Clowder Blog

As our upcoming webinar - Web Forums Out, Mobile Forums In (Oct. 2, 2 pm!) approaches, we wanted to dive into what makes an organization's mobile forums a success.

Forums through Clowder are user-generated and serve to continually engage your community. When a user creates a post, it opens up communication within the app. Readers are able to comment on, like and subscribe to content in the feed. Forums are the perfect way to get people talking and collaborating on a consistent basis, right on their mobile device.

Mobile devices have become invaluable business tools and the primary channel people conduct many aspects of their personal and professional lives through. The proof is indisputable - mobile has overtaken desktop and apps have overtaken websites. Even back in 2017, a study conducted by Samsung to gauge mobility trends at the workplace found that 93% of respondents used cell phones at work to complete professional tasks, reporting they spend 33% of their workday using their phones. In the two years since then, it’s very likely those statistics have increased. 

When McKinley conducted a recent survey identifying the association market's three highest priorities for the following year, the goal of generating non-dues revenue topped the chart. Increasing non-dues revenue allows for organizations to rely on alternative sources of income and not solely on membership payments. 

All organizations understand the necessity of a web presence. Your website is how your audience finds you and accesses the information, products and resources you provide. It should reveal a bit about your culture, your values and your personality. It’s an invaluable tool for communications and for personal and consumer transactions. However, nearly 80% of internet usage in 2019 is likely to be mobile, so simply having a good website isn’t enough.  

Associations are often well-versed in event-only mobile apps as they’re continually utilized for meetings, conferences and conventions. But what happens when an event is over? Well, 99% of the time, these single-use apps become deleted.

In this webinar, we explore the benefits of instead taking a year-round approach to mobile and what it means to extend mobile member engagement beyond just events.

Elevated Resources, Inc., a premier global talent acquisition and management services company, and Clowder, the leading provider of year-round mobile engagement solutions for communities, have collaborated to drive the development and enhancement of the Elevated Resources’ ELEVATE Mobile Direct App. The talent pool engagement platform was released earlier this year and provides a rich feature set to enhance connections between employers and their contingent pools of talent.

The Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) is the leading association for the construction industry. AGC represents more than 26,000 firms, including over 6,500 of America’s leading general contractors, and over 9,000 specialty-contracting firms. More than 10,500 service providers and suppliers are also associated with AGC, all through a nationwide network of chapters.

A common misconception among smaller organizations and often regional chapters of larger organizations, is that because of your size, you don’t need a mobile app. We would argue that that perspective is flawed because it’s not about how many people you are reaching, it’s about how you are reaching your people. How many members or partners you have is beside the point when determining how to best reach them and how they choose to consume content. Whether it’s 250 people or 25,000, your goal to provide an excellent service and experience is the same, isn’t it? 

Pushback is inevitable when pitching a new technology solution. Mobile solutions in particular are commonly subject to much apprehension. That’s because many organizations are still in the early stages of understanding the full value of a comprehensive mobile strategy. But to the uncertainty of mobile we ask: What’s your alternative? Is it more email? More web pages? More in-person meetings? What’s a better answer to decreasing engagement and increasing membership churn?

When your organization’s employees and members log in to your web site, membership database, sales tools or HR dashboard, do they use one set of login information to access all the applications? OAuth 2.0 is the industry standard protocol that allows organization to authenticate user data across all applications. Without geeking out on the technical aspects of OAuth 2.0, here’s an overview of why it matters.