Tips for Chambers Moving to Remote Work Flows
March 19 2020 admin Blog, Chambers, TRC, YGM 0 comments
As more chambers close their offices and move to remote work flows, it will take some time to adjust to the newness of telecommuting. We are here to help with some tips to get everyone started on how to make the best of this new situation. Communicate! We’re assuming you’ve let your member businesses and community know that you will not be present in the offices but will be working remotely. Be sure to make this information readily available on your website and chamber social media platforms. Give contact information as well. While it may feel a little odd to be working from your sofa, you will, indeed, be working. You want people to be able to reach you about chamber business. One of the most important things to remember, both in terms of interactions with your fellow chamber staff members and with member business representatives, is that tone and inflection are much more difficult to infer via text or email than in person. Don’t take something as rude or angry from someone who would rarely be that way with you in person. Often teasing comments don’t translate well to the written medium. This is a trying situation for everyone. […]
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Help your Chambers deal with information overload
March 18 2020 admin Blog, Chambers, TRC, Uncategorized, YGM 0 comments
Part of what we do at YGM is monitor various things (we’re nicer than the hall monitors of your childhood, but we’ve still got our eyes on the pulse of what’s happening). We monitor your chamber social media accounts. We monitor your event advertising to view your sponsorship benefits.  We monitor your balance of “event inviting” versus “business informational sharing.” What I can tell you from my recent monitoring in the midst of COVID-19 is that everyone is overwhelmed. I also know all of you are deeply concerned about providing your member businesses with information that could be beneficial to them. Social media is a great informational sharing tool, but we all need to make sure we use the platforms appropriately.   It’s great, for example, to share which restaurants are doing curb-side pickup or delivery.  It’s also important to share which nonprofit organizations are providing meals for school children.  However, just “sharing” each of these individual posts can be overwhelming to your members, your businesses, your citizens, your community. It may also prove frustrating when someone wants to go back to find a particular bit of information but it is lost in the trove of other information which has been […]
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TRC as a Strategic Plan
March 01 2020 admin Blog, Chambers, TRC, YGM 0 comments
“We have a strategic plan. It’s called ‘doing things.’” – Herb Kelleher No offense to Mr. Kelleher, known to many in the business world as an American icon, most businesses (and chambers alike) need a more structured plan than simply ‘doing things.’ As we move forward, chambers are going to want more initiative-based programming rather than primarily event-based programming. From our perspective at YGM, a Total Resource Campaign is a tool to implement and affect your strategic plan wrapped in a sponsorship drive. In talking with chamber professionals around the country, we hear them say over and again how they just keep doing the same things every year but are frustrated with how to break the cycle. Taking the time to do the difficult strategic planning, looking at your chamber with fresh eyes is the best way to break that cycle. Be clear about who your chamber represents and what your mission is. How can you walk that line between staying true to your mission and making enough money to carry out your programming? Are there events in your book of business that you hold simply because ‘it’s always been done that way?’ Look at those. How well are they […]
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