Nov. 21, 2009 - The End of the Poodle Skirt as an Association Management Tool
“Can you believe it?” one of my dinner companions asked, awe in her voice. “I mean, we've been coming to national meetings for all these years, usually looking for something to take back with us—some idea or trend or event which would justify our attendance. This convention, we are right in the middle of a whirlwind of real excitement.”
She was speaking of the annual convention of the National Association of Realtors, held recently in San Diego, and her statement clearly articulated the mood of the meeting. For once the excitement was real, not generated by banners and balloons and hype. It was tangible and intoxicating. Meetings were filled to capacity, hallway talk was animated, and twitters were piling up at #NAR09 and several less official channels.
I couldn't avoid remembering the countless times I'd been a part of planning committees for member meetings and conventions, and how desperately we'd tried to think of ways to generate this kind of excitement and participation. We'd held countless 50's Mixers, free food and drink in the Expo area, honorary celebrations for Realtor-of-the-year, discount registrations, door prizes and gift basket raffles. And still, even in our finest moments, only a miniscule percentage of members attended and those were usually yawning behind their hands and departing before the final event.
What made the difference this time? It was this: the National Association of Realtors was embracing innovation—significant, risky, breath-taking change. NAR was saying to members, “Hey! Listen up! We're not trying to stuff the change genie back in the bottle any more. The transformation of the real estate business is a reality, and we're ON it!”
The most obvious change NAR announced was a multi-million dollar commitment to Realtor Property Resource, a national property database for members. Of course there were grumbles, finger-pointings, and peekers-under-the-bed. But the pure fact of the matter was that this tool was long overdue, and is happily embraced by the average member (whose only vested interest is in his or her own professional success). Better yet, the commitment had been made: there would be no 6-hour box-lunch directors meetings with 800+ uninformed directors trying to make a business decision of a 12 million dollar magnitude: this was a done deal. “Just work out the details of implementation—RPR is a necessary step and we've taken it.”
Be that as it may. I must add, as a 30-year veteran of Realtor association management, NAR's most significant change effort was in the announcement of the “Game Changers” winners.
The background is this: in August, NAR announced to its more than 800 associations and specialty divisions that it wanted propositions for 'game changing ideas', ideas which would significantly transform the profile of the association and which could be utilized by all members as a resource. In return, NAR would fund and assist in the implementation of these ideas.
Once again there were folks who were on their knees, lifting the dust ruffle and peeking under the bed for boogeymen. But there were over 200 entries, twelve winners, and 20 runners-up. The announcements of the winners included an astonishing display of new ideas, many of which clearly challenged existing traditions in governance and policy. The winners included everything from the development of member communications and virtual fund-raising to public relations programs and consumer membership categories.
And not only did NAR fund the implementation of winning ideas, it also hired consultants to work with each of the winners to make sure each idea had a good chance of success. The goal is to produce a working guide for each program, a blueprint for success that others may adopt in their own operations.
This is association change which originates at the grassroots level, not from the top down. And the unspoken result will be the opportunity to watch some counterproductive association policies, practices and assumptions wither and disappear in the face of fresh new programs.
Watch my lips: can you say 'member benefit'? I think NAR said just that at its November Convention, and we all came away with renewed optimism and belief in the real estate industry.
Sure beats the heck out of poodle skirts and a sock-hop mixer.
This week the National Association of Realtors announced the implementation of a BHAMS (Big, Hairy, Audacious Member Service), a real estate database for members only which will comprise the largest accumulation of property and property-related data in the world. It’s going to be known as RPR (Realtors’ Property Resource), but I like the acronym ‘BHAMS’ myself.
Now, NAR has always been quite masterful at creating a flurry of consternation before any national meeting so that attendees feel as if there’s a significant reason to attend. (It’s a good technique: left to themselves, a group of bored members can be a dangerous thing.) This time, though, NAR has outdone itself. We will all descend on San Diego and participate in a man-made quake of earth-shaking proportions.
The problem will be one of conflicted interests. The major conflict is, of course, change—a hated word in any association’s lexicon. But more directly, the BHAMS will be seen as competition for existing MLS organizations, and there will likely be dramatic wringing of hands and bloodshed in the hallways. Some of that will be legitimate: the Big Hairy was birthed because MLS operations are often autonomous local “silos of information”, often serviced by vendors who remain far behind the technology curve. And looming behind these towers is the great Cloud of Google, with its challenging technology announcements, one of which came as late as last week.
As the melodrama plays out next week, one prominent collection of villains will certainly be named: the Association Executives and MLS administrators. Just 24 hours after NAR’s webinar announcement I am reading comments on blogs that say, “There go the jobs of the high-priced staff,” and make reference to the tyrannical hold staff members have over Realtors’ business success.
My point in writing this blog is this: no matter how you as an AE or an MLS manager personally feel about the Big Hairy, you’re going to need to pay attention to your role on stage. You’re already cast as the bad guy (along with a few others, of course).
The solution? First, get informed. Read some vendor and consultant blogs, considering the source of the comments and the personal agendas that may be lurking behind the words. Go to Realtor.com and read the RPR Fact Sheet. Secondly, spend some time thinking this through as a part of a bigger picture: list your personal pros and cons quietly and thoughtfully, by yourself, with your office door closed. Then, professional that you are, list the pros and cons of RPR for your MEMBERS. Compare the lists. Know what’s on each—they probably won’t be the same in every point.
Now, having armed yourself with some quiet reflection before you get to San Diego, and independent of the hysteria that’s rapidly building, plan your position statements. Remember, every statement you make about the Big Hairy should be prefaced with “It will be good for members' business” or “It will be detrimental to members' livelihood”. That first list you made should never see the light of day—it’s your personal list of conversational red flags. And try to spend as little time as possible stuffing the tired old cat back in the paper bag: RPR is inevitable. Don’t waste member resources on succession from the union or shooting the messenger or suing NAR: these methods won’t work, and you’ll be the ‘bad guy’ with a special interest (i.e., protecting your “empire”. One question posed in the comments of a blog bluntly asks, “So you think it’s more likely that Association Executives will voluntarily take pay cuts and lay each other off, rather than trying to find ways to disassociate from NAR to save their jobs?”)
Instead, understand that this is an opportunity for you as an AE to be wise, rational, and supportive of necessary industry changes—without sacrificing your organization’s health, viability, and importance to members. It’s an opportunity to lead by example, to sort through the fears and myths (no, the RPR is not a national MLS). The devil will be in the details, and the details will give you plenty of opportunity to contribute your expertise and insight as we work together on finalizing the implementation of the Big, Hairy, Audacious Member Service.
I am sure getting tired of being asked to join Facebook fan and cause pages . I actually refuse to do it anymore: for the most part it seems to be an ego trip on the part of the organizer—it has little to do with creating community and building business. Organizations (and that includes associations, non-profits, and commercial groups) seem to think that if they’ve tossed a Facebook page out on the internet, they’ve completed the course in Social Media 101, and their members/fans/target market can not accuse them of avoiding ‘technology’.
Well, guess what? The whole social media thing requires a little more attention than a couple of hours of work on a Facebook page. In fact, those two hours you spent on an organizational page may well have been time wasted: you invite everybody, they agree to be a fan or a friend, and then they go away, never to return. No community, no contact, no contribution. Nothing.
What’s the solution? First, think of your organization’s Facebook pages as an integral part of an entire marketing program. Link your Facebook page to your Twitter account. Add your Facebook url to every email signature that originates from you or your staff. Link your Facebook page to your blog and your association website. Add Facebook apps which will enhance your readers’ experience: YouTube, MyFlickr, and Twit Poll. Loosen up controls so that members can freely post and interact with your page: get out of the way of the user!
Secondly, ask yourself how a Facebook page can enhance the value of membership in your organization. There are many instances when Facebook simply isn’t a fit, and your page building efforts are time wasted. Members of some organizations simply aren’t receptive to social networking. That may be because they plenty of other opportunities for other forms of cooperation, or because the demographics of the membership aren’t a good fit. If, for instance, you have a viable website with a lot of public and member interaction, a Facebook page may be redundant. Let’s say you’ve developed a great Realtor association website, complete with a public property search, access to your MLS for members only, standard forms, a couple of informative blogs, and some forums with lots of input. What’s to be gained by a Facebook page?
And even if you don’t have a compelling organizational website, if you don’t have a dynamic content on your Facebook page, why would anyone remember to come back to it?
I’m an enthusiastic advocate of Social Media Done Right, but not of Social Media Done for the Sake of Doing It. As a part of your evaluation of your Facebook efforts, consider adding one of the statistics programs which monitor your visitors (like Friend Statistics), which will help you quantify how effective your page really is.
Each year the Center for Digital Government takes a survey of U.S. cities to evaluate how municipalities are integrating information technology into operations to better serve their citizens.This year’s report is just out, naming Corpus Christi, Santa Monica, and Flower Mound, TX, as winners in the various size-based categories. The cities instituted various projects: on-line meter reading, traffic light management, and a fiber optic infrastructure—all enabling citizens to have better, more efficient municipal services.
Interesting to me were the categories used to incorporate technology into the provision of services and reach out to a wider range of constituents. Certainly, Realtor organizations have long been aware of the need to provide a cooperative of business services to members, the MLS being the foremost example. That alone has driven the technology awareness of the association. But perhaps it’s time to take a cue from digital government and look at some of the other categories of association technology infrastructure.
Online Self Service. The CDG report states that 82% of participating local governments have webcasts: streamed audio and video, both live and archived, and that 74% have RSS feeds to their sites. Associations might consider using the same technologies for providing member and consumer education: think brief podcasts on topics of specific and timely interest like short sales, foreclosure issues, consumer questions, and technical advice for members. The important concept in designing sites is to ask “What does the site audience --member or public-- WANT to know? That’s a far different question from “What would we LIKE for them to know.)
And of course RSS services are absolutely essential to understand and utilize. Begin your tutorial in RSS with Wikipedia and go from there: there are lots of informative sources on the internet and it’s a subject every internet user needs to know about and use.
Don’t forget online courses and short tutorials for your website, too. For Realtor associations, NAR is releasing an online training program for new leaders, and the Internet Crusade folks are finalizing a program which will enable association staff to write their own online courses.
Participation and Transparency
The CDG report states that as far as municipalities are concerned, a whopping 87% have meeting minutes available online (archived and searchable) and 73% conduct online surveys or polls. Another 67% have blogs and 64& use social networks (Facebook, My Space) and microblogs like Twitter.
As organizations, we must be aware that our members are demanding transparency. Gone are the days of secret handshakes to get information like financial statements and minutes of the board of directors. The ‘real world’ expects information to be increasingly available—note the current government initiatives on transparency as an example—and our members expect no less. As association managers we find ourselves needing to learn how to present information effectively, not how to protect it from scrutiny by uninformed eyes.
Issue Education
In the municipal government sector, issue awareness and education is translated into ‘environment sustainability’, a current core value of cities. As trade organizations, Realtors must have real estate business sustainability as a its core value—that goes without saying. The question, however, becomes “What are we doing to utilize our resources to promote real estate business sustainability?”
Telling the public that it’s important to use professional real estate services is no longer adequate. (Actually, statistics tell us that the public already knows this, even in the age of accessible property information. ) Producing meaningful market statistics and analyses for our members and for the public is a core value. Becoming a source for timely and relevant information on general economic and specific business trends is another. Mobilizing immediate and successful member and public response to legislation initiatives is yet a third—how many real estate associations have turned to the public to assist with their campaign of extending homebuyer tax credit, for instance?
As an industry, real estate is in a period of monumental re-invention of itself. Developing an organization of members who are informed about the future and energized by its challenges is the job of the Realtor organization at all levels. Is your organization among the top digital organizations working to achieve this goal?
(Author’s Note: If you’ve got a digital success story or a percolating idea, share it here, now! Blogs are supposed to be interactive. Practice up! Jwl)
A behind the scenes look at organized real estate--what works in an association, what doesn't, and what a long time AE sees as challenges facing the industry from the viewpoint of its professional organization.
RSS Blog Feed
.jpg)
.gif)
.jpg)