Leveraging Your Associations Professional Development Content in Your Community

Communities exist for members to learn and grow together. Your community should make the individuals stronger. This generally happens through user generated content, but how do learning and development resources from your organization play into this? I have been hearing more and more conversations about integrating your AMS with your community platform. I am a huge advocate! Doing this can enhance the member experience and empower and grow both programs. However, it is necessarily necessary for you to support your members learning and development needs in the community. Here are some ideas….Create a Learning CommunityMy organization offers certificate programs in addition to licensure review courses. One benefit of some of these courses has included an exclusive online community for participants in the courses to ask questions and get feedback. We have a community that is populated through registrations of these products. Members get a welcome email to the community when they register explaining how they can utilize the community throughout their learning journey. These communities also include instructors and staff. Both of which share resources and links in the communities. They also share information about the course or certificate program and answer any questions. This is a huge benefit to the individual member who can interact and support their fellow learners. It is essentially a virtual study group – supported by your organization. What a great benefit as part of the program! BUT….. It is also a benefit to the instructors and staff who can answer questions broadly through the community instead of sending a bunch of individualized responses via email. Conference Communities Conferences are a huge part of your members professional growth. In addition to networking, there is a ton of learning opportunities. These opportunities can be expanded by creating an exclusive community for attendees. They can share their thoughts about the sessions and ask questions. They can even connect with specific speakers to discuss sessions and ask questions. These communities can support the learning and development throughout the entire year by making conference content available in the community. They also give attendees a way to connect with each other until the start of the next conference registration cycle (that you can promote within the community). Members Generated Content In addition to the monetized professional development content that your association provides for members career growth. Your community members can create content to support learning and development. Have you noticed there is a theme or need for a learning and development topic based on questions in the community? Ask you volunteer leaders to write a blog or host an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on the topic. Communities are about supporting the needs of those around you. Learning and development is one of the biggest needs of today’s professional. The community has an obligation in providing these resources for its members. Promote Resources Share content in your open forums. If someone asks a question and your association offers a webinar or conference on that topic, share it in the thread. It’s great when your active community members do this without a prompt, however, there may be opportunities they miss. It’s your job as the community manager, to capitalize on these opportunities to promote your organizational learning opportunities. Are there courses or products that might be of interest to your members? Ask your champions/ambassadors to start a thread about these courses. Professional development content is often the most valued content to your members. I am sure you and your active members can find ways to start a discussion that will benefit the community while promoting the resources your organization offers. In closingProfessional development opportunities are everywhere. Your association is probably not the only place your members are going to get professional content and training. However, the community can highlight and enhance your association resources to make them more attractive to members. I am hearing more and more about this topic. I would love to hear what you and your organization are doing in the learning and development space.