Learn how outside-the-box thinking makes successful leaders. Plus: Commuting doesn’t have to be a nightmare.

Strong leaders are crucial to a strong operation. But while organizations spend heavily every year to ensure that their managers are top-notch, Harvard Business Review contributors Ron Ashkenas and Robert Hausmann warn that associations may not be getting the best return on their investment.

Companies may invest big bucks in leadership training, but many have fallen into the practice of teaching potential managers with a “leadership development ‘equation,'” by which they cultivate their skills and then expect these execs to more efficiently achieve goals.

Taking a different tack, Ashkenas and Hausmann are experimenting with a strategy that requires executives to do critical thinking by presenting them with real-world problems and having them develop the solutions.

“[L]eadership development begins with a real business challenge that leaders need to solve, instead of with a hypothetical case study or simulation,” the authors write. “In order to succeed, they have to act, reach outside of their comfort zone, and adapt their approach.”

The program, currently in its test phase, introduces potential managers to those involved in a specific organizational challenge. After gathering details, candidates are then asked to design and implement a low-stakes experiment to solve the problem.

“The small-scale project would test a possible solution in a low-risk way, in 100 days or less, and without the pressure of having to be right,” the duo explain. “In other words, the main purpose was to quickly learn about what does or doesn’t work.”

No matter how organizations use this method, they agree allowing participants more flexibility is crucial to growth.

“What all of these programs have in common is the belief that by focusing on constant experimentation, leadership development can be a driver for strengthening organizational capability and business success.”

A multilevel membership structure that varies by benefits chosen, not by company size, could eliminate the headache of verifying member revenue or staff numbers. One trade association shares its positive experience with its fledgling tiered-benefits system.

A common source of frustration for executives at trade associations—those with company members rather than individual members—is the verification of company size for the purpose of allotting dues. The concept is simple: For the same set of benefits, big companies (whether measured by staff size, revenue, or unit sales, for instance) pay more, while small companies pay less. But it comes with an obvious problem: How do you ensure every member pays its fair share? The honor system risks enabling freeloaders who understate their size, while verification requirements introduce an undercurrent of distrust between association and member right from the start.

The Portable Sanitation Association International wrestled with this dilemma until about three years ago, says Karleen Kos, PSAI executive director. “It was really basically an honor system, and what was happening over time is that the system disincentivized growth and disincentivized candor, because the larger you got the more dues you were expected to pay,” she says.

The solution PSAI eventually arrived at essentially eliminated the problem. Rather than using company size to set dues levels, it created levels based on varying choices of benefits. As with many other associations that have introduced tiered-benefits structures, the choice is now in the members’ hands. How much they pay is tied directly how much they get. And the incentives now point in the other direction, says Kos

“There is incentive to move up as your company grows, because you’ll save money on things that matter to you. In the same way, there is incentive for us as an association is to engage members more thoroughly in the organization and then to show them ‘You’d be doing better if you stepped up to the next membership level because you’re already using these valuable benefits and paying more for them. In the last year you’ve sent this many people to the conference or you’ve got his many people certified,'” she says.

We’ve examined tiered benefits structures often here at Associations Now, though more commonly at individual membership organizations. Trade associations work in some different ways, but, as PSAI shows, a tiered benefits model can work in that context too. Two key differences are that the dues amounts per member are typically higher for companies than individuals, and the decision to join is often a group decision, rather than a personal one. With more money at stake and more people involved, the transactional value and hard ROI of membership may take priority over intangible benefits and emotionally driven reasons to join.

Hence PSAI’s tiers, which offer specific quantities of specific member benefits [PDF] in increasing volumes and at increasing discounts at each higher level (Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum). The association’s first attempt at the tiers three years ago was both difficult to manage and less successful than hoped, because the packages were loaded with too many low-value “goodies,” Kos says. The revised list of benefits offered in the second and third tiers are now simpler. “We’ve got a basic package of benefits, and that’s the Bronze Level, or the entry level, on both sides [operator and supplier]. With each ascending level we’ve added a small number of things that more engaged companies really do value and buy anyway. Then we’ve packaged it so member companies are, in essence, prepaying at a discount for valuable benefits they would likely have sought from the association anyway,” she says. In cases when packages aren’t used in full, the association comes out ahead.

PSAI is yet another example of letting members and their behavior show you the way. Kos says the prepay model provides “risk management” for both the association and its members. “As an association we’re getting a certain amount of revenue up front that we previously would have waited for til different points in the year. Now we have a better ability to plan, and the members are locking in prices and discounts, sometimes a year in advance,” she says.

Most member companies start at the Bronze level, but when renewal time comes around, PSAI’s nature as a medium-sized trade association proves advantageous, because Kos can easily identify companies that are on the rise.

“As we hear about our members and their company activities, I might reach out to those owners and talk to them about their business, because I like to know what’s going on in our industry,” Kos says, “Then I’ll make a note of it so when it’s time for renewal, or even on that phone call, I’ll say ‘Wow, with that many more employees, you’re going to probably need more certifications, right? It might make sense to think about a higher level next year.'”

The system of multiple benefits packages comes with a couple pitfalls, Kos says. For one, it’s more complex to administer, keeping track of which member companies get which benefits and tracking if and when they’ve received them during the year. (This was especially problematic for PSAI in the first year of the tiered system, when the packages came with a lot of small perks, she says.) But it also forces PSAI to plan carefully and project costs further into the future, if possible, because the rates for membership packages are set yearly.

For instance, the rates for 2015-2016 were set at the beginning of PSAI’s fiscal year, July 1, 2015. A new member company could buy a package in April 2016 that includes two annual meeting registrations and attend PSAI’s Annual Meeting in March 2017, having paid a rate built in to its membership nearly two years earlier. “If we see the need to raise our package costs because our underlying costs are likely going to go up, we have to recognize there’s going to be a lag before we start realizing the impact of that on our bottom line,” Kos says.

Overall, the results have been positive, though. PSAI’s move to a tiered membership structure came after an embezzlement incident had roiled the organization under its previous executive, so the change was part of an overall revitalization for the association, but the past year has been its best year ever for recruiting new members.

“Some of that is certainly momentum from the turnaround,” Kos says, “but I think there’s something to be said too for a member benefits system that makes sense and that clearly ties to value that matters to the members.”

This article was originally sourced from Associations Now and was written by Joe Rominiecki. 

I just back last week from Colorado Springs and ASAE’s Great Ideas conference, where, for the first time, Susan Cato, Director, Digital Strategies and Member Services at the American Society of Plant Biologists, Joe Colangelo, VP, business development at Bear Analytics and I were able to share the huge and exciting work we are doing for ASPB as part of a process of transformational change. Plantae.org is the result, a holistic, content-driven online community that is free and open to all plant scientists.

Main points from the presentation:

ASPB – traditional scientific society, 90 years old, publishes two big scientific journals, Plant Cell and Plant Physiology. 20 staff, 4,000 members.

Business model is under threat from open access – 80% of ASPB’s revenue has come from journals. About 4 years ago realized they needed to diversify their revenue stream, faced with the possibility that their business model was at risk.

ASPB only represents maybe 4% of the total number of plant scientists; wanted to think about how they can increase footprint and provide more value to more people.

Brought in the famous design thinking agency IDEO, to help them go through an ideation and market research process which resulted in a many really interesting ideas for digital products and services that would attract ASPB’s prospective customers.

Resulted in digital products like, a searchable member directory. Professional websites for ASPB members. The Greenhouse – an incubator for crowdfunding for plant science research. A digital career and job training program called Plant Food. MyJournal, which was a way for plant scientists to collect articles into their own library. Each product, however, would need to be individually created and marketed. Beyond the realm of possibility to do it all. 

• Even though the IDEO concepts and recommendations were spot-on, we knew that this was just part of the overall strategy; we needed to improve our value to the community – we weren’t doing a very good job of this. Not only did we have to improve our value, but we had to get serious about expanding our footprint and growing our community. We also knew that beyond our traditional membership – we had a larger community interacting with us…
  
• We started to evolve idea of traditional membership towards the idea of broader community. We were very siloed in our thinking – stuck in the “old” model of membership, so we were not approaching our community in a holistic manner. We needed to truly understand who as in our community, so we brought in Bear Analytics.
  

The seed was planted with IDEO, but it continued to grow with everything Bear Analytics discovered in their data cleanup. Scoured thousands of records in multiple databases, plus market research, including examining organizational records.

Factored in natural abandonment and churn; distilled data down to most engaged based on recency of touchpoints with ASPB, frequency of touchpoints, and specific channels (e.g. journals vs events)

Armed with all this data and research, and the sense that the idea of membership was changing, we realized we needed the infrastructure to support the ideas that IDEO had helped them come up with. We were headed towards a fundamental shift in our overall organizational strategy.

When you put digital products together with a database of engaged people in the ecosystem around ASPB, you get online community.

But you can’t build online community without the infrastructure to support it ASPB went all in and upgraded their AMS and their CMS as well as implementing Small World Labs for their online community platform.

And Plantae was born.

Plantae is an experience; content is what draws people in. We are ensuring that value is provided at all times and in many ways – content is organized in hubs – Research, Career Center, Education, Grants and Funding, Science Policy. We are building valuable content in each of these hubs and throughout the site.

The marketplace powers the experience.

The revenue model – Amazon prime model; the community is free, members can level up for deeper functionality and access. Monetizing products not the experience. ASPB membership is decoupled (you don’t have to be an ASBP member to join Plantae) but ASPB members give you premium access to Plantae automatically. Still in the process of truly understanding how to differentiate Plantae membership and ASPB membership.

This is an incubator project that could evolve in many different ways, and we’ll watch to see what grows inside it. We’ll make decisions based on what we learn. And we know we’re only at the beginning of a long journey.

But if we’re successful, we will have turned a little seed of an idea into a huge, bold innovative project that turns the traditional membership model inside out. And in the process, we’ll have nurtured a huge, thriving ecosystem for plant science – which ultimately is what this is all about.

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

Panel discussions are still a commonly used format for conference organizers. They’re easy to program and put the kids in the show, but rarely add learning value to the paying participants.

Some of the reasons panels fail to connect include:

• Lack of preparation and take-charge leadership in the learning design.
• Watered down content due to general vs. relevant topics and opinions.
• Low learning value equivalent to a lecture. (Instead of a monologue lecture, panels are often dialogues).
• Panelists forget who they’re serving…the audience!

Today’s premium attendee wants to participate and feel like they’re the fourth or fifth member of the panel. They want to experience a fast-paced, unpredictable, relevant and forward leaning conversation. They don’t want a formal presentation with a moderator who ignores the audience.

Holding Panels Accountable

A big mistake conference organizers make with panels is not holding them accountable for the learning outcomes of the session. Coach the moderator and the panel participants just like you would a solo speaker for any other educational session.

Borrowing from TED’s speaker commandments, we created the Ten Panel Commandments. These commandments may be borrowed in whole or part to help your continuous improvement efforts and speaker coaching. Some organizations make this part of their speaker agreement. Others share helpful tips like these in their speaker portal or bulletins.

Ten Panel Commandments

1. Thou Shalt Serve the Audience. They paid good money (at the very least invested their time) to be there so speak to them (not just each other). Remember without an audience, there is no panel. Don’t make them feel like their ease dropping. Help them solve problems and find solutions. Help them connect the dots. Meaning trumps content; always.

2. Thou Shalt Be Prepared. Research the other panelist’s positions and determine what makes you/your position unique from the others. Keep your answers short and concise. Prepare 3-5 key messages that matter to this audience. Be ready to support your points with concrete examples and crisp, concise stories that humanize your message and drive it home.

3.Thou Shalt Not Bluster. When you are speaking, keep it short. No more than 2 minutes is a good goal. People prefer snappy, well thought out answers to interesting questions. Think and respond in sound bites.

4.Thou Shalt Be Additive, Not Repetitive. Don’t repeat what has already been said by another panelist. Speak up if you have a different perspective or point of view.

5. Thou Shalt Disagree Diplomatically. At some point, one of the panelists will say something that is not consistent with your own view or perspective. You’ve got to weigh in! Respectfully disagree without being disagreeable. Don’t disagree simply because you can. Disagree because the discussion will benefit the audience.

6.Thou Shalt Not Self Promote. Some panelists just can’t help themselves pitching their product, service or company. Don’t be that person. NO ONE wants to hear your sales pitch. Instead, make your comments in service to the audience.

7.Thou Shalt Not Pontificate. Don’t talk down to or lecture the audience. You are there to have a conversation with the other panelists and audience as colleagues, not to serve your ego.

8.Thou Shalt Remember All the While Laughter is Good. So have fun.

9.Thou Shalt Remember Images Speak Louder Than Words. If you’re using PowerPoint use text sparingly. Font size should be 40 or greater. Select an impactful image that conveys your message.

10.Thou Shalt Remember Attention Span Drops After 10 Minutes. Change up the energy every 10 minutes with an audience question, poll, story or 30 second rapid response to a question. Follow TV programming guidelines (commercial break every 10 minutes).

What other commandments would you add? What other interventions have you tried to improve the panel discussion format experience?

This article was originally source from Velvet Chainsaw Consulting and was written by Sarah Michel.  

I’ve been working in internet marketing and SEO since about 2000 and there are several skills I have learned that have been instrumental to my success.

As I moved into teaching people how to flip websites I kept hearing the same concern over and over again, “what do I actually need to know to be successful online?”

I get that most people don’t want to spend all day every day learning how to be a web developer but these 7 skills are absolutely necessary if you want to earn good money on the internet.

1. SEO

I’m a huge advocate of SEO. SEO is amazing because if you can get to the top of Google, you can get free targeted traffic to your website all day.

And because those people are searching for what you offer, that traffic will convert.

But how do you master the art of SEO? There are many resources out there that will teach you SEO. I’ve personally been doing SEO professionally for 14 years and the person I trust the most to give you the most up to date information that is working right now is Brian Dean at Backlinko.

He gives no nonsense training and backs it up by data. In other words, he’s not guessing.

One strategy that I invented myself and have been seeing a lot of success with is what I call building link maps. This in essence is the art of doing link building and then building links to those links (link stacking) in a strategic way so they become more powerful.

2. Email Marketing

It has been proven over and over again that nurturing leads through email will dramatically increase your conversions. People like Ryan Deiss teach very specific methods on how to do this.

There are a few good email marketing platforms that will make your job a lot easier. Here are the tools I actually use:

Aweber – I use them to collect email addresses and send out follow up emails automatically.

Mailchimp – these guys have pretty much the same features as Aweber.

Lead Pages – these guys have pop up windows to collect emails that have been tested and proven to increase subscribers.

SumoMe – similar features to Lead Pages but they do have other tools as well.

In my own businesses, I have seen email follow up increase conversions over and over again and in many different niches. This is something that will mean more to your bottom line than anything else.

3. Evaluating Potential

If you’ve ever spent any time over at my Prosperly blog, you know that I love buying undervalued websites. I am only able to do this if I can evaluate the potential of a website and understand that it is actually undervalued.

Even if I’m not buying a website, if I’m starting an online business from scratch it is the same principle. I always look at what the market looks like, and then I look at what the competition is doing online. Are they proficient in SEO? Do they understand basic internet marketing principles?

When those key indicators match up, I know the potential is there and I feel confident moving forward. If the competition is extremely knowledgeable and deeply embedded in the industry, I will typically move on.

On the other hand, when I find a website that is trying to sell donkey socks, I am able to filter that out quickly because believe it or not the demand isn’t there.

4. Backend Website Administration

I hesitated including this one in this article because, let’s be honest, you started falling asleep as soon as you read the heading for this section.

The reality is, if you really want to be successful online you must get a sound base in html. You must learn how FTP works. At the very least you need to become a WordPress master.

You also need to become proficient in working with images. I use a program called Fireworks from Adobe, but many people use Photoshop as well.

If earning a living online is something you are really serious about then you need to learn how to be a webmaster. Youtube tutorials need to become your new best friend.

5. Increasing Conversions

The only thing better than getting more targeted traffic, is taking the traffic you already have and getting more of those people to give you money.

The reason this is so great is because it is completely in your control. If your website converts at a typical 1%, all you would have to do to double your revenue is to increase conversions to 2%. Easy.

How do you do it?

Split test, split test, split test. Also known as A/B testing, this means you show one version of a page to half of your visitors and show another different version to the other half. Then you see which version generated more sales.

I bought a website with traffic one time and just made a few (but significant tweaks) to the site and in less than 30 days the monthly revenue jumped by 968%.

Google Analytics offers a free AB tool in their software. There are other paid options but I will typically just use Google’s AB tool.

6. Pricing

If you don’t price a product or service correctly, this can quickly put you out of business either because you’ve overpriced your product and don’t get any sales or because you’ve underpriced and can’t cover expenses.

You must learn how to arrive at the perfect price so that you maximize revenue and customers. After all, it is so much easier to sell to a previous customer than to a new one. Maximizing number of sales along with revenue is extremely important for the long term growth of your business.

This goes back to the testing part of this article. You need to test different prices to see which one performs better. This is not something you should guess on. There is too much at stake.

Get the price right.

7. Monetization

When I am looking to buy an undervalued website, one of the first things I look at is whether or not I can monetize the website in a way that will either greatly increase revenue or at least give me a good return on my investment of time and money.

Any site can be monetized by putting Google ads on it, but to me that is short sighted thinking. It has been my experience that Google Ads have generated the lowest amount of income on websites that I have owned.

So you need to learn what people want and what they will pay for or how to find good affiliate programs that are worth promoting.

For example, I used to run a website that was a directory of lawn care companies in the US. I sold advertising on the site and didn’t make very much money ($30-$100 a month). I had awesome traffic from SEO and knew I should be making a lot more money than I was.

I created a “how to start your own lawn care business kit” packaged with everything a person would need to know to start their own lawn care business. I priced it $97 and people bought like crazy.

Once I started selling the kit, the website made me from $30k-$50k every year.

It was a powerful lesson on monetization. I learned that I should always be trying to come up with new and better ways to monetize websites that I owned.

So those are the 7 traits I think are most important to master if you want to be successful online. Am I missing something that has been critical to your success? 

This article was originally sourced from Business 2 Community here and was written by Adam White. 

Social media in general has had a profound impact on the way that people interact and do business, but many people have overlooked its effects on nonprofits. Social media ads and sharing have increased awareness for organizations in a big way in the past few years, but how far can that concept stretch? For instance, would using Snapchat be worth it for nonprofits? When done right, all evidence points to “yes.”

Why might Snapchat be worth it for your organization? Here are some of the ways in which the platform has changed the fundamental way in which you can connect with your audience:

Short Ads Provide Incentive for Quick Action

Unlike most traditional online ads, Snapchat’s particular format doesn’t allow you to run ads that can then be looked up later. This means that users who want to respond have more drive to do so quickly, lest they forget.

This is also the perfect medium for promotions that will be running for a limited time. Say you are having a fund drive over the weekend. You can create a series of individual Snapchat messages encouraging people to donate, and post one every half hour to hour or so for the duration of the drive. You can update them to reflect the amount of money needed during each segment to reach your goals.

Succinct Messages Pack a Punch

They say sometimes that “less is more” and that is certainly true when using Snapchat. With only 1-10 second viewing for every standard snap, whatever you post has to grab attention immediately in order to be effective. However, sometimes the brevity of these posts can actually be an advantage.

Snapchat Stories Open the Door for Longer Narrative

Take, for instance, the 2014 #LastSelfie campaign by the Danish chapter of World Wildlife Fund. They created Snapchat ads featuring a number of endangered species and taglines such as “Don’t let this be my #LastSelfie.” This was a masterful stroke on the part of WWF that perfectly illustrated the potential decimation of these species by associating it with the image’s swift disappearance from the platform.

To those who feel that their organizations couldn’t benefit from such short messages, Snapchat does offer a slightly longer-form option. Their Stories allow you to add snaps to a collection, which can be viewed over a 24-hour period before disappearing. This is especially useful to nonprofits who want to show the progress of something over the course of a few hours or a day. Anything from a cleanup job at a local park to coverage of one of the many political debates we’ve been seeing lately could be featured to show the event’s progress. In fact, a number of presidential candidates only recently joined Snapchat, reinforcing the idea that the platform is both relevant and useful for campaigns.

Platform Connects to Younger Demographics

Snapchat is the social media platform that you are most likely to have heard your 14 year-old daughter gushing about, which is a reflection of the generally younger user base that the platform commands. Therefore, it might not be much use to a nonprofit trying to wrangle donations from a predominantly middle-aged crowd, but will be a must for those aiming at the 18-25 sector, even in part. Millennials, in particular, are far more socially and politically active than most previous generations. In fact, according to the Case Foundation, 84% of millennials donated to charity in 2014. Thus, ads aimed at this demographic utilizing one of their favorite social media tools may have a larger impact than you might expect.

These are just some of the ways in which Snapchat is changing the face of nonprofit ads, and organizations as well as their marketing agencies are taking notice. All it takes is a creative touch to utilize these ads for your next campaign!

This article was originally sourced from Social Fish and was written by Brittany Goodwin. 

AuSAE webinar series is back up and running and to kick off this month’s webinar Vera Visevic from Mills Oakley Lawyers presents on "Is your Constitution Healthy or on Life Support?" To view click here.

So my husband subscribes to CEO Update, the most expensive old-school publication ever, which I find entertaining specifically for its old-schoolness. It arrives in all its black and white, mimeographed-looking glory each month, full of association news and association executive job postings. This month’s issue, though, was a bit of a head-scratcher for me, though, as the front page article was weirdly juxtaposed with another article that pretty much cancelled out the headliner.

The leading article was “Strong personal brand is key to gaining a competitive edge,” which stressed how important personal brand is for association execs. From the opening paragraph that you can read for free, you can see that a career coach says “Developing and cultivating a (personal) brand is really a career-long process….It’s important we take an active role in managing it.” True. The article goes on to stress that, in this day and age, social media and your online presence is everything when it comes to branding yourself and staying relevant, stating that LinkedIn has become the primary source for many organizations when it comes to hiring, and that “the lack of an online presence is perhaps the biggest mistake that many executives make” when it comes to managing their brands and their careers. Excellent advice for anyone currently working and/or hoping to be gainfully employed from now until the Internet implodes.

Then, on the very next page, is this article: “Not all CEOs are all in–or even on–the LinkedIn network.” This one talks about how many association CEOs feel that the risks and the hassle of having an active LinkedIn presence outweighs the benefits. A different recruiter than the one quoted in the previous article – the one that states how big a mistake it is to not have an online presence – is quoted as saying that he “does not think negatively of someone not on LinkedIn.” Um, ok? So…which is it, CEO Update–personal brand–the key component of which is online presence – is or is not important?

According to John Graham, ASAE’s CEO, in the LinkedIn is not important article, LinkedIn and ASAE’s Collaborate – is “totally appropriate and smart” for younger professionals working their way up the career ladder….but for executives at his level, networking “around town” is the way you stay marketable. So I–a 47 year-old association professional – re - joined ASAE specifically to be able to access Collaborate – was wrong for thinking that online networking and collaboration is valuable and necessary? Networking “around town” would have been more valuable to me both professionally and in terms of personal branding? I’m pretty sure that it’s appropriate and smart for professionals of any age to have a strong online presence.

Here’s the thing: even if you love your job and are great at it, in this day and age, you can’t afford NOT to be on LinkedIn and constantly building your resume in addition to your personal brand. Ok, so maybe John Graham doesn’t need to worry about it, but for the rest of us, being invisible online – and not being on LinkedIn or having a bare-bones LinkedIn profile and viewing every connect request as suspect and relegating it to the “ignore” pile – is just not smart, career-wise. No matter how great at your job you are, there are no guarantees in life (ok, short of an association exec’s contract…but even then….) and continuing to view LinkedIn as just another Facebook and/or waste of time is just not a good idea. I’m not saying that you need to log hours on LinkedIn – or any social network–each day or even week, but deluding yourself into thinking that it’s not important is, in my opinion, career suicide, not to mention, bad karma.

Yes, I just said that – bad karma. How many association execs are investing in private online community platforms for their organizations, seeing them as valuable ways to increase member value and member engagement? Just today I got an email from Higher Logic about a new case study – ASAE – and how valuable their private community, Collaborate, is. But wait…didn’t ASAE’s CEO just say in the CEO Update article that online communities – including Collaborate – are “totally appropriate and smart for younger professionals”….but not for, um, not-younger professionals such as myself or anyone over the age of…who knows what age qualifies as “younger”? What if everyone on Collaborate – or any association online community – thought that online communities are a waste of time unless you’re “younger”?

The thing with online communities–both public, like LinkedIn, and private, like the one your association is probably either already investing in or about to be launching – is that you have to give to get. If you – or your association’s CEO – thinks that online community is a waste of time, then he/she can’t expect anything different from your organization’s members….or from recruiters in the unfortunate circumstance that he/she finds him/herself job searching one of these days or years.

Nobody wants to be job-hunting, least of all CEOs. But in this day and age, unfortunately it’s not always up to us and LinkedIn is just a necessary evil in terms of professional credibility the same way a website is for businesses. Again, I’m not saying you need to spend hours each week updating your profile and/or sharing in LinkedIn groups or whatever, but uploading a photo, filling in your profile and not just ignoring every.single.connect request….that bare minimum you do need to do to remain relevant. And to association CEOs who depend on keeping their orgs relevant, here’s the thing: yes, as the figurehead of your association, it is your personal responsibility to remain relevant professionally…and LinkedIn is part of that.

So break out that headshot from your last Headshot Lounge (because I’m pretty sure every association exec, ever, has one), upload it to your LinkedIn profile and get to accepting some of those LinkedIn connect requests. I promise–most of the people looking to connect want nothing more from you than just what the connect request states: to connect on LinkedIn. It is not that serious – I promise.

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

ACE 2016 will bring together some of the top leaders and association professionals from across Australasia. Each will come along ready to share their thinking, their plans and their knowledge. Hear from key note speakers Wendy McCarthy AO, Steve Vamos and Holly Ransom, a number of unique exhibitors and insightful breakout sessions. Early bird finishes March 31, register now to be a part of something great. [CEO ACE 2016 Invitation and register here]

AuSAE Networking Lunches offer a great chance to get out of the office and meet new connections in the sector. Each lunch also features an insightful presentation on various topics of importance. Attending a lunch is a great chance to see what AUSAE really offers which is a place like-minded professionals can gather and share workplace challenges and achievements over a delicious two-course luncheon at a great venue. Check out the upcoming lunches below. We would love to see you there!

Perth | Rebranding your Organisation - How to remain relevant in a changing environment on Wednesday 29 June 

Debbie Childs (CEO at HelpingMinds) will present on how to differentiate your business or service in the minds of your target market and [more] 

Sydney | From "Compulsory Union Ticket" to "Membership of Choice" on Thursday 7 July

Siobhan Hayden (CEO at Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia) will share how the MFAA is improving member engagement and retention within the compulsory membership [more]

Brisbane | Creating a Behaviour Based Culture on Thursday 14 July 

Michelle Trute (CEO at Diabetes Queensland) will explore the behaviours you are really wanting your staff and volunteers to adopt in your organisation. How do you define [more]

Canberra | How to advocate your Members on Tuesday 19 July 

Genevieve Quilty (CEO at Optometry Australia) will discuss Optometry Australia’s responsibility to raise the united concerns of the sector with decision makers and to influence the necessary changes to support [more]