Successful chambers understand that every business is different and that’s why you need unique content ideas for your niche chamber member audiences.
Each type of member has a different business goal or a way to attain that goal. The management has different areas of interest and needs. While your chamber may not be able to address every individual business, you won’t be successful if you offer the same exact content ideas for all of your members.
Keep reading to get ideas for five targeted chamber member audiences: women-owned, young leaders, minorities, veterans and established businesses.
In this article, we’ve compiled some of the most popular personas that chambers target and created topics that are of interest to those groups. You can use them to create articles, educational social media, blog posts, or lunch and learns with member subject matter experts.
Personalization in services is important to becoming a valuable part of your members’ lives. However, it’s not always scaleable. To make it so, you can create individual groups or marketing personas of the types of members you have and create content around how you can best service them.
Part of creating good content is creating educational components. Whether that is a social media post, a blog post, a lunch and learn, or a video, if you want to create good content it has to be appealing to your niches or the different personas you market to.
As it goes with any targeting, there may be some of these subjects that interest several of your niche groups. Sometimes changing a few words in the title of the presentation or article makes it more interesting to a larger number of members. You may also find that you market these content ideas to a specific group and yet have others who are interested. Don’t turn people away. If a man wants to come to a women leaders’ luncheon on becoming a better communicator, allow it.
We personalize content because we want it to resonate with that segment and to make them feel understood. A member should never be made to feel alienated because we meant the content for another group and we didn’t include them.
Women
Traditionally, women have been secondary wage earners in the household and largely responsible for childcare and household responsibilities. Many would argue that is no longer the way things are, but with COVID and children at home in school we saw a mass exodus of women from the workforce. As much as things seem to change, they also stay the same. However, when finding content ideas for today’s women leaders, you want fresh and innovative learning opportunities.
Women will likely resonate with the following topics:
- Saving Yourself: finding a satisfactory work/life balance
- Where Did My Day Go: productivity tips for the beleaguered professional
- Learning the Art of Negotiation: if you don’t know your value, who will?
- How to Launch and Fund a Women-Owned Business
- The Hidden Grant Market
- How to Say No and Mean It: advice for those who take on too much
- Female Diversity: we’re not all Betty Crocker (good intro for shedding stereotypes and breaking gender rules)
- Being a Good Mentor to the Next Generation
- Speaking Up at a Noisy Table: tips for expressing your opinion, getting deserved credit, and other ideas when everyone else is louder (or more established) than you are
- Give Up on Having It All Without Giving Up on Your Dreams
Young Leaders (or People Reinventing Themselves in Their Careers)
I tend to shy away from organizing leader groups around age. Who wants to kick someone out just because they turn 30? No reason to have a professional version of Children of the Corn, after all. But there are needs of new leaders that should be addressed. However, people who are restarting their profession, switching from one to another, and are taking a few steps backward may also benefit from the educational materials you give your “young” leaders. Those types of topics may include:
- Personal Branding: why it’s critical to your career
- Graduating on Social Media: how to transform your social media following from your teenage years to a powerful network
- Social Media Adulting: no, you don’t want to post that anymore
- Translating Volunteer Positions into Strong Professional Experience
- Selling the Job Hop: how to make others understand short job tenure is valuable
- Navigating Expectations in the Workplace
- Understanding the Multi-Generational Workplace
- I Graduated, Got a Job, Now What?
- Networking 101
- How to Start Your Own Business with No Money
Minorities and Veterans
There are a lot of funding opportunities available to minority groups and veterans. Content ideas which help them navigate those opportunities is important as well as helping them market their skills and experience.
- Uncovering Hidden Funding Opportunities
- Leveraging Your Existing Experience in Your New Business or Career
- Creating a Resume That Translates (It’s important veterans draw the correlation between what they did in the military and what they can do in the private sector. Some employers won’t see it unless it is defined clearly.)
- Top Employers Actively Recruiting Minorities and Veterans
- Navigating Prejudices in the Workplace
- Understanding Your Employment Rights
- Silencing Self-Doubt
- Charting a Course to Financial Success
- Leading a Multi-Generational Workforce (veterans often work with several generations but there’s a hierarchy in the military that is fading in the corporate world)
- Developing Your Own Leadership Style
Established Business Owners
Your members who’ve been in business a while may feel like they have little need for chamber education. But there are some topics you can cover that would be of help to them too. These include:
- Thriving in a Multi-generational Business Environment
- Embracing Diversity
- Smoothing Out the Edges: when your family-run business is no longer just family
- Making Your Business Sexier: doing what needs to be done in order to sell
- Leaving Your Baby Behind: knowing when it’s time to walk away from your business
- Selecting a Successor and Other Retirement Myths
- Taking Your Business to the Next Level (and how to decide what that is)
- Get Your Groove Back: starting a side hustle or new business later in life
- How to Be a Great Mentor to the Next Generation
- Is What You’re Doing Still Working: a late business (or personal) audit
Putting together this type of personalized content can be a lot of work but it also helps your members feel closer to your chamber. It makes them feel like you understand their needs. Plus, the content can be used in multiple ways for even greater reach.
You may not be an expert in all of these areas. It’s likely you will want to bring in a member or local thought leader to run the lunch and learns. Some chambers invite members to conduct them with the understanding that they can pitch a program, class, book, or such at the end.
For best results, you’ll want to market these offerings by being specific about who can benefit from each session but always make people feel they are included if they choose to join.
