Reid All About It

Is that even a real word? Yes, it is, says Dictionary.com: truth·i·ness [troo-thee-nis] (noun): “the quality of seeming to be true according to one’s intuition, opinion, or perception without regard to logic, factual evidence, or the like: the growing trend of truthiness as opposed to truth.” And Wi

Quiz time: How often do you try a new recipe? A different gas station or restaurant? An unfamiliar magazine or radio station? When’s the last time you talked with someone about an idea or project that flopped, or asked for constructive criticism? When did you last seek ideas from someone with a diff

How’s your first-year member retention rate? Not that great? You’re not alone. First year retention is a challenge for most associations, maybe because they spend much more money on acquiring new members than on guiding them into the association. Last week I suggested several onboarding ideas, begin

There’s a restaurant saying, “turn ‘em and burn ‘em.” Get customers in the seats and back out the doors as quickly as possible. Although turning tables helps the cash register, you risk alienating customers if they think you’re only interested in their money, not their dining experience. I thought o

Museums and associations, they’re more alike than you think. Nonprofit mission-driven membership institutions governed by member boards Engaging audiences through education Traditional and hierarchic cultures Professional staff siloed in departments Risk-averse and slow-moving Striving to remain mea

100 years ago today, Juliette Gordon Low called her cousin and said “I’ve got something for the girls of Savannah, and all of America, and all the world, and we’re going to start it tonight!” She gathered 18 girls that night to form the first Girl Scout troop in the U.S. Today, the Girl Scouts [...]

I fell into the association world. During the first interview my future boss and I hit it off talking about food and travel. The position sounded interesting so I bit. I’m not the only one. I bet many of you accidentally landed in associations. After that first job, we were hooked. We were promoted

Brian Solis, in his post, The Importance of Brand in an Era of Digital Darwinism, talks about tone-deaf brands like Netflix that didn’t engage with customers and didn’t monitor social network conversations, consequently screwing up and losing their customers’ trust: “Brands that fail to instill this

Close your eyes and imagine a perfect world. Your audience never misses a post because your content is so interesting and entertaining. They can hardly wait to share it. Your reputation as the industry’s premier resource spreads. Your Google ranking and retention rate improve as more traffic and mem

Google’s new privacy policy takes effect on March 1. It allows them to collect and consolidate user data from all its web properties — Search, Gmail, YouTube, Picasa, Maps and about 50 other Google services. You can’t opt out. Google has always collected this data at its individual sites. Now it wil