I’m headed south today… all the way to the big city of Portland, to offer a presentation at the Northeast Grange Leaders’ Conference which will be attended by Grange leaders from throughout New England and New York. We’ll be talking about media and member relations, discovering that the way we, as organizations, relate to the media and to members shouldn’t be fundamentally different. Today’s program is based loosely on my No News Is NOT Good News workshop. We’ll be examining some of the techniques leaders can use to keep their organization represented in a positive way and build enthusiasm.

In an interesting irony, some of the fundamentals included today I first introduced at the Maine Media Market held in Portland back in the mid 1990’s… at the time I offered a program called Employees–the untapped market, suggesting that while organizations may intend to offer great customer service but ultimately the customer’s experience with the organization is left to chance because it depends on an interaction between the customer and an employee. It makes very little sense to spend a ton of money and time marketing to customers while leaving that interaction to chance. Why not “market” to employees in a way that equips and encourages them to perform?

The logic is no different for an organization trying to grow in membership. The best media program is still, ultimately, dependent on the customer’s (prospective member) experience with the employee (existing member).

For those who were unable to attend, here is a link to the one page handout of resources: . If your organization is interested in unleashing its potential to gain customers or members, zip me an email and let’s talk about how a similar presentation might contribute.