Online Continuing Education

There’s big reasons we prefer to shop online – time-savings, convenience and ease of use to name a few. Whether from the couch or waiting at the airport, we have instant access to find exactly what we’re looking for online. It may be an emergency anniversary gift that has to be delivered tomorrow or a book you’ve been dying to read. Regardless of what we’re looking for online, do our search habits change? For example, would I shop for a pair of shoes any differently than I would for an online course that’s required for my profession? Nope, it would be [...]

In case you missed last week’s dynamo cast of presenters on the topic of “Using Content to Drive Member Loyalty” here’s a quick recap and links to the presentation slides and webinar recording. Amanda Davis, Online Learning Manager at North Carolina Association of CPAs discussed how their use of high-quality educational content helps to keep members satisfaction with the organization high and lead to overall member retention. Dean West, founder and President of Association Laboratory Inc. highlighted their recent report on the “Future of Association Engagement” and how those key findings relate to the NCACPA case study. It was a great [...]

After our recent webinar with Avectra, an Abila company, we got to thinking more about engaging members and what that really means and how to effectively do it. Here’s a selection of articles to read as you consider what engagement means for your association. What We’re Scoring When We’re Scoring Engagement A tool for tracking and measuring member engagement can be valuable for any association—if you can decide what “engagement” actually means to you, first. You Dropped the Ball with Member Engagement. Now what? You become so absorbed elsewhere that when you look up and get a chance to focus on [...]

Let’s face it—the times, they are a’changing.  Currently, Millenials make up a third of the workforce, and by 2020 they’ll be in the majority. Not to mention, they’re an interesting bunch to employ, engage and retain. Here’s a great round-up of articles to begin learning what makes this newest generation tick. Meet the Millennials: The consumers to change the marketing landscape Nextweb.com Understand what millennials value, and discover the best ways to connect with them and market to them. Designing New Opportunities for Millennial Members Association Now Look at how AIGA, the professional association for design, is adjusting to changing membership demographics and [...]

Our clients often ask us, “How should I price the CE courses that I provide to the professionals in the industry our organization serves?” Understanding our answer is typically the easy part. Executing upon our answer seems to be more of a challenge. This blog posting is the second part of a two-post series and is intended to help you to establish the proper price for your content. Last week we discussed cost-plus versus value-based pricing, and how scarcity can affect demand (you can read the entire post here. We ended last week’s blog with the question, “What makes a course [...]

There’s an old technology riddle about the power of the networking effect.    It goes something like this: What’s the value of one fax machine?  Zero. What’s the value of many fax machines?  Infinite. The network effect basically says the more network “nodes”, the more valuable the network, and it is NOT a linear equation, it’s generally logarithmic. I attended the Avectra User Group Conference in early March and I saw the networking effect in action.  Several hundred Avecta clients were there and we generated some interesting sales opportunities, which is generally how most vendors judge the success of these events.  But [...]