Big Changes at Socious – More Resources for Associations, Users Groups, and Nonprofits
Well you have probably noticed a few changes around here at Socious lately. Late last year we rebranded the company, we are no longer the men in black, we are the guys in green. We also have brought on a new Director of Marketing and Strategy that we will be announcing in the upcoming days....

An Online Community Can Learn A Lot From a Car Auction.
When you have an auction, you need cars (content), you need buyers (consumers of the content) and a medium to bring them together (the auction). Here are some points the car auctions know, that can help you in your online community....

Socious Presentation at American Society of Association Executives
If you are at the ASAE Technology Conference for the American Society of Association Executives, stop by and see Paul Schneider of Socious and Ted Simpson of the Higher Education Users Group give a presentation titled: Driving Growth: An Online Community Success Story...

Socious Article in ASAE Magazine
Well now I can say I am a published author, kind of. My article for ASAE Associations Now made it into the December 2010 edition. Good stuff! Here it is:...

Webinar Recording: Mobile 101 for Associations
If you missed our webinar Mobile 101 for Associations you can now view the recording here:

http://www.socious.com/10-minute-webinars.html...

Know Anyone? Socious is looking for a Director of Marketing
Socious is growing by leaps and bounds! So much so, we need some additional help around here to coordinate and manage our marketing efforts. Know anyone that would be a good fit? Let them know. The specifics are below: ...

Personalization-The Key to Engagement
We recently came out with our version 4.1. The theme behind that development effort was engagement. ...

Associations: Don't Fear Social Media Video
Here is a video we did as a marketing piece for Socious. If you like it, tweet it out for us. ...

Big Surprise! (Not Really) More People Using Mobile Phones!
There are some features that people want, where I would agree, for associations, they probably won't get a lot of use. Mobile, though, is not one of them....

We are Excited! Introducing mobile.community by Socious
Well after a lot of planning and work, we are proud to announce our mobile application mobile.community. I will have to say that this is a product we are really proud of. ...

Morgan Stanley Report on the Mobile Internet Industry
Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) released "The Mobile Internet Report," on the trends and usage of the mobile internet industry. They had some interesting findings and predictions. ...

Attackers Moving to Social Networks For Command and Control
With the latest data from Marketing General stating that 75% of associations are on Facebook, 66% on Twitter and 59% on LinkedIn, these sites are embraced by the association industry. It is just an important reminder that not everyone out on these sites has the best intentions. ...

Online Communities Grow Organizations
Well hopefully that title got you to read this post. I know that this statement is true, but it is always nice to get validation from external resources to back me up. A few months ago, Marketing General came out with the 2010 Association Benchmark Survey. ...

ToolKit: 15 Ways to Engage Your Members in an Online Community
One reoccurring question we hear when launching an online community is ‘How do I engage my members.” The Socious tools have a lot of ‘hooks’ to help you do this, but there are things that you can do, regardless of what technology you are using, to engage members within your online community....

Association Online Communities - 4 Keys to Success
Here at Socious we have been refining our approach to building successful online communities since 2002 and we have seen what works and what doesn’t. The one constant we have seen with all successful online communities is having good content. ...

Bring Your Chapters Under Your Association's Online “Umbrella”
As an Avectra partner, I was asked to write a guest blog on the Avectra corporate blog. An excerpt from that blog is below:...

Introducing Socious Version 4
Here at Socious, we are happy to announce version 4 of our Online Knowledge Community Software. This new version is a culmination of months of work to change the overall navigation of our system and add some cool new features. ...

Going Mobile
There was a recent study from Ruder Finn revealed that Americans are spending nearly three hours per day on their mobile phones....

Introducing Socious Toolkits
In 2010, we are embarking on a new marketing initiative. With everyone else out there doing webinars that maybe have 5 min worth of good material, and discuss more of "What you should do" rather than "How to do it", we are offering our Socious Toolkits....

It is Good to Give Thanks
Amazing that Thanksgiving is already here. We should do it more often, but the great think about Thanksgiving is to remind you of, no matter how bad things may be, you have things to give thanks for....

Six Online Community Vendors for Associations: An Analysis
Socious is happy to be featured in the whitepaper:Six Online Community Vendors for Associations: An Analysis...

Update the Look of your Online Community with No HTML Experience!
In the new Socious version 3.4 release, you can have ultimate flexibility in how you want your site to be set-up. AND YOU NEED NO HTML EXPERIENCE!!Here is a sneak peek....

Social Media Policies
There are a lot of discussions on how do you tell employees and members what is acceptable and what is not in relation to their use of Social Media. A great tool to "set the ground rules"is a Social Media Policy. ...

Online Communities: What Do People Measure?
After my webinar last week, a lot of people started asking me what people are measuring to determine the success of their online community. Well here is a great graph that outlines what people measure, what they don't measure but want to and what people don't consider important....

Is Social Media a Distraction at a Conference?
Maybe it is just me, but if social networking is the next best thing to meeting face-to-face, then if we are at a meeting where we can meet in person, why would we want to do 'the next best thing'?
...

Socious Announces the Release of Version 3.4
Socious is pleased to announce the release of the Socious Tools version 3.4. With a major new piece of functionality, Custom Content Landing Pages, as well as over 70 other enhancements, fixes and features....

The Social Media Bubble
Over the past two years, Social Media has been the push of every association. So many people started blogs in the association industry, started their association or personal Twitter stream and Facebook page.For awhile there, I had a hard time keeping up with all of the content that was being shared....

Beyond Social Media Basics: How to Monitor and Engage Audiences
At this point, just about everyone has covered the basics of social media and the fuss about Twitter, Facebook, and more. But the magic question many still ask is "what do we do now?" Join us as two social media thought leaders share where to start and how to keep things going. ...

Content is King
There has been a lot of talk recently on the ASAE listServs and at the ASAE conference I was just at around the lack of success people have seen with Social Media at their association. Here is what we are doing about it....

See You at ASAE in Toronto!!
Well it is hard to believe that another year has passed and here comes another ASAE annual conference. Seeing that this one is in Toronto, I am more than a little excited since Toronto is a city I have always wanted to visit....

Six Online Community Vendors for Associations: An Analysis
Socious is excited to be a part of the upcoming white paper: "Six Online Community Vendors for Associations: An Analysis" written by Maddie and Lindy of SocialFish....

Taking the Association Website to the Next Level
Taking the Association website to the next level is something we are talking a lot about here at Socious. The problem/reality is that users are already using sites they know and enjoy on a daily basis....

Did You Miss Our Webinar "Associations: Maximize Your Public Profile on Facebook"?
Did you miss the webinar we did last week " Associations: Maximize Your Public Profile on Facebook"? If so, no need to worry, you can view the recording and see the slides here...

Socious Featured in Association Whitepaper
Socious has been working with Socialfish, a leading association social media consulting company, for while now. We are happy to say that we will be featured with 5 other social media companies in an industry whitepaper they are writing about the leaders in the industry. ...

Here is the Problem I Have with Twitter
Well actually my problem is not with Twitter itself, it is with some of the people that use it....

Techie Bytes Podcast
I was lucky enough to be a part of a cool new podcast series put on by Chris Jenkins of the Ohio Society of CPA's...

BUZZ 2009: Leverage Social Media at Your Association
Buzz2009 is for associations eager to incorporate social media and word of mouth tactics into their overall strategy. This day-long event reveals how the social web can have a measurable impact on the business needs of your membership organization....

Freshness: It is Good for Fruit, Vegetables, 80's Rap Groups and Online Communities
The biggest thing that will make or break your online community is keeping your content fresh. There is nothing worse than coming to a website where you are looking for information and the information you find is out of date. You will go to that website once and only once....

10 Steps for Building a Successful Private Social Network
No matter what online community software program you use to run your association's online community, there are certain issues that need to be addressed upfront....

Some Great People I Would Highly Recommend
Over the past few months, I have had the pleasure of getting to know a few people that really know what they are talking about in relation to association membership and marketing....