You’ve finally done it! You created a YouTube channel for your Association and embedded your first video creation on the organization’s website. Within no time the phones will be ringing off the hook with new members signing up, existing members registering for events, and sponsors looking to get involved with the best group in town.

But then, nothing.

How come some organizations shine through online video while others sink to the bottom of an ocean full of content? Poor quality, poor content and poor implementation are just a few thoughts that come to mind. With that being said, here are ten tips to help your videos rise above the milk and become the cream of your Association’s communications efforts.

How not to create a website video.

K.I.S.S. – Keep it short, stupid!
With an overwhelming amount of content available online, it is incredibly difficult to capture the attention of your audience for more than a few minutes. Sure, Kony 2012 had a 30-minute run time, but you will find your videos to be much more successful around the 1-2 minute range. Besides, a YouTube video view shouldn’t be your end goal – it should be getting your visitors involved in your web content and engaged in the Association activity

Content - Make it interesting, please!
Are you simply reading out the text on your website? Booooring. Make it worth my while to click the play button, and I might stick around and watch the whole thing. Show me something humorous, or something personal - most of all, entertain me.

Pay Attention to the Audio
Nothing is worse than poor audio. Too high, too low, or washed out by ambient noise, spend some time in post-production to ensure my ears are not violated. A small investment in an external microphone can go a long way towards a higher production value.

Video Composition
Don’t stress about HD – chances are your web video will not be viewed full screen at full quality anyhow. Focus instead on effective composition and appealing visuals to catch the eyes of your viewers.

Create Catchy Annotations
Did you know you can add text to your videos after they have been uploaded? These are called annotations, and also act as hyperlinks to get viewers to view other videos, visit your channel, or subscribe. Effective use of annotations can help you easily build your subscriber count and video views.

SEO’d Descriptions and Tags
Just like your website, you want your videos to be easily found via popular search engines. Choose descriptive titles that your audience will search for. Put your website URL at the top of the description field to increase its visibility. Don’t forget to fill out relevant tags – using at least 10-15 tags will greatly increase your video’s presence in search results and “related videos” suggestions.

Customize your Embedding Options
Do you want to make your video autoplay whenever a visitor lands on your homepage? How about removing the clutter of the video player controls? All of these attributes can be easily controlled by appending specific parameters to your video’s embed code. There is a great page here on all valid YouTube embed parameters.

Fit and Finish
If you made your video with the built-in webcam on your laptop, it is going to look like it. Represent your brand image appropriately with the same level of quality of video productions. You wouldn’t design a magazine ad in MS Paint – would you?

End with a Call to Action
What do you want your audience to do once you have their attention? Subscribe? Sign up for your newsletter? Register for events? Make the next step obvious for your visitors, and keep them on the path of least resistance to your conversion goals.

Be Human
Everyone gets enough commercial bombardment on television these days, don’t subject your viewers to more of the same business speak. Open up, be human, and be relatable; make the first steps in building a relationship with the viewer. The Association game is very much a relationship industry, and videos can help you build those connections.

While not the only things you can do to improve your video efforts, this is just a short list of considerations that will get you thinking before you produce your next big web video. What tips did I miss? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Support Services Unlimited offers affordable full-service video productions for all budgets – check out our video page for more information. Don’t forget to subscribe to SSULive on YouTube to catch all future Assoc Life comics, and share a link to your YouTube channel below – we want to see what you’ve been working on!

“Breakthroughs come from an instinctive judgment of what your customers might want if they knew to think about it” – Andy Grove, Chairman, Intel

After months of designing, building and testing, the new online membership renewal system is online and waiting for your members! But what comes next completely overwhelms your office and your staff. No, it’s not a jam-packed email inbox - it has nothing to do with emails at all…

It’s the fax machine!

Your members are thrilled that your online renewal forms are easy to edit and fill-in online. All they have to do is export as a PDF, print the forms, walk over to the fax machine and send it over, allowing your administrators to manually type in all of the information.

Something’s not right here. This tool was designed to save admin overhead and make the lives of both your staff and your members easier. But instead it has created even more work than before, eliminating the anticipated overhead reductions and negating the significant technology investment. Accessibility for your members is a key consideration when implementing any new technology, but at the end of the day you need a plan to phase out admin-time-robbing and archaic systems from your organization.

You need to change the path of least resistance.

I like to think of members as water. No, they aren’t translucent liquid, but they like to follow the path of least resistance. Right now, the fax machine is the path of least resistance; it is the same process they have been using for years. Heck, they probably have your Association’s fax number on speed dial. By making the process of faxing increasingly difficult, you can get your members to start following a new path – one that saves time and resources for all involved.

Here are just a few thoughts:

1. Remove your fax number from all forms, especially the electronic ones!
2. Start phasing out your fax number on all communications (email signature, etc.)
3. Make the online process incredibly intuitive with large submission buttons and simple instructions.

It won’t happen overnight, but with a little ingenuity you will start to see the number of faxes decrease. Online registrations will begin to pick up. And before you know it, the path of least resistance for your members will become the path of least overhead for your organization.

How have you helped your members adopt new technologies? What old technology do you still have hanging around your office? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

I recently had dinner with a friend and Association professional, in which we discussed the value inherent in social media and the best way to get started. Simply put, he has been, and remains, hesitant to get involved with social media for quite some time. The reasoning? He just doesn’t know if it will work.

I’ve had this conversations many times before; there are so many new tools out there, how do we know which one will work for our organization? Will any of them work at all? Or are we better off remaining with business as usual? Instead of rifling off statistics or case studies, I offered a simple piece of advice:

You won’t know if you don’t try.

Every group is different, and there is no cookie-cutter solution to selecting which new tool to use or which social network to get involved with. However, if you invest just a bit of time investigating, you might end up with a winning solution. Below are my three steps to trying new technologies:

1. Try – Plan to try something new for a set amount of time, whether it is three weeks or three months. Set a baseline measurement before beginning, something you can track your progress with; maybe this is website visits, event registrations, total impressions or some other metric.

   Ex. Establish and support a Twitter account for a three months trial period. Track website traffic, with a baseline measurement of 1000 monthly visits.

2. Measure – Take periodic measurement relevant to your baseline

   Ex. Received 1200 visits in month one.

3. Know – three months is up, did it work? Compare your end figures with your baseline, and know where you stand. If you found success, that’s great! You’ve identified a valuable new tool for your Association and are already on your way. If not, no worries; you gave it a shot, and maybe it just wasn’t for you or your members. Focus your energies elsewhere, and be guilt free.

   Ex. Monthly Website traffic increased to 1400 visits in 3 months – continue using Twitter for communications.

   -or-

   Monthly website traffic saw no significant change in traffic as a result of Twitter activity – consider pursuing a Facebook page.

See that wasn’t so hard, was it?

I have seen the fear of the unknown paralyze Associations. Of course we all have busy schedules and lots of fires to fight in the meantime, but how long can you push innovation aside? What if everybody was too skeptical to adopt email in the 1990s? Or the Internet? Things would move a lot slower now, that is for sure.

The Association landscape is changing. I saw an interesting post that talked about how some members and board members of the
American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) formed their own committee on blogging, separate of the Association. The industry for magazine editors is changing in the face of evolving publications; the decision by the Association not to pursue the field of blogging is a missed opportunity to remain relevant to their membership.

The ability to innovate and adapt will play a major role in natural selection for Associations in the coming years. Those that embrace new technologies and opportunities will thrive. Those that find solace in fear will face difficulty retaining their relevancy in a changing world.

What scares your Association? How will you overcome it? Share your experiences below, and how you plan to try new things in 2012.

I read an interesting article this weekend from Steve Drake on Association websites, talking about how common it is to find Association websites that are poorly designed, poorly maintained or all of the above. It got me thinking about why this is, and I think it comes down to dollar signs.

An interesting thing happens with Associations that differs from for-profit enterprises. Despite a sizable budget, many feel the need to nickel-and-dime any significant investment in technology or infrastructure. It may be the fact that strategic planning beyond the year ahead can be difficult with a revolving door of board members. Or it may be that they simply don’t know any better. In the end, they always pursue the cheapest option possible.

All too often however, the old adage “you get what you pay for” holds true.

The website is your Association’s primary communications asset. Communicating with members, the public, potential sponsors and more is all handled through this online portal. A well-designed and well-built website can provide numerous benefits, not limited to:

• Increased exposure through SEO;
• Reduced admin costs through automation of processes;
• Improved registrations through simple user-interface;
• Greater brand perception through appealing visuals;
• And more.

So when you are looking to refresh your Association’s online presence, think long term, and think about the benefits a great website provides. Because a band-aid always falls off, you need to fix your wounds the right way – with the right expertise utilizing the right tools.

How does your Association website look? Is it delivering the value it should? Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Associations face numerous threats in today’s world of constantly evolving technology. Social media is vastly changing the way professionals look at networking, and Associations need to dramatically rethink their value proposition to stay up to date. I won’t be getting into the “what” or “why” these growing changes can be a threat – you can check out a great post from Lead Creation on “Does your Professional Association have a future?” to get a better idea. Instead, I am going to look at how you can utilize these emerging technologies to your Association’s advantage, allowing you to innovate and remain relevant in 2012.

Crowdsourcing
Social technologies have opened communications into a two-way street for your Association; are you utilizing them. Using these platforms to understand the motivations of your members will allow you to better deliver what your members are looking for. Facebook and LinkedIn both allow functionalities for “polling” your audience, and easy way to get a rough understanding of opinion. Don’t forget about contests as a way of soliciting the feedback of your audience and getting their buy-in on the future direction of your organization.

Finding new blood
As times change, so too should the people steering the ship. Consider getting some fresh perspectives on your committees; social networks can help you find the perfect match. Social networking sites will allow you to identify key influencers and thinkers in your industry, and allow you to build the connections to get them involved. Not only can you follow their ideas and activity to determine organizational fit, you can see how much of an audience they influence (an audience that they can expose to your Association as well). Begin by identifying influencers, making casual interactions to develop the relationship, then the “ask” for getting them involved within the Association.

Be the filter you want to see in the world
As the impending Sharepocalypse bears down upon us, how will you stand out from the crowd? Establish yourself as THE voice for information in your industry; aggregating key blogs, filtering the noise, and delivering your professional perspective on the news will capture the attention of all industry professionals, turning you into the beacon of light in a storm of information.

Education on demand
Not social per se, but technology today in general can help you improve the Association’s biggest revenue generator – educational offerings. New webinar, video and e-learning technologies allow your members to get the education they want when they want it. On the administrative side, the strain on resources can be greatly reduced by replacing multiple events with re-usable recorded sessions. Finally, venue and travel expenses are a thing of the past as webinar technology delivers your events worldwide.

As the times change, so too must your Association to stay relevant. While new technologies and Social Media can pose threats to the ongoing viability of your organization, they also offer exciting new opportunities to leverage to the collective benefit of your member base and your industry as a whole.

How are you utilizing new technologies and media to improve your member offerings? What will you do differently in 2012 to be successful? Share all of your thoughts and comments in the section below!

Really – our Association’s Social Influence is a benefit to our Members?  How so?

Like my post on why Non Profits should increase their blogging activity, this article provides some more information to help Associations begin thinking about how their online presence is a Benefit to Members – and not just a way to advertise your activities and attract new Members.  Leveraging your online social activities into benefits may help increase buy-in and resource support from your Board and obtain a more deeply engaged Membership base. 

Social influence matters – and it is going to matter more in the near future.  Danielle Leitch published a post
way back in April 2011, where she refers to a ForeSee study that concluded “Less than 1% of website visits, on average, come directly from a social media URL.” – not much influence there.  The same study also found that 18% of website visitors acknowledged being influenced by social media prior to visiting the site – getting better.  More recently, I’ve seen reports where they mention rates as high as 65% of site visitors having been influenced by what they saw in social channels before pursuing a purchase.  Regardless of differences in techniques used to make those measurements – it is an astounding increase over a very short period of time. 

The value of your Association’s Social Influence to your Members comes from helping your Members have website visitors who spend more than less-engaged visitors not influenced by social media.  That same ForeSee study concludes website visitors who acknowledge being influenced by Social Media are more loyal and satisfied customers who spend more than visitors who were not influenced by Social Media.

Unfortunately, you are not going to be able to directly point to any of your Members’ Google Analytics data and directly attribute anything to your efforts.  Then again, they aren’t going to be able to point to anything in their Google Analytics data and directly attribute an increase in online sales to this behaviour.

That’s the funny thing about influence – you don’t really know if it is affecting your customers directly – or not.  And if it is, you can’t really assess its impact.  And this is where I believe things move from the analytic to the heuristic.  Where we need to move away from concrete data on which we have become so reliant – and back to what computers can’t do - apply our ability to reason “fuzzy” facts and connect seemingly disparate information.

I’m conflicted – yet I believe.

My “spidey sense” is telling me this is real and influence is going to have a big impact in the time that lies ahead.  Furthermore, influence takes time to build – it’s based on trust and credibility – both things we don’t give away nonchalantly.  Consequently, if we don’t start now with a concerted effort to establish trust and credibility – we’ll be too late when it is measurable and quantifiable. 

I want to be prepared when I’m asked “What is our online social influence?”

That’s great – thanks for sharing – the blog title mentions my Association’s Social Influence and how that is a Member benefit.

You’re right – that is what I promised and you’ve been patient with me – so here we go… the big finish.

If we believe influence is an emerging and important online “thing” I believe an Association can create indirect value to their Members by becoming a trusted online voice.  By extension, all Members of the Association receive the benefit of the influence of the Association – well by association.  It works like this… If I am a Member of The X Association, a trusted and respected voice about ‘X’ and I am seeking quality information about ‘X’- The X Association will certainly hit my radar.  When I am looking for suppliers of X, I find The X Association’s Member Directory.  Because The X Association has a great Code of Ethics for their Members, and I like what I am “hearing” about X from the Association – I naturally tend to prefer the Members of X over non-Members of X. 

Personally, I like Members of The X Association because I don’t need to sort through a pile of information about the non-Members individually.  I have essentially reached a point where I have “trusted” choices from which I can find X.  My problem is made simpler because I can restrict my diligence efforts to only these trusted choices.

While this may be a bit “out there”, I have come to believe our online world is morphing to resemble the world before the internet – only far vaster.  When I think about how I bought a car before the internet, I would ask those people whom I knew and trusted about cars what they thought of the various choices I was considering.  Now, I can spend more time talking about the game and less dealing with the nuances of vehicle characteristics or which size engine to buy.

The role of Associations is facing similar changes – they need to extend their “ways before the ‘net” to the new online world or risk irrelevancy and disappearing altogether.  Finding ways to deliver a different type of benefit – similar to what has always been done is one of the keys to surviving this transformative period.   Those that embrace some emerging “things” before they’re absolute and concrete will be in the best position to help their Members.

Becoming a trusted voice for the industry or profession which your Association represents will benefit your members.  I hope the next time one of your members wonders why you’re investing all that effort into all this new-fangled Social Media stuff you’ll be better equipped to help them understand the benefits they will receive from your success. 

Who knows – they may even be willing to help by becoming engaged participants.

Are your social networking activities of value to your members? Share your successes and failures, and how you measure your online influence in the comments section below.

Michael Rogers’ recent collection of Webinar Week posts are a great reference for anyone who hasn’t yet jumped into the “Hybrid” event pool.  I kind of presume everyone is doing some kind of virtual event at this point – if you’re not, you soon will be.  While the previous posts help with background and understanding of how to “make the sausage” – this post presents 5 simple steps you can take which can have big benefits to you and you Members through your events. 

We all need a little leverage these days – I hope one of these may be your fulcrum.

It seems a lot of folks are getting interested in “hybrid” events – the kind where some of the audience is “live” in a room, and some are “virtual” – watching the event unfold via the Internet.  I believe there is considerable opportunity to improve the state of the art by using things we do every day in slightly different ways.  I’d like to challenge those of us who professionally provide “hybrid” events to take them up a notch and really get these.

Most hybrid event providers are employing three fundamental components in their hybrid event – a video of the speaker / panel, the slide deck presented near them, and a Tweet Chat mechanism for the remote folks to provide thoughts and input.

All well and good – great first steps.  You are able to carry the activities to the virtual participants and give them a mechanism to provide their thoughts.

I think you’re missing a very big boat if this is all you’re doing.

Engagement

Remember, back in the day, when you’d call or have coffee with someone to talk about how excited you were about an upcoming presentation.  You’re just as excited today – but you’ve likely replaced a phone call with a Tweet.  Even more powerful – larger audience - and it takes less time; smart and effective.

As a speaker, I always wanted to know what my audience thought before the presentation.  With that knowledge, I believed my audience would feel I’m quite in tune with what they’re thinking and I deliver extremely relevant information.  Today, with the magic of HootSuite and a #hashtag – I can!  I turn on a channel for my upcoming engagements monitor the hash tag for the event and voila – my audience thinks I’m timely, relevant, and a great use of their time.  Sometimes, I’ve even “seeded” the channel just to get a reaction to things I may be on the fence about presenting.

First Step: Create a hash tag for your event / events – get them going early in your event communications and tell your audience the speaker(s) are listening. 

Second Step: In your interaction with the speaker(s) – tell them about this opportunity and help them get engaged.  As the event date closes in, contact them and share what you’ve seen in the channel(s) to help them prepare – my guess is they’ll thank you for the information.

Feedback

One of the biggest challenges hybrid events face is consolidated effective feedback – learning the opinions of the entire audience.  It’s one thing to listen for applause, count hands; whatever you do when you want to emphasize a point or respond to the opinion of your audience. 

How do you know what your virtual folks think?

The moderator watching the Tweet chat is going to deal with the “feedback lag” – the time it takes the remote attendees to think about what they want to say, frame it in a 140 character English message, and then type it, send it, and wait for it to arrive.  By the time it gets to the moderator…. Mr. Speaker is keeping the in room audience engaged on another point and Ms. Virtual is left feeling slighted because they didn’t get their voice heard – bad mojo for your next hybrid event.

Third Step: Employ a good real-time polling mechanism that shares the collective opinion of your entire audience.  I’m quite fond of Polleverywhere – a nice polling tool which allows people to cast their opinions via Text Message (SMS), Twitter, or clicking on their response via a web page.  Stop counting hands – engage the remote audience the same way – and know what everyone thinks.

Don’t forget your speaker!  Many times professional speakers aren’t familiar with the needs of a virtual audience.  Their messages are tried and true…. for a room full of people.  You (or your provider) are the experts – review the deck, look for polling opportunities and coordinate with the speaker to help them cross this chasm.

Keep the conversation going

A lot of people spend a good deal of time and effort to make a successful event.  All too often, once the final dish is cleared from the luncheon table – the event point in time has passed and we’re left with whatever memories we can retain about what we learned. 

For me, that’s not enough.

Most times, I continue to ponder the points and enjoy the lift from the motivation of the speaker only during the trip back to the office; that glorious time when my thoughts remain my own.  Upon my return, there’s the messages, email, and other activities I put on hold to enjoy this great professional activity.  If only I could get back to that feeling I had during the event.

I’d love to have an opportunity to hear what others thought about the information – was there a contentious point which caused a stir?  Is there more that we can do with what the speaker started – an hour isn’t a lot of time for really big things.

There may only be a few of us that want this “add-on” experience – but what a great group to attract to your Social Networks – we want to be engaged, give us a soapbox.

Fourth Step: Use the Event as fodder for your Social Networks – after the event.  Get a blog post or two, maybe the speaker would like to write one – maybe an impassioned attendee.  Circulate some of the really good questions out to your network.  Create a poll and stick it on your website – maybe the opinion changes with a larger audience weighing in.

Share the wealth

Most events are attended by a mere fraction of the number of people who really could use the information.  Creating a great collection of 4-8 minute video presentations from a hybrid event is an excellent way to share the information with a broader audience, create video assets to help with the emerging SEO need for video, and help us folks with failing memories have a way back to get clarification as our memories fade.  The incremental cost to bring this should be quite small when reflected against the total investment you’ve just made in the event.

Fifth Step: Leverage video replay of your events – especially the hybrid ones!  The provider is already using a camera and audio gear to broadcast – recording and producing is a fairly small step from there.  Adapt your content strategies to incorporate this wonderful capability – heck, if you have Pay Per View capabilities there’s even more money to be made.

Don’t Wait!

If you’re waiting for this to get “better” or “more proven” – you’re backing up.  “Wait and see” may have been an adequate strategy last year – it isn’t going forward.  The ability to have these capabilities is becoming quite affordable and cost effective.  If you aren’t doing it – others are and your audience is evolving very rapidly – they are going to start expecting these types of things around your events.

If you’re a speaker, I encourage you to engage with your audience – before and after your speaking opportunities – you can never have too many engaged followers.

If you manage event productions, I hope you find some of these ideas help your audiences grow and feel more empowered by the use of them – drop me a note here we’re happy to lend a hand to help get you going.

If you attend events –  I hope you start to experience some of these benefits soon.

Let’s all start challenging the people to give us the most they can for the time we invest in our professional event.  I know there is more than this list to be addressed to create a truly fantastic “virtual” experience. 

Love it, hate it, think I’ve lost it, got a challenge for me?  Drop your thoughts below – I really want to keep this growing and would love to hear what you think.

OK guys – it's time.  Time to let go.  Time to say goodbye to that IE6 Browser that’s running on your computer.  Today’s websites are trying to provide advanced functionality – much of it runs locally to give you the speed and elegance you’ve come to expect from your other applications.

IE6 is making it hard on your web team to help your Association look spiffy and progressive; they would much rather be spending their time building a new widget that gives you useful information than working around the inefficiencies of that antique browser.

Latest worldwide counts indicate only 7.7% of the online world is using IE6 – how ‘bout you join the 92.3% and get with a more current browser.  Your web team will really appreciate it.

There really is no reason not to do this – current, modern browsers are free – really free.  They install in minutes and will make your online life so much more enjoyable.  If you’re like most, you are spending almost a full working day online every week – doesn’t it just make sense to make that time as productive as you possibly can?

Encourage your members to do the same – tell them you can no longer support IE6.  Give them the following links and help them improve their lives.  I mean, really, isn’t your online time too valuable to waste?

Get a brand spanky new web browser here:
Firefox: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/
Chrome: https://www.google.com/chrome

Grab a bowl of popcorn and watch the end of IE6 here on the IE6 Countdown.

What browser are you running? Does your website support IE6? Share your experiences in the comments below!

As a Professional Association, chances are you have a membership that is geographically diverse in their location. What’s the best way to get to these people? Better yet, what’s the best way to educate?

Webinars have gained an increasing amount of attention in the past year, becoming a “buzzword” in the Association industry for 2012. But getting your Board of Directors on board for this new technology can always be a challenge. Understanding the variations and applications of the technology can be a great starting point for a successful webinar event.

This week, we will be focusing on what makes a great webinar event. Tune in to the SSULive blog daily to find out what you need to know, including:

• Top 10 things to consider for your webinar
• Webinars for events
• Webinars for education
• How to host your first webinar

But before we discuss specific application, we first need to understand; What makes a webinar, a webinar?

According to Wikipedia, “The term webinar is short for Web-based Seminar, a presentation, lecture, workshop or seminar that is transmitted over the Web, specifically a portmanteau of web & seminar, to describe a specific type of web conference.”

To add additional clarity, we will add defining features to the term “webinar”

• Live - A webinar is always broadcasted live to its audience, and is not the replay of an earlier recording. We call a replay of an event an “Event Recording”
• Interactive – A webinar allows for multi-way interaction between the audience and the speaker, and is more than a one way broadcast. We call a one-way broadcast a “Webcast”

To summarize, we define a webinar as;

“A live-online presentation featuring audio, video and presentation materials that allows for multi-directional interaction amongst presenter and participants”

Now we’re all on the same page, we’re ready to dive into the different applications and factors that make for successful webinar events. Tune in tomorrow for the Top 10 Things You Need to Consider for a Successful Webinar.

Have you hosted or attended webinar events before? What are your thoughts on this growing form of event facilitation? Share your comments below!

This is the third installment in our ongoing series of Assoc Life animations, focusing on the everyday problems of running a Professional Association.

Some Associations view complaints as an insult to their operations. But should you be offended by comments of negative sentiment?

Any and all feedback from your Members should not be frowned upon and swept under the rug, but encouraged and solicited. After all, these are prime opportunities for improvement. Members comment because they care. They complain to allow you the chance to improve for next time. If your members truly didn’t care, it is much easier for them to stop renewing their dues than to sit down and write an email to you.

The least you can do is make the same level of effort to listen. Respond. Adapt.

In the current age of social networks, it is easier than ever for your Members to share their opinions and have their voice heard. Whether or not you are listening, these comments will be publicly shared and discussed by your audience. In 2012, why not place an emphasis on listening vs. talking? If Associations exist for their members, shouldn’t we be giving them what they want?

How do you handle Member complaints? Do you encourage Member feedback? Share your thoughts in the comments below.