"Virtual events break down geographic barriers to attendance. Stretch your event across time zones so participants can experience it live wherever they are. Leverage digital conferencing platforms... that enable live captioning and translation for speaker remarks so audience members can view subtitles in their local language."

In a just-released events survey, Sophie Holt, global strategy director, Explori, said: “Online and hybrid seem to have a complementary role to play alongside [in-person] events. Not only will they give reassurance to visitors who are concerned about safety in the short term, but still want to connect with their community, but they may also have an important role to play in bringing new audiences to established events.”   That was exactly the case for Pro Farmer’s first-ever virtual Crop Tour held last month, Joe May, their marketing and sales director, told me yesterday.    “It went really well. We went into it with no idea how well it would be received and were very pleased. We’re lucky enough to be part of Farm Journal, so their TV crew produced a really professional looking broadcast for us each of the four nights. We never had a live broadcast component before."   ...

When you go on the Pro Farmer site, you see a cool ticker-tape message: “Register for free to attend this year’s nightly Crop Tour virtual meetings & watch from your own home.” Crop Tour is perhaps their biggest annual event; I’ve had great conversations with marketing director Joe May about it in the past, and I’ve promised to catch up with him after this year’s event—going on now—ends.    One thing that I will definitely ask him is, when in-person events return to our world, will virtual participation be a part of that? In other words, will hybrid events be the new normal?   "There are people in your community who will never come to an event but would benefit greatly from it," Brian Cuthbert, group vice president, Diversified Communications U.S., told me a couple months ago, speaking about the potential of virtual participation in the future. "Are you leaving money on the table by not giving th ...

At De Correspondent, a Dutch, membership-based news site, journalists regularly turn to all 60,000 members to ask for potential sources, information and inspiration for new stories—a process that works so well that it expanded to the U.S. market as The Correspondent. At the MelEdits blog, Melanie Padgett Powers, a big contributor to our Association Media & Publishing division, writes that organizations should develop a similar system when it comes to generating content. “...put out a content creation call for sources in your regular e-newsletter,” she writes. “Plan ahead and regularly ask for contributions on specific topics... Continually monitor social media and your online communities to see what members are talking about—but also who is doing the talking.” The benefits of this process are multifold: Not only will you be able to see what your members are talking about—and therefore what kind of content is relevant—bu ...

In a recent survey of organizations by GrowthZone, only 11% of respondents said their first-year member renewal rate increased in the past year, whereas 26% said it went down; 61% said it remained about the same.

I was reading an article titled 8 Opportunities for Subscriber Retention on the INMA blog by Amy Shioji, vice president of customer experience and insights at Gannett, and maybe the takeaway that struck me most was number 7: Collaborate with newsrooms early and often.

"In our shared pursuit to push the web to do more, we're running into a common problem: performance," writes Web performance consultant, Jeremy Wagner, in a column for Google.

Falfurrias Capital Partners, Industry Dive Seal Growth Partnership

When Pro Farmer asked their audience if they would recommend the company to others, the 0-10 answer included an open text opportunity so Pro Farmer can get more information—specifically what might be most valuable and what might be lacking.   "Our survey resulted in multiple concerns from text responses about user log-ins and passwords to the websites," said Pro Farmer marketing manager Joe May, in a webinar earlier this year that will also be given in a live session at our Business Information & Media Summit (BIMS) Nov. 11-13 in Hollywood, Fla.   "So what we did was proactively remind our users the basics—how to reset their password; how to set their browser to remember their credentials so they don't have to enter it every single time," May said. "That's a simple action that we probably all take for granted, but for our audience... [let's just say that] 50 years old is considered a young farmer. Age range can go from a farmer in their 20s to a ...