What the Heck ARE “Algorithms” and “Analytics”

Associations have a unique role to play—and an inherent “leg-up”—in the burgeoning social media landscape. A built-in constituency and easily accessible demographic information provides trade organizations with a vast array of marketing statistics that a consumer-driven organization can only dream about.

Possessing the information, however, does nothing to serve your members more effectively or increase your value to them. It’s what you DO with the information and how you USE it that increases value.

This is where the value of algorithms and analytics become clear to association marketing professionals.

How Associations Can Benefit
An algorithm in today’s e-world, is any kind of search engine. Examples include Google/Yahoo, Amazon/Netflix/iTunes recommendations, social media filters, etc.

A proactive association intent on stepping ahead of the curve, can use algorithms to help them serve their membership on a number of fronts:
  • Recommending trade show/annual meeting seminars
  • Suggesting continuing education courses and useful publications to purchase
  • Connecting members within same cities or when traveling
  • Providing vendor and consultant information, links and databases
Algorithms provide both short-term benefits (i.e. better seminar registration numbers) as well as long-term gains. Capturing the information generated over time produces enormous amounts of data that can illustrate industry trends and provide more accurate member profiles. Click-through rates, where members come to your website from/where they go next and other online behavior can provide associations with a much more accurate picture of how and where to find new members and how to serve existing members better. This process of reviewing web-generated data is called analytics.

Like It Or Not—It’s Here To Stay
It is important to remember, young workers (aka. your potential members) have cut their teeth on e-media. The 30-something generation prefers to receive their news and information in an electronic format. Facebook and Twitter are simply part of their lexicon and are fully integrated into their lives. Marketing professionals who want—and need—to reach younger professionals MUST employ these tools. Facebook and Twitter refer a ton of traffic to host sites across the board. Once your membership is “friending” your site and tweeting your members, gathering information about their likes, dislikes and online activity is a valuable tool to ensure your organization remains relevant.

Where Do You Start?
To make better use of algorithms, analytics and the benefits of social media, you’ll need a webmaster who fully understands these concepts, and/or an on-staff employee charged with both managing your social media and maintaining your database. A first step that requires minimal investment would be a third-party vendor or consultant who can help determine your needs and design a blueprint for moving forward.

At LTD we provide a full-range of marketing services, including online marketing assistance. Call us if you have questions and we will be happy to sit down with you to discuss your online marketing needs.

For more information on these topics, suggested readings include:
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=52634

http://searchenginewatch.com/2167961

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/Web-analytics

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/web/09/30/like.button.web.traffic.mashable/index.html?iref=NS1