This morning's email bring an excellent post from Kevin at Associations, Inc--

When “A-ha!” Meets “Well, Duh”

Kevin is summarizing the ASAE conference, particularly the three key
ideas he reports are the topics of a lot of the conversations there.

One of those topics relates to giving up control.  Associations
need to give up the control they think they have, the discussions
go.  This is, after all, the Age of Social Media, and many
associations are afraid of social media because they're afraid
of giving up control.

Ah! you scoff.  That can't be true of OUR association. Our
members are Independent Contractors.  Well, let me ask you:
have you read the questions on AE talk lately?   There are
a large number of them which talk about nothing else but
'control' (spell that 'rules' and 'fines' and 'policy' and 'bylaws').

Kevin has a paragraph which I think should be read aloud
every morning in real estate associations around the country:

"Do associations really believe they are in “control” of
communications, messages, members, or even their own
destiny? And who are these associations? Because I’ve
never believed that to be the case and am surprised if others
do. Any association that works in government relations,
for example, is well aware of how very little control they have
over anything. Any national association that has components
knows that it has no control (and any local component with a
national association knows that it has no control). Any trade
association that works in an industry that is bigger than a
 breadbasket knows how little control it has over anything."

The second concept that seemed endemic at the ASAE
Conference, and was rolled out regularly when the role of
Social Media in associations was the topic is the following
mellifluous phrase: "Associations are for Associating".  Let
THAT roll off your tongue and then Kevin will swat it down with
this comment:

 " You’re an association, not a chatroom. Your job is to help
your members succeed, not bring people together so they
can talk and you can sell advertising space."

In other words, associating is a means to an end, no matter
WHAT tools you use--and those tools could be face-to-face
meetings and/or the many facets of Twittering and Facebooking.
What you are about is supporting members' success, and
that should be the first question you ask about a service or
product: How will it lead to member success?  And the next
important question you need to ask is, How do I measure
that contribution?  

Too often we measure the success of our Realtor associations by how
many people show up at a meeting, or come to the Christmas
Party.  But that's a subject for another blog.