In this economy, you have to do more with less. Make something out of nothing. You may be thinking you want to implement a social media solution, but where will the money come from? Well, online communities can not only be a valuable member benefit, they can also be a revenue source for your organization. There is a trick to it, but if you get it right it can open up a valuable new revenue stream.

No matter what your association focuses on, there are companies that would love to pay for some interaction with your members. The question is how do you give the vendor enough access that they get value for their marketing dollar, without giving away too much information where your members get upset. The key is allowing vendors 'access' to your online community in a way that enhances your member's online experience and brings value to the community and the vendor.

When implementing any vendor program that will interface with members, the key is to make the vendor information available for members to find on their own. That doesn't mean that you may not put the information in some 'valuable website real estate' but it does mean that members find the vendor and not the other way around. The best way is to intersperse vendor information with member information.

Here are ways that we help customers do that on our sites:

• Let vendors post news stories. They are generating press releases on a regular basis that are probably of interest to your members. Intersperse vendor announcements with association and members announcements.

• Allow vendors to answer questions in your ListServs/Forums. Many of the groups I have seen be successful at this do not allow vendors to ask questions, just answer. Members get expert answers to their questions and vendors get valuable insight into the issues and concerns of their target clients. If you have a tag line capability with your ListServ software, sell that tagline to a vendor. It is another way for them to get their name out to your members without being too obtrusive.

• Send out a Poll or Survey on behalf of the vendor to your membership. Try and be sure that the membership will be interested in the results as well. This gives your vendor valuable market research and gives your members access to interesting results.

• Allow vendor to post files. This works well on our customer's sites. Vendors get to post marketing materials, case studies, white papers whatever information they would want to get into the hands of a prospective client. When members search for information across the file library, they will get member and vendor information in their search results. The member can choose the information they want to look at, but have more information choices. The vendor gets their information in the hands of a prospective customer that they probably had no idea was interested in their product and/or service. No one spammed anyone, no one cold-called anyone but both parties benefited and the site proved itself as a valuable resource.
  

• Allow members to search on products and services that they are interested in and have it pull back the contact information for the vendors that are sponsoring your site. This is a great resource for the members and a great marketing opportunity for your vendors.

This is not an exhaustive list, but hopefully you can see a trend. The trend is allow vendors to be part of the discussion, but set the ground rules. Vendors want to interact with their potential customers. They want more than their logo on a website. If you can provide this to your industry vendors, you will be amazed at the number that sign up. You will need to set the rules of engagement though. If you cannot build what a vendor can and cannot do right into the security model of the site, then you need to clearly spell out what a vendor can do in your partnership agreement and outline the recourse for them not following the rules. We find that most vendors are scared of being 'black balled' by a customer community so they are very cautious; however, there can be a bad apple in every bunch.

Since selling these different opportunities as individual benefits can be a drain on resources, look at packaging certain benefits together into sponsorship levels. You might also look at incorporating this vendor program with your conference exhibits and sponsorship program.

One thing to be sure you have in place is a good Subscription Agreement contract that clears you of any privacy and copyright issues that arise from what a vendor posts (not a bad idea for your site in general). This contract should also clearly outline what the vendor gets for their sponsorship and the terms and conditions. A good lawyer can help you with that or we provide a good one to our clients, drop me a note and I would be happy to send it to you.

With budgets being stretched, new revenue sources are becoming needed to increase member benefits without increasing dues. I have seen and been a part of many good vendor programs within an online community that not only paid for itself, but became a significant source of revenue for the organization. Yours can too with a little effort and a good plan.

External comments are coming soon to my blog. I would love to hear your comments. Please email me at pschneider@socious.com.