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.

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.

Mysteries have their place—in movies, books, and plays. The amount of traffic directed to a website from an e-blast or a Facebook post should not be a mystery.

Have you been in a conversation with someone when they say “Chipotle is bae” or texted with a friend who replies “The Bears are so bad this year…SMH”? If your answer is no, chances are you’re not a millennial, the next boom of people now in the workforce.

A number of AMC staff members recently sat in on the Association Trends webinar titled Meeting Membership Recruitment Benchmarks: Strategies to Turbo-Charge Your Recruitment. We asked four of our participants for their biggest takeaway, which are each included here.

When an association recently transformed its brand and name, it decided to also update its forms, including its membership application.  The membership manager, thrilled at the prospect of collecting loads of great data at a time when fresh members are most enthusiastic to provide it, packed the form with so many items it would be good for only one thing for the new member -- a good snooze. Sound familiar?

"If you build it, they will come." If associations build an innovative, meaningful, networking-rich event that their audience members can take key messages from and implement in their place of work, they will be successful.

As we worked through our website redesign, I took a look at our site’s Google Analytics to get a wide ranging understanding of our site’s traffic.

If you are planning exit interviews for volunteer leaders ending their board service, consider one or more of the following ideas to help ease the transition, gather feedback, and identify engagement opportunities going forward.