Month: February 2024

As an agency full of curious people hungry to tell stories about the world, it’s brilliant to work with membership organisations. Their whole reason for existing is based on a strong social purpose, to provide guidance and often sector-wide regulation for a whole host of important disciplines. Whether it’s law, surveying or engineering, their members do something complex on behalf of society that the rest of us are seldom aware of.

This gives us the scope to create compelling films, podcasts and written content that has relevance to a wide audience. We can then use that wide-angle, overarching story to set the context for a myriad of technical topics that are the lifeblood of a membership’s daily working life and that constitute a big chunk of the value these organisations provide their members.

Keep it all in focus – from emotive story to technical advice

Sometimes, it’s appropriate to invest more heavily in content that tells emotive stories. Often, the investment will narrow down on the niche technical detail. But a powerful membership content strategy should never lose sight of what lies between the two approaches.

As ever with content strategy, the approach depends entirely on the audience you are trying to reach and what you are trying to persuade them to do differently.

So, start at the highest level by understanding which audiences are most important to your membership organisation; this is likely some combination of existing members, students studying for the professional exams you offer, policymakers and politicians focused on the same field as you, relevant journalists and academics and, at many membership organisations, the general public. These audiences – plus any distinct specialisms in your membership – should determine how you organise the content you produce and the way you structure your website.

Having content organised in this way allows you to always make the link between, say, a technical white paper aimed at a segment of the membership and an emotive story about how their profession makes people’s lives safer or better. This link consistently reinforces the main mission of a membership organisation and reminds its members of the value of what they do in their daily lives and that their professional body is speaking on their behalf.

A case in point

Keeping that full spectrum of content approaches in mind also allows you to think about the channels you use to reach those audiences and the impact your content has. For example, you might send members a frequent newsletter highlighting content across that spectrum of approaches but probably relying more on technical updates and advice. You may also use owned social media platforms to push that information and advice more widely.

But you may then decide to invest significantly in a campaign at one point in the year aimed at member and non-member audience segments. This is straightforward to do if your content strategy already outlines that ‘full spectrum’ of approaches.

One case in point is with a campaign we produced and are running for the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). The overarching message of the campaign was that UK policymakers and politicians need to make changes if we are to kickstart economic growth in this country.

This gave us a start point to make compelling films about companies that already demonstrate ideas and hard work that could get the UK growing again, and that also talk about the way economic growth leads to better lives for us all.

In an election year, we can use those films to engage the general public and a policymaking audience (think tanks, civil servants, politicians) to show the role that UK business (and ICAEW chartered accountants) has to play in UK economic growth and why ICAEW is an important voice in that national debate.

But it also allows us to produce thought-leadership content with policy ideas for kickstarting growth and, finally (but no less importantly), advisory content for members about technical challenges that are part of members’ daily work in this area. Topics such as applying for R&D tax relief or setting up to sell a new product line overseas.

Considering all relevant audiences from day one allows us to make one set of content but use it in a wide array of different channels with each of those audiences.  As such, content plays a role that ranges from showing the benefits of the accounting profession and why chartered accountants have an important role to play in society all the way through to showing chartered accountants how to accomplish a part of their job and so contribute to the UK’s economic growth.

Content thrives when it is elevated by expert voices. Nowhere is this truer than for membership organisations. After all, membership organisations bring individuals around a point of interest to create a hub of specialism and learning around which content can be built.

However, experts come in different guises, and marrying them with content that engages members and builds their affinity with an organisation calls for careful management.

Three expert groups all bring different strengths to the table. These are external experts, internal experts, and members themselves. When used together, the impact on attraction, retention, engagement and sentiment can be compelling.

Here’s how Sunday has produced expert-led multimedia content for each group.

Leveraging reputation

External experts will elevate membership content by delivering world-leading thought leadership that reaches across sectors.

By convening like-minded individuals in one place, membership organisations already have in-built pulling power for external voices and opinion. And these external collaborations can help demonstrate reputational value to members and beyond.

But this needs careful selection. Only certain voices and values will align with a membership organisation, resonate with members, and deliver content that meets wider strategic goals.

External expertise in action

ICAEW’s ‘The New Boardroom Agenda’, was awarded the PPA IPA ‘Campaign of the Year’. The multimedia content campaign, which ran 2022-23, informed ICAEW members about their role in upholding corporate governance in a fast-evolving world.

Alongside written and podcast content, the campaign produced three short films that brought to life corporate governance issues through personality-driven stories. One highlight was Guy Singh-Watson, founder of organic farmers Riverford, who shared why he sold the business to employees at a fraction of its market value.

Although not an ICAEW member, Guy spoke of member concerns around leadership behaviour and succession planning from an informed point of view, offering relevant insight from his decades in business.

Demonstrating value

For membership organisations to succeed, members must feel confident that their interests are being well-represented. Internal expertise is often underutilised in achieving these goals, but by creating opportunities to showcase internal experts in content, members receive sources of insight, as well as greater transparency over how the organisation operates internally.

The benefits go beyond an organisation and its members. Visible experts are effective experts. And the right content shaped around internal experts will empower organisations to advocate and lobby for members on a wider stage.

Internal expertise in action

Climate change is the biggest challenge of our time. From funding green technologies to helping businesses comply with new regulations, finance professionals will be at the heart of society’s transition to a green economy.

That’s why we built a content series around ICAEW’s attendance of COP28: ‘Making COP Count’. We worked with ICAEW director of sustainability, Richard Spencer, to create multimedia content that explained the impact of COP28 on the accountancy profession and how ICAEW is upskilling members around sustainability.

As well as educating members on their professional responsibilities, the content series showcased Richard as ICAEW’s leader on sustainability and as someone who members can confidently come to for advice on the topic.

Celebrating members

Members are the lifeblood of any membership organisation and are valuable experts in their own right – well-placed to educate and inspire fellow members.

Member-focused content is not only valuable for the membership community, it also helps frame organisations as collaborative networks that celebrate individual success, driving sentiment and affinity with the brand.

It all demonstrates the reciprocal nature of membership organisations: when members inform content, content will better inform members.

Member expertise in action

Who better to celebrate diversity and inclusion at a membership body than the members themselves? As part of our multi-award-winning ‘Welcome Inclusion’ campaign for ICAEW, they did just that.

By bringing together members for an in-person diversity workshop, we produced a range of short films that explored inclusion and the workplace, sharing the business benefits of diversity as well as personal stories of tackling discrimination and intolerance.

The member-focused content enabled ICAEW to walk the talk on diversity and inclusion – one of its strategic objectives for the decade – by showcasing its values as an inclusive organisation as well as its influence in driving a more inclusive financial sector.

Prologue


Robust data not only helps professional bodies extend their brand and messaging, it also helps generate leads and engage untapped audiences with content that resonates. Here’s how.

Part one: finding the story

Search data is your go-to source for features to develop into compelling stories. Google or own-site search data can help inform what your audience is looking for and, importantly, helps you discover areas lacking in your current editorial offering.

Once your feature is published, analytics tells us two absolute truths. First, data shows us which subjects attract members to our sites; those stories – topical or evergreen – that attract audiences from across the digital landscape to engage with our content.

But that is just the beginning, our analytics can also determine how much of our content these visitors consume – the longer they stay on the page, the more content they are engaging with. The combination of these two factors determines which subject and topics we as editors should investigate further to feed the appetite of a content-hungry audience.

But finding your story is only half the battle, it’s how you tell it that counts. We’re lucky as editors of member websites, we have an audience that is already engaged with our subject matter. And we have at our disposal a variety of digital formats to bring our features to life – long-form articles, data visualisations, podcasts, photo-stories or short-form video. Through robust scrutiny of data, we can tell which formats are most engaging for both our clients and for their members.

Importantly, as budgets are tight and the time of our audience is challenged by competing propositions, the data can tell us which subjects to avoid – those features that attract minimal visitors, or yet those that attract visitors only for them to abandon without scrolling – leaving your content unread and unloved.

Part two: telling the story

Often, the data itself tells a great story – think the great Spotify wrap-up or the Google year in search. This is especially true for member organisations whose professionals are benchmarked on a variety of metrics on an annual basis.

There’s the compelling salary survey data – where members get to compare their personal earnings against industry standards and sub-sectors. Playing this data out through engaging data-visualisations ensures your audience directly involve themselves with your content, while adding a member voice to your feature gives colour, context and a touch of humanity to an otherwise institutional feature.

Data can also help editors tell a balanced story – important for member organisations needing to strike an even tone in an environment where debates are polarised, and in the case of social media, the channels are weaponised. A recent video feature on Modus used robust data from around the world to help make the case both for and against the abolishing of DST in a dynamic easy-to-digest fashion – vital for a time-starved audience.

Epilogue

Embracing data throughout the content lifecycle is the only way to ensure you meet the demand of your membership. It can help you to find and shape a compelling story, and help you tell that story in an engaging way that makes it land with both conviction and impact.