How Association Leaders Can Use AI to Save Time and Grow Member Engagement

Hello, everyone. Donna Peterson here. Over the last week, two things happened. I had my Toastmaster meeting, which I have every other week on a Wednesday morning.

Then I was speaking some of the associations that I work with. And one of the topics that came up is as leaders, we all volunteer for these associations. We have volunteers to be officers in these associations because we believe in them. We feel that this association is necessary for our industry.

We feel that this association can offer value to other people to enhance their career, like my Toastmasters. I think everyone should be a Toastmaster member working on their public speaking skill. So when I joined the Association, I quickly raised my hand and became a volunteer. And in the years that I have been with Toastmaster, I have run the officer roles.

I've been the president, I've been the membership, I've done the PR, but right now I am in the VP of Education role. And what happens is as much as I believe in these associations, my everyday job takes over. And there's things I want to do within these associations that I'm members with, but sometimes I just don't have the time. Or I think of it, I start to work on it, but I get pulled away in my everyday work.

And I think that happens to all of us as leaders. We have good intentions, but we just have so much time in our day. And today I wanted to talk about how you can use AI for some of those tasks to hopefully get them done in a more cohesive fashion, but in a way that can really help you grow your association. Because like I said, we have our full-time jobs, we care about these associations, but we can't find the time.

AI can help us organize this work. It can help us form ideas, and it can help us also start to deepen the relationships with the members that we have and also with possible prospects of people to become members with. Grounding AI is more than a podcast about artificial intelligence. It's a conversation for leaders trying to understand how AI fits into business, relationships, and real-world decision-making.

Hosted by Donna Peterson, each episode shares practical insights to help teams use AI more effectively, build trust, improve communication, and stay human in a rapidly changing world. If you're looking for practical conversations instead of hype, you're in the right place. Now, let's get back to the episode. So the first thing, let's start with, what do you already have?

What I mean by this is as associations, we're always trying to keep our members engaged. We are trying to find new members and we're trying creative ways to do it. But sometimes we have great content already in-house. We might have past webinars that have already been done.

We could have event recaps or meeting notes or other presentations maybe outside individuals came in and gave to our members or to our district leaders or to our leaders within the associations Take that information and let AI review it. let AI come back to you with some feedback of, oh, this is great information. We could use it and make it into this. Or no, this is really too old.

Let's not use it. And remember with AI, it's not put it in, ask it a question and just take back whatever they say and use it. No, communicate with AI back and forth. Explain to AI, what are you trying to do?

Are you trying to get your members to engage more with the events you have? Tell it that. Then also upload who are your members. Give it a description of who your members are right now.

Because that's going to help AI figure out, is this content answering what these members need? Or when we created that, was it too broad? Here at World Innovators, we're a 45-year-old company. We have tons of content.

We started blogging back in 2010. Are some of those blogs outdated to what we are offering now? Yes, they are. And that's where we have to make sure that we're not taking pieces of that content that's outdated and updating it because it doesn't even make sense.

So let AI review the content you already have and give you an idea of what would be good pieces to revamp, but then not only update it, but maybe you can make it into a checklist. Maybe you can make it into a guide. Maybe you can make it into a few or a series of social media posts. Remember, people like short.

They don't want big, long things. I was just at a round table and all the gentlemen there were saying, Donna, we don't read past the first line. And I'm guilty of that, too. I'm so busy.

I get to that first line. I read it. If it's really important, I might read on. But if it's big, long paragraphs, my eyes roll back.

For me, if you want me to read your literature, make sure it's short bullet points that I know what you're talking about, that I can see the value right away. And I'm not alone in that. This is where AI can go through. It can tell you which pieces of content are good to update, what pieces of content would be good to create into another form, and maybe what other new pieces of content you should think about creating.

So start with what you already have. The next thing is let AI help you think about better events. What I see with a lot of associations and the ones I'm in, we're just as guilty. We do the same thing year after year, which is good.

Continuity is good. But I would change up some of those old events. I would add some new ones because you getting new members all the time and what might be of interest to them could be totally different than what was of interest to the older members or the original members. So with AI, you can go through and you can start brainstorming different ideas of what your members, again, make sure you've given AI a description of your members, what your members might be interested in doing.

And then you can do some of your own sleuthing through either Facebook or LinkedIn. What are they posting about? Are they posting about, are they watching the World Cup? Did they just play in a golf tournament?

Do they do long distance swims? Do they like downhill skiing? And this is where you could start to get ideas of events that might be of interest to them. Another way, have AI help you create a survey.

a survey, a quick one that you could send out to your members or at your next event. Do a raise of hand. Hey, guys, we're going to do a five quick question thing. Please raise your hand on how you feel about this.

Another great idea, and we just did this with the American Marketing Association of Connecticut. I'm a member of that association, and they set up a speed networking event. This was a great event. It wasn't about everyone moving spots and pitching their own company.

It was about certain topics that were of interest in our industry. And so there were cards at everyone's spot, and you could pick which one of the topics you wanted to discuss about. What this is, you got different viewpoints from different people, but you did also get to know different people. Because I know when I go to association events, what happens?

You end up going towards the people, the friends you have. But this speed networking thing opened up my world to a whole new group of people I was not aware of. I didn't know what they do. I didn't know we had a similar interest in loving downhill skiing or open water swims.

That all came out. And the speed networking was a fun event and everyone there liked it. There wasn't one person who didn't like it. So think about that.

Get the viewpoint from your members of what events they would like to see. Maybe you do a survey. Maybe you ask after an event, but also take events that you're currently running. Maybe it's a golf outing.

Maybe it is a lunch and learn. Get some viewpoint of what would they like to hear about? Maybe the lunch and learn is first a chef teaching you how to make a special personal pizza. Then you cook it, you all eat it.

But meanwhile, there's bonding in there, but you're enjoying this event because you're learning something else. Your association is not just where you go to do business. We open it up and what happens here, this is where we start to develop those relationships further. So a simple point, good events start with member value always.

Bimmer has to be getting value out of it, but it's not just about filling the calendar. Make sure that they good events the members will actually like to attend and will get value out of it And then like I said ask the members what do they want to hear about Look for members who are not being reached already This is a great one We always trying to find new members, but we have a criteria in our associations of who we think those members should be. Use AI to think outside the box.

Is there an outskirt group of people who would get a lot of value out of what our association is doing? I know whether you're talking about, let's say, AMA, American Marketing Association, a lot of people think, okay, that person has to be in marketing, any marketing sales role, they would want to be here. But marketing is at the core of all business growth. That is where we could start to look at CEOs, business owners, any top level title.

They would be interested in being part of the AMA because they have to be abreast of what's going on in marketing, what's working, what's not, because that is the way the company is going to grow. That's another idea to use AI. AI is not here to generate all the information for you and plaster it up there. Because when you use AI, especially with your associations, you've got to make sure that the content maybe it's revamping for you speaks specifically for your association.

If you don't put that uniqueness in, if someone reads it and they can't tell, hey, this is for Precision Metal Forming Association or this is for Chemical Coders Association or this is for the American Marketing Association, you're wasting everyone's time. It has to be unique for the association or for the district under that association. Use AI to do some research, figure out what you can revamp, what you already have, how you can create new events or change the description to entice more people to attend, and then also how you can go out to find different segments of audience that would be interested in becoming members of this association.

I hope you found this information helpful. I try to come to you every week with very grounded, simple ways to use AI. Please leave a comment below if you found this useful. And as always, we need your help.

Rank this podcast, give it a thumbs up and spread the word that more people need to be listening to grounding AI. Until next week, have a great day. Bye. Thanks for listening to the World Innovators Grounding AI podcast.

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