux of how companies market themselves.

Ads are shown on television, social media sites and in newspapers. Salesmen are hired to spread the word about the business at networking events and by knocking on doors. Websites are built to educate the public about what is being offered.

In this stage, a business must tell a customer why she needs what they’re selling. When the customer is becoming aware of a product for the first time, she still needs to be educated on:

• The problem the product solves for her;
• The reason it’s so important to resolve this;
• The benefits associated with the purchase.

When marketing to the customers who are not aware of a product, or are unsure of why they should pay attention to the product, education is vital. It’s up to you, the marketer, to describe how a purchase could make the customer’s life immensely better. Here are a few examples of how specifically you can dominate at this:

• Create a special landing page specifically for your target market to educate your potential customers on what you’re selling;
• Use your social media accounts to slowly raise awareness about what it is you sell by getting your fans to help you spread the message;
• Tap into business partnerships to get influencers to share why you’re such a great product with your shared audience.

This is the stage where you need to be offering information in a way that shows your customer why you matter. This is where you need to make your customer pay attention so she sees why what you’re selling matters to her specifically.

2. Consideration

Capturing the interest of the market and educating your potential customers about what you offer is only the first step. From there, the customer moves into consideration mode. She knows you’re not the only company that does what you do, so she’s bound to start doing her own research.

During the consideration stage, your customer is digging into the nitty gritty. She’s giving your company the run down internally comparing everything from price and package to attributes and amenities. She wants to find the best value for her dollar.

When a customer is pinning you against your competition, you need to stay top-of-mind and stand out from the crowd. The first step in doing this is by showing up.

Too many businesses teach a customer about why their product matters but then don’t nurture the interest through the consideration stage. The best way to do this is to set up a marketing funnel to check in with the customer regularly while she makes her decision. There are several areas where you can show up to keep your business name top of mind and make your company look more helpful.

• Offer something for free on your website (and get the potential customer’s contact information in return);
• Put together a drip campaign that your business partners can send out to their list to encourage the sale;
• Post at least once a day on whatever social media accounts your customer uses to stay top of mind.

The more you can show up during the consideration stage, the better. This is your time to provide the answers to all of your customer’s objections bringing them closer to selecting your company to buy from.

3. Selection

Once a person has selected your business to buy from, you’re not off the hook. You must get the customer to complete the sale. Often times, this is harder than it seems.

Converting interested buyers means making the buying process as seamless as possible. It’s also your opportunity to upsell.

The first part of the selection process is how you present your product. Using choice architecture to set up and compare products side by side can actually help you generate more money during this stage of the customer lifecycle. I know because Hotels.com did it and got me to happily pay 19% more than I had originally intended to pay.

To dominate at this stage, you need to do something similar. You need to pay attention to how the options are laid out and how laborious the buying process is.

Customers don’t want to have to jump through hoops to give you money. If you’re leaking potential customers from your website, and people are not following through selecting your company, you will need to take a closer look at conversion process.

• Are you asking the customer for too much information?
• How easy is it to find and buy from you?
• Are you presenting all of the customer’s choices in a way that is pleasing and makes the customer feel good about their purchase?

Fine tuning the conversion process is complex. Often times, having help of a third party or outside agency can make a world of difference. You’re married to your product. Having someone who can look at your buying process from the customer’s point of view can help you identify potential pitfalls and ultimately boost your overall sales.

4. Satisfaction

Once the product is purchased, the marketing is not complete. Even though you have received payment from your customer, you need to keep her happy so she does not make a return or bad mouth your business.

The satisfaction stage gets ignored quite often because it feels like the transaction is over. The companies that continue to reach out to the customer even after the purchase is made are the ones who continue to win business.

A few ideas for how to masterfully market to your current customer base include:

• Following up a few days after the purchase to make sure the customer is happy. She won’t always tell you.
• Continuing to check in with the customer to let her know about new deals or upcoming offers.

This might sound time consuming, and if you do it manually, it is. However, having an automated marketing funnel for post-purchase follow ups will take this important step off your plate and still help your business reach every single customer at the right time after they’ve bought from you.

5. Retention

You’ve almost done it! You’ve won the sale and you’ve kept your customer satisfied after the purchase. Now, you move into the loyalty phase. This is the phase where your customer decides whether or not she is loyal to your brand, no matter what.

Retaining a customer takes continued marketing. You must extend your post-purchase marketing funnel out to continue to sell the benefits of your business to your customer. This can be tricky because you don’t want to violate the person’s trust by abusing the contact information she’s given to you. Here’s how to do it appropriately:

• Offer a reward for being a loyal customer to your business.
• Encourage your customer to publicly talk about you by offering another reward for referring other people to your business.
• Promote customer-only sales and events to show how much you value those connections.

No matter what you do, keep connecting with your customers long after the purchase. Let them know you care and that you’re still around creating exceptional products or services that they can buy.

From Start to Finish

The time it takes your customer to move through each stage of the customer lifecycle varies. Some industries, each of these stages happens quite quickly. Other times, it goes slower. In either case, your marketing needs to be on point so that you can convert more interested buyers and keep your customers around for the long run.

Not sure where you’re hitting a sticky point in the customer lifecycle? Let’s talk. Schedule your free business consultation with one of our team members to pin point where you’re leaving money on the table and how you can fix that.

This article was originally sourced from Social Fish and was written by Goutham Bhadri.

Facebook was once a great way for personal brands to immediately start building an audience for their Pages. In the last few years algorithms have changed all of that, but a new feature aims to solve the organic growth problem.

Many brands and businesses post content, images and video on Facebook as a way to attract likes, comments, and shares. But many of these posts are no longer seen in the News Feeds. This can be a challenge for visibility, which Facebook Audience Optimization offers to fix with targeted posts.

The new feature can help your brand focus on the right audience based on your topic and related interests. With the addition of specific tags a post has more potential to reach your community and attract new Fans.

When you publish a new post on Facebook your brand can is place its content in front of the eyes of thousands of readers who will be more likely to be interested in your products or services. A simple addition of a few key terms is all that is needed.

How Facebook Audience Optimization Can Increase Visibility

Here are several ways the new Facebook feature can enhance your organic visibility:

Targeted marketing on Facebook: While a paid advertising campaign can allow for demographics and keywords, a specific group of tags can potentially attract the same Fans as along as it is not too broad and relates well to your content.

Attracts interested readers: Even if your brand is posting on a specific topic you can include tags for followers who are interested in anything related to that. This can even include the use of large brand names and even celebrities. Facebook provides the potential reach for every tag used.

News feed visibility: A post that includes targeted tags is more like to be seen in the New Feeds than one that is not. If your posts are no longer being seen by your Fans then this could bring your visibility back to their profiles. Tags that include terms that are not too broad in scope, but are more specific will have a better reach.

Increase in conversions: When your brand researches your target market for the right post tags then your readers will be more likely to make a purchase. Because you are honing in on a specific market they will have a greater interest in what you have to offer.

Creating a Facebook Audience Optimization strategy for your brand is simple to set up in your Page settings if your Fan base is under 5,000 Fans. Otherwise the feature is automatically available to all English speaking brand Pages. The next time your business publishes a post you will be able to focus on a targeted audience with the ability to attract more visibility and leads.

This article was originally sourced from Business 2 Community and was written by Personal Branding Blog.

Do you work in Membership?

Social media can and should do more for membership than for any other association department. It provides additional ways to reach, understand, and engage members, helping to make your job easier and more fulfilling. There are responsibilities, for the vast majority of associations, it will be up to those in membership to map social media data to the membership database and make sense of how members are using social media. It’s something that everyone using social media in your organization needs, but if you don’t do it, no-one else will.

You need to own the data, but that’s a good thing! Being more plugged in to social data will not only help you in your daily work (streamlining renewals, retaining members, and more), it will also make you and inavluable resource to your colleagues because of all the ways your work will benefit others in your organization. You’ll be a Social CRM hero, and that could become very important to you career very quickly. So, given all of that what can the membership team actually DO with Social? What can YOU do to help your association get the most out of social? Everybody says you should be using social, but nobody tells you how. This is how.

These are short, checklist-style handy guides that take you step-by-step through the steps to rock your social media activities for your particular department.

Let’s start with Membership

1. Take charge of capturing your members’ social data. Are you recording your members’ social profiles in your AMS? Even if you don’t have an immediate use for the information, you will eventually. Are you updating your membership and renewal forms so that they ask for social information? What about conference registration forms? And how about your membership directory?

2. Track how members are using social tools to connect with your association. Besides knowing where your members are online, it’s also important to know which members are actively connecting with your association online. Understanding connectedness and online engagement can help you predict the likelihood of renewal and create more efficient renewal processes.

3. Track down member contacts. Once the groundwork is laid, social media can serve as a safety net and augmented customer relationship management system. Using LinkedIn as an example: Watch for members who change their current position on LinkedIn. If they are in transition, send them a message to help them land on their feet. If they land in a new position, send them a congratulations message with how to stay in touch.

4. Connect with new members so they’ll be more likely to renew. If the hypothesis that new members who are connected on social media renew at a higher rate is correct, then it makes sense to focus on getting new members connected right away. Update your welcome packet to invite new members to join the association’s LinkedIn group, like the Facebook page, and follow the Twitter account. Recruit members who are active in social networks into a new online membership committee. Provide them with a list of new members and ask them to connect with them online, either through public social networks or through the private online community.

It’s never too late to start applying social media to the work of retaining members. You may already be doing some of this. It’s not about flipping a switch so that everything is suddenly driven by social. Instead look for quick wins and small steps that can make everything you do more effective. Good luck, and have fun getting to know your members in all new ways.

This article was originally sourced from Social Fish and was written by Maddie Grant.

A few weeks ago, LinkedIn announced that they were going to be rolling out some pretty big changes to their Groups feature. I wrote about how the changes would likely impact associations on Mizz Information; in short, here’s an overview of the new Groups features and what associations need to know about each. 

Member Approval in Standard Groups: When a member requests to join a Standard Group, their connections in the group can approve the request. Group owners and managers can also approve any request to join.

• Association Takeaway: You no longer will be able to control who joins your Standard groups, as any member connected with the new member will be able to approve their request to join. Not the biggest deal in the world, but yet another reminder that LinkedIn owns Groups and makes the rules.
  

Better Content Filtering: Because no control over what’s posted in your own group is “better,” LinkedIn “has improved the filtering of spammy and low-quality content so that promotional conversations stay out of the conversation feed and conversations can happen around more relevant topics.” Also, Job listings and job conversations posted to the main conversation feed are automatically moved to the Jobs tab—that is no longer optional and even if you had previously disabled this tab, it’s back.

• Association takeaway: That group you thought you “owned”? LinkedIn will be deciding what content belongs and doesn’t. They’ve already been doing it for a while now, moving valid posts to the Promotions tab…but oh, wait, see #6 for more on that. Also, if your association has its own career board and doesn’t permit job postings in its LinkedIn group, now that it’s no longer optional, get ready to devote time daily to moderating job postings and discussions, and if your job board is a major source of revenue, it’s definitely time to evaluate whether the benefits of housing your org’s community on LinkedIn are worth the potential lost revenue due to people in the group being directed to post jobs to LinkedIn’s job board versus your org’s, as well as how you’ll handle moderating job discussions and posts.
  

All Groups Are Now Members-Only Groups: Bye open groups, joining a LinkedIn group will now require either an invitation from an existing member or the group owner/moderator, or approval of a users’ request to join a Standard group.

• Association takeaway: Operating a LinkedIn group just became a lot more labor intensive, as even Standard groups will require approval of new members…as well as additional moderation due to #s 4 and 5 below.
  

Standard and Unlisted Groups: All groups will be either Standard (for those that are now Open) or Unlisted (for those that are now Private). Standard Groups will show up in search results (both LinkedIn search and search engines) but the conversations inside the group won’t–only members of the group will be able to see them. Group members will be able to invite any of their 1st degree connections to join. If your group currently has public conversations or is free to join, it’ll become a Standard Group. Unlisted Groups won’t show up in search results and only the group’s owner and manager will be able to invite members to the group.

• Takeaway for associations: If your group is currently public, any member will be able to invite others to join and people will be able to see the group name listed in search results request to join. If your group is currently private, it will be Unlisted and will no longer appear in search results either on LinkedIn or search engines, and only group owner and/or managers can invite people to join. So if you currently rely on search to attract members to your group you’ll want to make your group public now (assuming you still can change it). LinkedIn says that the group owner has the option to make the group unlisted only when the group is created, so I’m not sure what that means for groups that already exist as private. For Unlisted groups, the group logo will only be visible on members’ profiles to other members of that group and the group will not be findable via any search engine—so if people have been finding your group, then your organization, via LinkedIn groups, that’s about to end if your group is Unlisted. Here’s more information on Standard vs. Unlisted groups.
  

All Groups Are Now Private Groups: LinkedIn’s “research” (that no group moderator was apparently ever involved in, based on LinkedIn’s group moderators group) has “shown that professional conversations are most effective in a private trusted space, so conversations in groups won’t be visible until you’ve joined the group.”

• Association takeaway: Again, visibility of your group will be drastically limited, if not eliminated entirely in the case of Unlisted groups, and you’ll now have to rely on existing members inviting their 1st degree connections. Group owners and moderators will be able to invite people to join Unlisted groups, but that will involve researching potential new members and reaching out to them rather than vice versa as LinkedIn groups have worked up until now.
  

Content Moderation: LinkedIn has decided that moderation is bad, so they have disabled the ability to have posts be moderated prior to being posted. All posts (except for those that LinkedIn’s mysterious algorithm deems spammy) will be posted instantly to a group without the need for manager approval. Group owners, managers, and moderators can still remove off-topic conversations and place members in moderation, and other group members can also flag inappropriate comments and conversations after they’ve been posted.

• Association takeaway: If you currently require posts to go through moderation before they are posted to discussions, that functionality will now disappear and you’ll have to be a lot more vigilant about moderating the discussions tab. Weirdly, though, while LinkedIn has taken away the ability for group owners and moderators to moderate the content in their own communities, they’ve at the same time decided that they are better judges of what’s appropriate for your group…see #5.
  

Removal of Promotions Tab: LinkedIn says “General member feedback indicates that promotional content in LinkedIn Groups isn’t a valuable experience, as it can quickly lead to spam”…so they’ve decided to remove the Promotions tab. To which they have been moving posts for a while now. Now, instead of the Promotions tab, any posts their algorithm decides are promotional will go to the moderation queue for the owners, managers, and moderators to approve, and job posts will be automatically moved to the no-longer-optional jobs tab.

• Association takeaway: More work for moderators but, in theory, less spam.
  

Removal of Subgroups: Per LinkedIn, “We recognize that subgroups were important to the organization of some of our larger groups. However, for the majority of our members, the experience was confusing. In order to surface these subgroups to members and to help these subgroups grow, they will now be treated as their own independent groups. As a result, group owners will no longer be able to create subgroups. If you’re the owner of a parent group with subgroups, you may wish to rename your subgroups.” Not sure what this means for subgroups of closed groups—I assume this means they’ll also default to being Unlisted groups, which means they’ll be virtually invisible.

• Association takeaway: if you have active subgroups, you’ll want to list them in the About page of your group, and/or figure out some other strategy of marketing them, and the only way people will be able to join is if the owner or manager of the group invites them.
  

Groups Highlights and Email Digests: Per LinkedIn, “We’ve created a digest of the most popular and recent conversations to cut down on emails from your groups and help you follow the most interesting conversations.”

• Association takeaway: members presumably will no longer be able to opt to receive daily digests; LinkedIn will decide what information is relevant to them and send those digests. They’ve already been doing this with announcements, apparently, as this is the message I see now in a group I manage when I send an announcement (the group has 17.5k members):
  

LinkedIn Groups iOS Mobile App: LinkedIn has released an iOs app for Groups (Android version “available soon.”)

• Association takeaway: While presumably members will no longer be able to opt to receive daily email updates from groups (see #9), they will be able to receive push notifications for group conversations. This could either be cool, for those members who want real-time updates, or could result in members complaining about the notifications, which I’m sure will be enabled by default, so you should probably be ready to start explaining how to disable notifications just in case.
  

Now that the changes have rolled out, group moderators are reporting–and I see the same in the groups I manage–a drop in engagement and posts, confusion (mine!) about how “jobs discussions” works (e.g. when you try to post a jobs discussion, you navigate to a blank screen) and an increase in promotional posts now that the promotions tab is gone. I know of at least one association that had decided to close its group because of these changes, and I can say that if my org were in a position to launch a private community right now, I’d definitely be recommending that.

How have the changes impacted your org’s LinkedIn group? Anyone experiencing any positives to counteract the negatives I and others have experienced? 

This article was originally sourced from Social Fish and was written by Maggie McGary.

Amy DeLouise is a video director-producer who specializes in telling real people stories that help nonprofits and companies tell their brand story. Her new book is The Producer’s Playbook: Real People on Camera (Focal Press).

1. Tell a Story

Even if you are telling a nonfiction or “real world” story, you still the essential story arc elements to keep your viewer engagement. Start with a hook that hints at the main climax or challenge, proceed to a brief introduction of the topic and characters. Then you need to build to the climax, some challenge or issue that needs to be overcome. Finally, you reveal the resolution, and perhaps add a call to action if you are selling a product or trying to engage people with a charity or issue.

2. Be Brief, With Exceptions

Wistia has done several useful studies on viewer drop-off, and it looks like a couple of trends are worth watching for social video makers. First, you need to grab your audience in the first few seconds with what we call a “hook.” If you’re planning to use Facebook’s new video tool, you’ll want a silent hook, meaning, a striking image, sequence of images or words that really grab people, since videos play in the Facebook feed without sound until someone clicks. See more on how to create a hook in item 6 below. If you can tell your story in under 2 minutes, great, because the first big viewer drop-off occurs right after 2 minutes of viewing time. But wait, f your audience is willing to hang in there for 5 mins, there’s a solid group you can keep engaged. Then it gets interesting. While viewers do leave, there is substantial engagement for much longer content. Viewers may be switching platforms, that is, they will start viewing on a mobile device, then switch over to a desktop or large screen to continue consumption. Longer viewing sessions tend to happen with content the viewer is already pre-disposed to care about: a documentary on a subject of interest, a training video they need in order to accomplish a task, a story from a charity they like to fund. So this leads to my next suggestion.

3. Know Your Audience

This goes without saying, and yet I’m often confronted with projects that want to be all things to all people. By definition, this means you are ignoring certain audience characteristics and needs, and risk diluting the story for everyone in the process. If you want to reach tech-saavy millennials, build your content for Snapchat and Twitter with links for extended viewing on other platforms. If you are reaching out to boomers and grandparents, go for Facebook. Youtube is still ubiquitous as a platform (more than 100 hours of video uploaded every minute!), and remains the #2 search engine, so including this platform in your audience outreach strategy is generally advised.

4. Know Your Platform

Speaking of platforms, always assess a variety of distribution tools before you go into production. Each one has different “isms” (tech term!) and compression codecs that may affect your design and your acquisition choices. For example, if you’re going to broadcast, you’ll need to acquire in a minimum 1080i, at 29.97fps. But if you know you’re compressing for YouTube or web distribution, you’ll want to acquire video in progressive, at a bare minimum of 720p, but these days I recommend 1080p. And shooting 24fps will save you a lot of compression frames for every second of footage. If you will ultimately be cutting up the video and using some or all of it projecting on large screens at a live event, consider shooting in 2K or 4K.

5. Think Mobile

75% of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2020 (Cisco). That’s huge. So consider what your video will look like on a mobile device when planning your production. Gone are the wide shots. Medium shots don’t play much in my videos any more, either. The story must be compelling in a close-up medium. Avoid tiny type. Avoid flashy swish-pans and zooms which, when compressed, turn to mush. Do your audio mix for several possible platforms and listen to it on a mobile device before you release!

6. Care About Audio

If you have gorgeous images with bad sound, your video will be skipped over before you know it. Always hire a professional sound engineer for video shoots. Don’t expect a videographer to be able to acquire high quality sound with a camera microphone or inputs directly into the camera, as these cannot be monitored for over-modulation or other problems. A sound engineer will use a mixer, listen to every take, and own a variety of microphones for different circumstances. For my productions I also usually send our final edits to a sound mix studio for additional sound design work, plus mixing voices and music properly for our different distribution platforms. The mix for a 10,000-person audience at a conference isn’t the same as the mix for desktop computer speakers. If you are handling audio mixing yourself, aim to output at -6dbfs. And always create mono-compatible audio, ever noticed how people will share earbuds while watching a video? That means each person is only hearing one channel of your show! Avoid over-compressing voices. And ALWAYS listen on a mobile device before outputting.

7. Manage Your Assets

If you’re shooting one video, you should be planning for the next 20. Be sure to shoot some “evergreen” footage that can play in other projects. Metatag footage with keywords plus the date of the shoot and initials of the DOP (Director of Photography/Videographer). Take the time to add additional metadata such as locations and people’s full names, not “Shawna and Bob talk”, so you can track images down for re-use in the future. Get interviews transcribed. This is extremely inexpensive and saves hours of fishing for soundbites in the video editing room. Plus you now have quotes for easy use in social shares, blogs and newsletters. Hire a BTS (Behind the Scenes) photographer for a few hours to shoot the video shoot. You’ll get incredible mileage out of these photos for social shares, and you may even need some shots for coverage within your video.

8. Reward Engagement

Give viewers tools to engage with your video after they’ve viewed it. For example, Facebook has added a feature that allows you to post exclusive video content to your pages to “reward” viewers with added content. YouTube allows you to embed links to take viewers to other content, as do various hosting platforms such as Wistia, Sprout Video, and Vidyard, which also help companies by tracking user engagement with powerful analytics.

Social video is exploding. With a little planning ahead, you can harness its power to share your 

story.

This article was originally sourced from Social Fish and was written by Maddie Grant.

NSW Government announces eHealth strategy 

At last week’s CeBIT Australia conference NSW Minister for Health Jillian Skinner announced the state’s eHealth strategy for the next decade.

The strategy will see a digitally enabled and integrated health system, with a focus on delivering patient-centred health experiences with quality health outcomes, and builds on the government’s existing blueprint.

Ms Skinner said it was a 10-year program of innovation, investment and implementation, with identified goals in the short, medium and long-term.

“It’s a policy that outlines the direction that we will take using the latest advances in technology policy and also including integrated care and ongoing enhancements to performance, quality and safety in our health system,” she said.

“The strategy builds on the significant investment that the Government has made over the last five years, including funds in the current budget to further digitise our state wide health infrastructure and systems to deliver a suite of eHealth initiatives right across the state. We continue to build a high-speed broadband network, the NBN of Health we call it, which currently connects 150 hospitals and health centres across NSW including those in rural and remote locations. This enables our clinical and corporate systems to be used in hospitals across the state and in ambulatory care.”

South Australia’s Clevertar begins diabetes trials in the US

Health software company Clevertar, which specialises in virtual personal assistant programs, has begun trials of its new diabetes coach program in the United States.

The South Australian company will run the trials in Pennsylvania as it progresses its plan of reaching global markets with its “Anna Cares” software.

Anna Cares is a cloud-based solution that allows health care professionals to keep in contact with clients in their home, and to check that they are taking their medications and taking part in daily activities.

The company has also received a $600,000 investment from third-party partner Konica Minolta and $420,000 in funding from the Australian Government to help it expand.

Clevertar plans to use the diabetes prototype for other non-communicable chronic diseases in the future.

Australian startup CliniCloud partners with American telehealth provider

This week Australian health-tech startup CliniCloud announced it would be entering into a partnership with leading US telehealth provider Doctor On Demand.

CliniCloud, founded by two Australian physicians, Dr Andrew Lin and Dr Hon Weng Chong, is a home connected medical kit, with a digital stethoscope and non-contact themometer. It allows patients to record and their track temperature, heart and lung sounds at home, and share these via video consultations with doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists.

It is designed to allow for faster and cost-effectiveness diagnosis, and to prevent unnecessary in-person checkups or trips to hospital.

“CliniCloud is thrilled to be partnering with Doctor On Demand. The opportunities for smart technology to change how Americans access quality healthcare and improve the way we live are endless, and Doctor On Demand is at the forefront of innovation in this space,” said Dr Lin.

This article was originally sourced from the Australian Ageing online and was written by the Editorial Department, editorial@australianageingagenda.com.au

Consumer Affairs Victoria has requested more information from cancer charlatan Belle Gibson as its investigation into allegations of fundraising fraud at her wellness empire intensifies.

The consumer watchdog began investigating Ms Gibson in March after it was revealed she faked cancer to market her The Whole Pantry business.

It is also looking into claims that several charities had not received thousands of dollars in promised donations via the sale of her award-winning health and wellness app.

Six months on and CAV has reassured her abundance of followers seeking justice that investigations are “ongoing”.

Initial investigations were hindered when the self-proclaimed wellness blogger failed to comply with a statutory notice to answer 27 questions and provide documents and information, including copies of any charitable receipts.

The move forced CAV to take Ms Gibson to Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, where she was given until July 9 to comply.

CAV withdrew the notice after receiving the documents on that day.

0 a CAV spokesman told the Herald Sun.

“While the investigation is ongoing, Consumer Affairs Victoria is unable to comment further.”

Ms Gibson, 24, fooled her more than 200,000 online followers with claims she was beating a malignant brain tumour and other illnesses through nutrition and holistic medicine.

In sensational media interviews, she admitted she never had cancer and blamed a “troubled” childhood for her problems sorting fact from fiction.

CAV could not say how long its investigation would take — or pre-empt any charges.

Under consumer law and Victoria’s Fundraising Act, a person or business can face fines of more than $28,000 and 12 months’ jail if he or she makes “misleading or deceptive” statements in trade or commerce.

This article was originally sourced from the Herald Sun and was written by Rebekah Cavanah.