Regardless of the size or focus of your association, you’ve likely experienced a situation in which you didn’t have the expertise required to tackle a goal in the most effective way. Eventually, most of us encounter situations that could benefit from professional consulting expertise. But how do you know when your association has reached that point? Here are six signs to look for that indicate bringing in external consulting expertise might be right for you:

How should association leaders respond to member requests for more openness, communication, and accountability from their board of directors? This is the question AMC governance and strategy consultant Anne Cordes and AMC principal Mark Engle, along with Jed R. Mandel, Esq, discussed in their 2016 article on the role of transparency in association governance. While there are several benefits from the policies and practices called for in the name of transparency, it can also do harm when applied without regard for board privacy.

It’s no secret that social media has taken over the lives of millions—and our many association members are no exception! That’s why AMC clients use this low-cost, high-impact advertising and engagement tool to its fullest with innovative initiatives that truly are worth Tweeting about.

As the season of holiday gatherings winds down, I am sure that on more than one occasion a dinner was interrupted by unsolicited political banter. Around the association table, I would like to offer my gift of five reasons to be optimistic for the 115th Congress and the new presidential administration.

It’s that time of year again – time to light the menorah, decorate the tree, and celebrate the end of what was hopefully a fantastic year! It’s also the time when many people make resolutions for the coming year and plan how they’re going to do things differently to make it even better than the one before.

We all fall into the same trap. “This is what we’ve always done,” we say. These are dangerous words for associations. They lead us to complacency and we risk losing our ability to feel fresh to attendees. The National Association of Neonatal Nurses (NANN) recently ran into the same issue – and decided to approach it head on.

Jennifer GoodSmith wasn’t always a “tree person,” but over the course of a branding campaign for the Morton Aboretum in Lisle, IL, she’s come to know more about trees—especially the arboretum’s trademark oaks—than she ever thought she would.

600,000 to 1,000,000.

That’s how many business books are published each year in the U.S. alone, according to a recent Forbes article. How in the world do you know which ones are worth your time?

Queue AMC’s Management Team members, who took the time to share their favorite leadership and business books and articles. If you’re looking for career-impacting reads, you’re in the right place! AMC asked:

Quick Tips for Video Production, Part 1

So you’ve planned out your video, and everything seems to be in place, but now you need to make it happen.

I’ll be honest. Conferences cause me great anxiety. Working for an association management company has provided me with an “out” in that I’m typically working at the there is a collection of coworkers, familiar faces with whom I’ve some sort of established relationship.

A group of staff from the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) recently participated in Association Forum’s Centennial Day of Service at The Fred Matthews Senior Housing Center, a 60-unit affordable housing unit for seniors. They had a great afternoon visiting and playing bingo with residents, while spending time with other members of the association community.

All good content marketers – corporate and nonprofit alike—dream of elusive viral posts and skyrocketing social growth. But how do you get there? How do you find and engage your audience and better yet, elicit likes, shares, and retweets beyond your wildest dreams?

The association world is constantly changing and it’s key to make sure each segment of your association continues to expand and adjust with the current market climate. Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are an important part of any association, and it is essential to revitalize SIG meetings that have become stale over time. The Administrator/Coordinator SIG at Association Management Center recently went through this process and, by using the steps below, had amazing results. The SIG boosted attendance by 30 percent, had increased member engagement, received tons of positive feedback, and had much happier members overall. Consider the following to revamp your SIG today:

More Solutions for Common Web Problems

As mentioned in the first article in this series, there are a variety of ways to complete a task on the Web, but some solutions are better than others. Below is a continuation of the list of common Web problems you may encounter in your website updates and some more-optimal ways to solve them.

Better Solutions for Common Web Problems

There are a variety of ways to complete a task on the Web, but some solutions are better than others. While looking at items that are part of a typical Web update routine, I listed below some common web problems, possible solutions, and then much better solutions. Because there are so many ways to address items on a website, these certainly aren’t all the possible solutions, nor are all of the “poor solutions” always incorrect. The goal for any website is to keep things clean, consistent, and engaging. The “better solutions” listed below are recommendations with this intent in mind.

When reading Seth Godin’s blog post from back in January, Who Is Us?, I got excited. In only four sentences, he spoke volumes about numerous issues associations have had for what seems like forever without ever mentioning our industry.

Quick Tips for Video Preproduction Part 2

Now that you’ve figured out what you have to make videos and what you want to do with it, it’s time to start planning. Using your established purpose, goals, message, and resources, now you can begin writing a script, setting a timeline, and creating a distribution plan.

Quick Tips for Video Preproduction Part 1

You’ve made the decision to start making videos, and now comes the scary part: where do you start?

Right now, the world looks like your oyster. You could go so many ways and do so many things in your new medium. The sheer number of possibilities can make beginning this process seem very daunting. Done properly, video marketing can add personality to your marketing strategy and grow a valuable connection to your audience, as you read in our previous post on video marketing. Before you begin, it’s necessary to narrow your focus by answering a few questions.

It’s time for the next installment of Associational Management Center’s Ask the Management Team question series. This quarter, we reached out with a question about something everyone can relate to: BUDGET! But instead of focusing on the challenges related to limited budget, we wondered what our executives would do if they had more money to spend. We asked AMC leaders to answer the following question:

If your budget increased by $200,000 for the year, with the expectation all of it must be spent in 2016, where would you invest to make the biggest impact? Why?

It’s easy to feel lost when it comes to video marketing, especially when what first comes to mind is big-budget commercials produced by large companies. At first glance it looks daunting, but video is more accessible than ever and can be done on a budget.

Rebranding has been a hot topic in the association community for years, and 2015 is no exception. Associations regularly have been seeking to better understand tips and tricks for effectively rebranding their organizations. Here at AMC, our client, the Awards and Personalization Association recently went through the process and we thought we’d share our experiences with you.

Earlier this year, three AMC staff members took part in an educational session at the Association Forum led by Dean West, FASAE and President of Association Laboratory in Chicago. Dean’s session focused on Association Laboratory’s latest whitepaper, an environmental scan of the association industry entitled Looking Forward 2016.

So you just finished a board meeting and amidst all the generative conversation and decision making, chances are, you have a few action items before the next meeting. It is hopeful that these action items correspond to the strategic plan and will fit nicely into a work plan that already exists. However, this is not always the case and you are now not only tasked with completing the action item, but creating a work plan that links it with the strategic plan to track your work and ensure you reach the board’s requested goal.

AMC principal Mark Engle, DM FASAE, regularly consults on Board development and governance topics, so when we asked him to sit down and talk about one of these topics in front of the camera, he jumped at the opportunity.

In 2015, more than 142,000 users visited the career centers of AMC’s client organizations. Of those 142,000 impressions, how many could potentially have been new visitors to the career center, thus providing an opportunity to build your brand during a professional’s first exposure to your organization?

Remember that year you didn’t attend the Annual Conference? The food looked perfect on Instagram. The hashtag blew up Twitter. Your favorite conference buddy was tagged endlessly on Facebook during the new learning labs which were located OUTSIDE in Palm Springs. And…you’ve always wanted to go to Palm Springs…And, the sky was perfectly blue. Nobody was wearing a coat. Everyone was smiling; and earning millions of CE credits while smiling. This feeling that’s welling up inside you? This, my friend, is the fear that you’re missing out or, more commonly referred to as FOMO.

Sometimes associations take the wrong path, whether it’s in their membership strategy, their marketing strategy, or their advocacy efforts. Whether it happens with leaders fully understanding the situation or by mistake, going down the wrong path obviously isn’t ideal.

On a monthly basis, AMC’s Management Team holds a meeting that includes a generative discussion on a topic of importance to association leaders. This month, the topic focused on competition to the association industry, and the discussion jumped from innovation to risk to Board composition to the speed at which associations make decisions.

Just as it is important for association leaders to hear from established leaders on topics of importance to our industry, we feel that it is also important to hear from up-and-coming professionals on topics important to them. Thus, we've created our Ask the Young Professionals series here on the blog. Here’s our second question, as well as answers from 10 of AMC's young professionals.

A few years ago, I sat for the Certified Association Executive exam. Thankfully, I lived to tell about it! Reflecting on the process, the exam, and the post-exam timeframe, here are 15 anecdotes/recommendations/ideas I want to share with anyone preparing for the CAE exam next week or the exam in December (which, if you haven’t started prepping yet, you’ll want to get on that ASAP).

Healthy board relations are a critical component of successful board performance and require cultivation and nurturing. AMC principal, Mark Engle, DM FASAE, regularly consults on board development and governance topics, so when we asked him to sit down and discuss these topics in front of the camera, he jumped at the opportunity.

On a quarterly basis, we ask our executive level leaders (our Management Team) to provide their insights on a pressing question for the association industry. Here's the next question and answers from a subset of our leadership.

You can’t fulfill your mission if your business is failing. Your business cannot succeed unless you have a growing base of satisfied customers. In my experience, these two statements are often underappreciated by associations. In fact, as I’ll share, they are sometimes just ignored.

She may not have the name recognition of Beyonce or Dave Grohl, but in the content marketing world, Amanda Todorovich is a real rockstar. She is a regular presenter at Content Marketing World and other large industry conferences, and was named a Direct Marketing News 40 Under 40 recipient in 2015. And that’s in addition to her day job – leading the content marketing efforts for the Cleveland Clinic, one of the world’s leading health systems.

Kenyans and Ethiopians have dominated the sport of distance running for many years. What sets them apart from the rest of the field is their technique of pack running. They run in a large group (or pack) and use each other to set the pace, fend off the wind, and conserve energy. Even though they are working together, and the goal of each individual is to try and win the race, they realize that in order to do so they need the help of their teammates.

We hear often about organizations working to “eliminate silos” and encourage collaboration and shared ownership. When it comes to content strategy, this process also can mean increased opportunities for inconsistency, disjointedness, and maybe even conflict.

From January 10-13, five of AMC’s meeting professionals descended upon Vancouver for Convening Leaders, the large annual event put on by the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA). When they returned, we asked them to tell us about their top takeaways.

To me, marketing is like detective work. It takes a lot of trial, error, and data to answer your burning questions, but once you put together pieces of the puzzle, it becomes an extremely effective tool.

The year 2015 was a good one for a number of reasons – not the least of which here at AMC is that we launched our blog and began developing and publishing our own unique content on our own website. With more than 220 staff members, there is a lot of leaders within our walls, and we are now better able to share their expertise more consistently with the association community.

In the vast majority of cases, especially in the association industry, the answer is no. While we may not always hit our goals, the overwhelming likelihood is that we haven’t completely (and absolutely) failed.

Creating value is often about embracing change. It’s about exploring options in relation to an organization’s overarching business goals. Here are a concrete example and a number of considerations about how change permeates all of what we do in associations.

Several AMC staff members attended the Association Forum of Chicagoland Holiday Showcase this past Tuesday, and we asked them to share their biggest takeaways from the event.

Content marketing—let’s start with this one. HubSpot defines content marketing like this:

“a marketing program that centers on creating, publishing, and distributing content for your target audience—usually online—the goal of which is to attract new customers.”

As we have done with our Management Team, we have plans to develop questions for our young professionals to answer on a quarterly basis. Here’s our first question, as well as answers from 10 AMC young professionals.

It's that time of year again – time to eat some turkey and pumpkin pie while watching the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions play in their annual Thanksgiving Day games. But Thanksgiving is also a time where we should do as the holiday’s name instructs – give thanks – to our friends and family, to people who have helped us, and for those of us in the association community, to our volunteers and members.

From our previous discussions on membership forms and a new customer’s first experience with our organizations, we learned that less is more. The form and online experience both need to be as inviting and user friendly as possible. However, cumbersome forms and processes are larger than just membership forms; it impacts conference and event registration forms as well.

I attended the 2015 ASAE Annual Meeting in Detroit and there was one topic that really grabbed me, probably because I heard it over and over again; that topic was “Grit!”

On a quarterly basis, we will ask our more than 20 executive level leaders (our Management Team) to provide their insights on a pressing question for the association industry. Here's our first question and answers from a subset of our leadership.

In the age of e-learning, webinars, and podcasts, there still are occasions when an in-person experience is irreplaceable. I had one such experience recently in Vancouver at the Call To Action Conference (CTA Conf), which focuses on conversion rate optimization (CRO).

We didn’t realize the magnitude of the AMC Challenge we posed in our September 15th post: Send us your ideas of how to turn your membership application into a delightful experience for a new member’s first encounter with your organization. When the inbox remained a hollow chamber for almost two months, we decided to take up the challenge internally.