OUT-OF-SITE MARKETING.

Integrate online and offline promotions to attract audiences to your Web site.

WHILE MOST EVERY ASSOCIATION HAS A WEB PRESENCE BY NOW, Internet marketing consultants warn that without proper marketing and promotion, Web sites can quickly become white elephants in cyberspace.

"The now cliche Web maxim 'If you build it, they will come' has lulled many online marketers into a false sense of opportunity. The truth is that Web site traffic building has its own set of public relations [and marketing] needs and requires its own system of aggressive, attention-getting tactics," says Charles Sayers, an Internet marketing consultant based in Acworth, Georgia.

Once you've decided to get serious about marketing your association's Web site and making it a favorite of your current members--and a new stop for prospects--Internet consultants advise you to take advantage of as many Web site marketing and promotion strategies as possible.

Think traditional

For starters, while it may sound elementary, organizations must not forget to employ their traditional advertising tools. At the most basic level, this means, for example, consistently including the association's Web site address on every piece of marketing collateral created by the association-- be it print, radio, TV, video, and so on. "We've always made sure that our Web address appears on all of our printed advertising," says Michael Daigneault, general manager of the Web site for the Canadian Association of Retired Persons, Toronto, Ontario. "With a very limited budget, CARP's early focus was on attracting members of the association to use the Web site by providing the site as a presence in all of the literature going out to members, including a regular column in the magazine on our Web activities," explains Daigneault. "Since then," he adds, "we've done a fair amount of advertising in daily newspapers across the country, particularly in 2000, as well as a modest ongoing campaign on other Web sites durin g the last two years. This year, we will do relatively little advertising in other media and we plan to focus on making best use of the CARP magazine and direct mailings. Across all of these media, of course, we have established a consistent style for promoting our site address."

If you want to get more sophisticated, begin thinking of more creative ways to cross sell your virtual presence with your physical one. "But you must weigh all of your options," cautions Susan Robertson, vice president of ASAE's marketing and communications division, "and make sure that they tie together. A lot of mistakes can be made when managing related projects in splendid isolation. Since almost everything you do with regard to a program involves marketing, you can't afford to have a disconnect between one part of the project and another." Robertson points to the promotion of ASAE's CareerHeadquarters.org site as "an orchestrated sequence of outreach tactics that show how this coordination can be done effectively."

ASAE made the decision to open up the site to anyone interested in an association career by buying the URL (www.careerheadquarters.org) and branding it. "The marketing campaign built around our job-posting site," says Robertson, "is based on getting people who are looking for jobs--but would not intuitively know to go to an association's Web site--to respond to a site called CareerHeadquarters.org because it does sound like the place where they could find jobs." Robertson thinks that it's also a way to attract people who might not otherwise have considered an association job--perhaps some of the professionals who are looking due to a downturn in the technology industry. "And if they had to go through ASAE's site as the portal," she says, "we'd lose a significant part of the prospective audience."

ASAE's companion marketing concept is based on the need to drive people to the site to post or to find jobs. "For that," explains Robertson, "we have created a print campaign for the subway system in Washington, D.C.-- something we may roll out as a national tool as well-since the CareerHeadquarters.org site is not restricted to a particular location or constituency. We'll also target potential sire visitors with a direct mail postcard campaign, a print campaign, and print ads in our magazine."

While covering your traditional bases, you'll need to move your pitch to the online arena. Associations are finding varying degrees of success with a number of strategies.

Ensure that search engines find your site

We've all experienced the frustration of coming up with the "no result, search again" response when querying a search engine for a person, place, or thing that we know is out there in cyberspace. On the other hand, it's sometimes amazing the number of matches that pop up in response to a comparable query. Positioning your Web site for easy access by the various search engines is no accident. Here are some methods to ease the way for your prospective visitors.

1. Consider a professional search engine listing firm. Seasoned Web users turn to search engines like Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) and Excite (www.excite.com) to help them find specific information on the Internet quickly. Essentially, they simply type in a subject area and the search engine brings back links that they can click on for further information.

Given the great power these search engines have to steer thousands of Internet cruisers to specific sites, it should come as no surprise that a number of Web-savvy firms have cropped up to help organizations be among the first links that the search engines return to information seekers. For a cornucopia of insight on these firms--as well as a great overview on how to work the search engines, check out SearchEngineWatch (www.searchenginewatch.com).

The Los Angeles Direct Marketing Association (www.ladma.org) apparently is no stranger to this search engine listing strategy. When you enter the keywords "Los Angeles direct marketing association" into AllTheWeb (www.alltheweb.com), a popular search engine, LADMA's site is the first link to be listed. That kind of visibility does not happen accidentally,

2. List your site with hundreds of search engines. If you don't have the resources to employ a listing service or the time to master the subtleties of search engines (many service providers devote their careers to this one service), you can get very good results by using a software program to automate the entire search-engine listing and positioning process. For example, Web Site Traffic Builder (www.websitetrafficbuilder.com) by Intelliquis, Draper, Utah, registers your site with more than 3,500 Internet search engines and directories, automatically puts your association in the appropriate category for each search engine, and generates the proper meta-tags that your site needs in order to be found by Web surfers in search of your particular service or subject area. Plus, you can use the software to check your site's position on the Internet's eight most popular search engines. (See sidebar, "Seek These Sites--And You'll Be Found," for a list of the top search engines and their URLs.) A similar program, WebPo sition Gold, by FirstPlace Software (www.webposition .com), Joplin, Missouri, focuses on getting your site placed high up on the Web's top search engines.

3. Link 'til you drop. Probably the easiest, least expensive, and most effective way to promote a site is to link your page with every other noncompetitive page on the Internet that shares the same interest. Craig Settles, a senior strategist for Successful Marketing Strategists, Berkeley, California, and author of Cybermarketing: Essentials for Success (Ziff-Davis Publishers, New York City), advises: "Link until you drop." The Indianapolis Land- lords Association (www.srconline.com /ila/links.html) offers a number of local industry related links on its site.

At the Home Sewing Association, links to its home page--www.sewing .org--are a member benefit. Donna Pierson, director of special projects at HSA, says, "For quite awhile we allowed links to sites of both members and nonmembers. When we hit 175 links, however, it started to become overwhelming from an administrative standpoint. We decided to maintain links as a member benefit only. By including an explanation of the link as one of the values of membership, however, I have had prospects become members of HSA."

4. Participate in online directories. In an effort to make Web cruising a little easier, a number of associations have packaged themselves--or their members--into easy-to-use directories that help Internet cruisers get to their sites more quickly. A good place to start would be the searchable directory of associations maintained by ASAE. The easy-to-navigate database, found at www.asaenet.org/find/, is essentially an online version of ASAE's traditional print Who's Who Membership Directory and Buyers' Guide. ASAE members receive complimentary listings in both the white pages and the Buyers.' Guide (yellow pages) sections of the directory, along with a listing on the searchable online guide to associations. For an additional fee, members can enhance their listings with a 50-word descriptive paragraph of their products and services.

At the Mailing and Fulfillment Service Association, Alexandria, Virginia, members receive a complimentary listing in the association's member directory but are charged a fee of $150 per year to add a hypertext link in the online member directory, which is searchable. "Like our print directory," explains Eric Casey, CAE, director of marketing at MESA (www.mfsanet.org), "the on-site version is intended to be a business-generation tool for our members, and we promote the site to the direct marketing community since they represent the client base for our nearly 700 members across the country who are large commercial mailers and fulfillment houses and about 130 associate members that supply the industry. MFSA also crossmarkets the links to its print advertisers who, can purchase them for $90 per year.

"Part of the rationale for charging for our link," says Casey, "is that we see it as functioning similarly to display advertising space in our print directory. "The price is approximately 40 percent less than the least expensive display ad that can be purchased in the directory." MESA's online directory is the second most popular location on its Web site and attracts roughly twice the unique visitors (approximately 10,000) each month as the circulation of the print directory, which numbers nearly 6,000. "Since we aren't as sure of the quality of the Web site visitors as we are of that of the members in the circulated directory," explains Casey, "it makes sense to us to price the online directory at a lower cost per thousand basis than for the print version.

"We make it as easy as possible to link to our site," adds Casey. "Members do so to demonstrate to their clients and prospects their commitment to the industry. We do monitor how they portray us on their site in order to ensure our standards of quality, but so far we have not experienced any problems."

Deliver enticing electronic Publications

Online information of special interest to members and nonmembers alike can lure visitors to your site--or attract them to become members--whether it is delivered directly to members' or prospects' e-mail or available on the association's site.

Interesting and informative association newsletters are a time-honored way to establish an ongoing relationship with current and prospective customers. And for some associations, extending that reach via the Internet has been wildly successful.

One of the masters of promoting via e-mail-delivered newsletters has to be the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (www.fifty-plus.net) Currently, age 50-plus retirees can sign up for three of the association's e-mail-delivered newsletters, which focus on health, money, and travel and leisure. And so far, no fewer than 72,000 Web cruisers have signed up for the weekly e-mail dispatches, which feature abstracts of articles that can be found on the association's Web site.

"The subscriber base has been steadily climbing, which has also resulted in an increase of registered users at our Web site," says CARP's Daigneault. Indeed, a year ago, registered users of CARP's site totaled about 14,000. Now, more than 24,000 mostly senior retirees visit the site. Adds Daigneault: "We also reach out with a sign-up at our site for another e-mail-delivered member newsletter, the subscriber base for which is another 15,000."

Another heavy user of e-mail-delivered newsletters is Computists International (CI), Palo Alto, California. The organization distributes a newsletter and four supplemental digests, some of which are available to nonmembers. The flagship newsletter, Computists Weekly, is published 40 weeks per year along with four supplemental digests, which members choose to receive or decline. Kenneth I. Laws, executive director and publisher of CI, says that in the case of his association, he has used his Web site (www.computists.com) to advertise the newsletter, rather than the other way around. "The Web site," says Laws, "draws a lot of people through hits on the newsletter archives. It's a synergy that hasn't necessarily translated into profits, but searchable archives are certainly a good way to draw search-engine traffic."

Most new members, says Laws, are interested in one or both of CI's weekly job supplements. "That was what motivated them to pay for membership," he explains, "and annual cost seemed a minor factor in the decision to renew. Once they got started, they were hooked on the quality of our flagship publication and tended to remain members for at least several years."

Regardless of some of the successes CI has had with its online publications, Laws cautions: "It's difficult to build a newsletter business and easy to kill one. The barriers to entry are so low that if a service were making money, it would be easy for competitors to move in and split the revenue. It's a tough business."

Despite the challenges, the CI newsletter archive draws 1,200 hits per day. Laws estimates that he could bring in even more hits if he kept a full archive online, but he retired the older material because he didn't want to waste people's time with job ads and announcements from a decade ago.

Other burgeoning Web activities include opt-in e-mail lists and e-zines, generally targeted to participants or readers with highly specific interests. Often, people signing up for opt-in email lists (or listservers) have indicated an interest in receiving advertisements and information about a specific category of products, topics, and services. As members of an association, people might have signed up to receive information in a particular interest area, which is supported by auxiliary services such as a listserver, print or online newsletter, professional development opportunities, and so on. According to Casey, MFSA's listservers are quite active. The association takes advantage of the interactive medium by communicating to the e-list participants information on new content that has been added to MESA's site, giving participants a heads up on what new products and service might be available.

Subscribers to e-zines are also looking for information targeted on specific interest areas, but tend to tolerate advertising if the e-zine's policy allows such promotions. For more about this new twist on direct marketing, enter "opt-in e-mail" and "e-zines" into any popular search engine for more information.

To promote online pulications--and many other online products and services--renting or buying consumer e-mail lists is probably one of the easiest methods, although it also may be one of the most expensive. Essentially, associations using this technique will rent exposure in an e-mail customer distribution list of a firm that is already established on the Web. Often, the firm owning the list recommends via e-mail that its customers visit the site of the list renter, and sometimes includes a discount coupon for goods, services, or membership at the list renter's site.

Alternatively, you may simply purchase a list of targeted prospects to which you might consider blast emailing a notice about the availability of your publication. "Keep in mind, however, that spam [unsolicited commercial e-mail] is a very real concern in the marketplace," says Todd Baker, vice president, The Grizzard Agency, a direct marketing company based in Los Angeles. "While people don't mind receiving newsletters and similar publications in their postal mail, subscribing them to your e-mail newsletter and giving them an opt-out option can sour people on your organization. If you're branded as a spammer, even if you've followed all of the proper procedures, it's hard to regain your good name. This is especially true of nonprofit organizations."

A better way to go about this, suggests Baker, is to use e-mail lists to send out a mailing outlining your enewsletter and Web site. Include a few sentences about what your organization does, a compelling reason why your reader would benefit from this service, and a call to action ("click here to find out more," or "reply to this e-mail to sign up," and so on). "If you entice people to subscribe," claims Baker, "those subscribers will be much more receptive to your message and much more loyal to your organization and its goals."

Baker explains that e-mail lists are usually priced in a similar way to regular mailing lists. There is a base cost per thousand addresses, with additional charges for the selection process required to narrow your target audience. "The main difference," says Baker, "is that you will never receive the list in any database format. E-mail list brokers know that digital information can be copied easily, so they deploy your mailing for you." The other main difference is that the costs are usually higher than traditional lists, although with the current dotcom crisis, Baker says the list prices are probably coming down. "Expect to pay," he says, "from $200 to $400 per thousand names for a list contracted on a per use basis.

"The bottom line to all of this," explains Baker, "is that once a person contacts you in any way, either through your Web site or via e-mail, and gives you his or her e-mail address, that address is now yours and can be added to whatever acquisition or development streams that you have in place. So, it really does benefit you to make sure that your e-mail contains multiple ways that recipients can get in touch with you." Since some may even want to write or call, Baker advises giving end users what they want and they'll appreciate the fact that you respect their preferences. "It's a good way to differentiate yourself from the competition," concludes Baker.

Add interactive online attractions

There are a number of ways in which you can provide a positive experience to site visitors. "If visitors feel good about the online experience," says ASAE's Robertson, "and if your Internet presence is as friendly and accessible as it can possibly be, that's all part of the marketing goal because it enhances the visitor's perception of your organization."

Associations are facing this marketing challenge with some creative additions to their sites. One takes the form of a virtual press center on the organization's site. Increasingly, journalists are turning to the Internet and the Web to search for stories and develop new ideas, and there is no reason why any association with a Web site should pass up an opportunity for free media exposure, says Settles.

The Air Transport Association (www.air-transport.org), Washington, D.C., makes the most of its virtual press center by featuring association executive speeches and Congressional testimony, in addition to a generous supply of press releases. The Advanced Medical Technology Association (www.advancedmed.org), based in Washington, D.C., also offers an in-depth selection of press releases.

The branded news ticker is another of the more innovative Web site promotion strategies being used on the Web today. Currently, a number of news organizations offer free, Web-based news feeds to any Web site interested in running those feeds. Individual.com (www.individual.com/network/headlines), for example, offers free news feeds to Web sites, as does Moreover.com (www.moreover .com/site/products/webmaster).

The Mortgage Bankers Association of America (www.mbaa.org), Washington, D.C., sports a news ticker on its home page, offering breaking mortgage news and headlines for passersby.

The application that catapulted America Online to the premier spot among Internet service providers-the chat room-is a fairly simple add-on to your site. Essentially, it's a place where your members can congregate and exchange live text messages with one another over the Internet. The operative word here is live. In a chat room, everyone gets to instantly read and respond to anything that anyone else feels inspired to write on the spot.

"Chat has become a very popular area of our Web site," says CARP's Daigneault. Open to members only, the site offers a differently themed chat every day of the week except Saturday. Recent themes have included chats for singles, regionally focused chats for the eastern and western Canadian provinces, one focused on creativity, and another for women only called "Girls Night Out." And given that virtually all of its members are retired, CARP has had no problem finding members willing to moderate its chats on a voluntary basis.

Meanwhile, the American Occupational Therapy Association (www.aota.org), Bethesda, Maryland, offers special chats by appointment.

Along similar lines, you might consider starting a message board. The Internet's answer to the local coffee shop or town square, message boards enable visitors to post messages to one another in a dedicated domain, and thus build a community centered around the sponsoring Web site.

"We've found that our discussion area has been a great tool for attracting repeat visits to our site," says Patrick Murphy, Web editor for the National Auctioneers Association (www.auctioneers.org), based in Overland Park, Kansas. Currently boasting about 6,000 members, the association regularly draws about 1,200 browsers monthly to its site to participate in online, auction-related discussions, as well as legislation-related letter writing campaigns.

A new twist on one of the most reliable forms of advertising-word of mouth-is the send-this-page option, enabling site visitors to send with a few mouse clicks your home page, or any other site page for that matter, to a friend or colleague. Known as viral marketing, the technique is predicated on the concept that the Internet community will voluntarily spread the word about your product or service (either on the strength of your brand alone or on the basis of a promotional offer you might initiate) via email, chatrooms, and other Web communication media. "In the future, we plan to do viral marketing of this type by enabling a site visitor to e-mail a story on our site to a friend or colleague," says NAA's Murphy.

After you've added all this value to your site, don't overlook a way of spotlighting attention on your Internet presence: Enter a Web site contest. Web sites that have the mettle should attempt to get their new site judged by the many site-of-the-day, site-on-a-shoestring, or site best-practices judging services. Sites that are judged worthy of an award are given the equivalent of a graphic blue ribbon they can post on their site. And the awarding service also provides a free link to the winning page from its own home page--a perk that can literally generate thousands of visits to a new Web site, according to Sayers.

Proving that even associations with few staff and small budgets can compete, the Home Sewing Association (with a staff of four and a budget for the Web site this year of $13,600) walked away with third prize in the Cyber Space Web Site Award program sponsored by Space Master, Inc., New Jersey, and presented by the New York Society of Association Executives, New York City, at its "We Love New York" event. First and second prize went respectively to the American Heart Association, Dallas, and the International Council of Shopping Centers, New York City, formidable competitors with far greater staffs and budgets.

Paying the price

"It's difficult to calculate precisely how your marketing budget will be impacted by the additional promotional activity required to maximize activity on your Web site," says ASAE's Robertson. "When you try to put a price, for example, on providing information, how do you calculate how much an increased number of hits on your Web site reduces the cost of paying for staff to provide that information over the phone?"

On the other hand, explains Robertson, you can corral the numbers when it comes to the amount you can save on online registration. For the first time, ASAE is offering not only online registration, but attendees will have the opportunity to select the events that they will attend and then actually print out their schedules. The new member benefit will be offset by substantial cost savings.

Meanwhile, most associations have paid the big up-front costs of designing their initial Web sites and several iterations thereafter. But, while many boards have been as generous as possible with funding for Web and Internet activities, other sources of revenue are always welcome. Here's what some associations are doing.

Advertising and sponsorships. "Since the technology budget is small at the Home Sewing Association," says Pierson, "our site has been an ongoing challenge to finance. Contrary to the results of some, we did have some success with selling banner ads. Last year, in fact, they really took off and we almost broke even with the budget for funding the site." HSA established certain sections of its site to host rotating banner ads. "We felt that we would be comfortable with a maximum of 12 individual ads," says Pierson, "and we sold ads that would appear on pages of the site for a fee of $600 per year for members and $1,200 per year for nonmembers." After a year of the banner ad campaign, Pierson can now provide advertisers with results such as the number of site visitors (approximately 60,000 per month) and the number of click-throughs experienced by each banner ad.

Perhaps a more promising program is one that HSA launched in January 2001: offering sponsorships to members in which they hold the exclusive rights to a page or pages promoting their products with those of partner members. "We wanted to give our membership some kind of ownership in our Web site," explains Pierson. "We decided to try to pair up some of our members to feature, for example, a bridal page where we would show a gown designed after one of our members' patterns, made from another member's fabric, and so on. When the end-customers come to the site, they see something that they might very well go to their local fabric shop to buy."

Pierson marketed the sponsorship program via a simple direct mail program, sending out 25 letters at a time, offering sponsorship of the special Web page for an annual fee of $1,200. She got a bite immediately--for the bridal page--and is now beginning to offer other monthly sponsorships for $350. "Compared with most advertising costs," says Pierson, "this is minimal. We also ask the sponsor to provide advertising copy and images so that production costs will be limited--and often the materials are available in another format that we can easily convert."

Subscription tees. At Computists' International, Kenneth Laws has experimented with both free and fee-based subscriptions to online newsletters. "Early members paid $135 per year," says Laws, "which included membership as well--but the primary member benefit has always been the newsletter access. I dropped that to as low as $47.50 per year for professionals and half of that for students. I have also tried different rates for members in different countries. The bottom line is that sign-up for our product is not price-sensitive. Even for free, it's often been difficult to grow the membership beyond my original narrow audience of computer scientists."

Hyperlinks. While individual ASAE members receive as a member benefit a listing in both print and online member directories, associate members (vendors, consultants, and suppliers to the industry) can expand their presence beyond a simple listing for a fee of $415. The charge pays for the listing and the online posting. The hyperlink linking back to the member's site is an additional charge of $345. "Once associate members purchase display ad space in the directory," says Karl Ely, ASAE's publisher and advertising director, "they receive an expanded listing in the directory as well as an online posting in the electronic Buyers' Guide. We have a similar system for our more specialized directories, Technology Solutions, Association Management Companies, Insurance and Financial Services, and Printing and Publishing," says Ely. "A charge of $395 purchases a 50-word listing in the directory, a spot on the matrix of services offered by each firm, and a listing in the online directory." As with the Buyers' Guide, th e hyperlink is an additional $345 charge. Says Ely, "2001 has been the best year in the history of the directory. More associate members have realized the value of hotlinks and listings."

Classified ads. While they don't generate quantifiable revenue, the bread-and-butter advertising staple of every newspaper in America--the classified ad--is also a big hit on the Internet. Many associations offer classified domains as a free service simply to draw more traffic to their sites. The National Association of Left-Handed Golfers (www.nalg.org), Atlanta, hosts free classified ads for lefties looking to buy or sell new or used clubs. And the New Media Association of New Jersey (www.nmanj.com), Morristown, invites the local new media industry to post job offers at its site.

Concludes marketing consultant Sayers, "Combining these tactics with a relentless persistence to build your site's traffic will virtually guarantee that within a few short weeks, your access counters [a software tool used to measure visits to a Web site] will start spinning like the gallon indicator on a 1950s gas pump." While Sayers may be a bit optimistic, it is the combination of all of these marketing methods that will ultimately result in more traffic to your Web site. "We have to get to our association members in a variety of ways," advises Robertson of ASAE, "because there is no best way. And when we talk about melding traditional marketing with online methods, we are really getting to the point where traditional marketing includes those online activities. Perhaps a better way to say it is that we now are creating a contemporary marketing plan. And don't forget the importance of public relations; that's the opposite side of the marketing coin." But, then, that's another story.

Joe Dysart is a writer, speaker, and business consultant specializing in the Internet and is based in Thousand Oaks, California.

SEEK THESE SITES--AND YOU'LL BE FOUND
According to Media Metrix (www.mediametrix.com), in October 2000
these eight search engines experienced the highest number of unique
visitors (noted in thousands) of any search engines on the Web
SEARCH ENGINE             URI                NUMBER OF
                                             VISITORS
                                             (IN THOUSAND)
Yahoo!                    www.yahoo.com      87,504
Lycos                     www.lycos.com      50,144
Excite                    www.excite.com     38,141
About the Human Internet  www.about.com      25,493
AltaVista                 www.altavista.com  19,756
Ask Jeeves                www.askjeeves.com  14,248
LookSmart                 www.looksmart.com  14,140
Google                    www.google.com     8,097
Source: Media Metrix, October 2000, "Global Top 50 Web &
Digital Media Propertive."

MARKETING A VIRTUAL ASSOCIATION

GERALD ASH 

The Association of Knowledgework, Ruskin, Florida, is a start-up virtual association with no marketing budget and a target market of a wide range of professionals in dozens of different professions that are suddenly Gerald Ash engaged in a whole new field-knowledge management. AOK morphed out of an e-mail discussion group for association executives that I founded in January 2000 in my role as a consultant with The Forbes Group, Fairfax, Virginia.

But how do you market to such a vast and diverse audience, especially when you have no budget? The answer is networking. Here are just four of the several strategies we've used to attract members.

COOPETITION (cooperative competition). AOK is the new kid on the block. Knowledge Management Consortium International, Vernon, Connecticut, was founded in 1997 based on corporate memberships, while AOK is focused on individual members. KMCI President Steve Cavaleri and I agreed that the two organizations were complementary-one virtual, one bricks and mortar. Consequently, we created an affiliation whereby we offer deep discounts and services to one another's members.

AFFILIATION. Part of AOK's primary marketing strategy includes reaching budding knowledge management professionals through affiliation agreements with their existing associations, suppliers, and service providers. In turn, the reciprocal agreements with these organizations are expected to help AOK's partners deliver the knowledge management dimension to their customers and members without expanding their core missions.

PERMISSION MARKETING. Knowledge management professionals are Web learners and, therefore, we've positioned AOK well in terms of the ability of search engines to quickly find the organization's Web site. However, membership dues for surfers accustomed to free information is a tough sell. Accordingly, AOK's site is rich in both free and protected content. Visitors must, however, submit their e-mail addresses in order to access the free area. Thus, they have given permission for membership promotion while experiencing some of the value.

INTERACTIVE CONTENT. AOK is a dynamic site providing more than documents. For example, the Star Series features celebrity guest moderators for discussion groups. Networking matters to KM professionals and this gives them one of several opportunities to do that on the site.

How's it working? In the past six months AOK has picked up affiliations and members in the United States as well as in Europe, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, and Malaysia-bringing its membership to 700 knowledge management mavens in 45 countries. Visit the AOK Web site at www.kworkorg for more information.

Submitted by Gerald Ash, chief executive officer, Association of Knowledgework, Ruskin, Florida. E-mail: [e-mail].