communication department

Volume XIX Number 7

Membership

Membership Drive Materials

It’s that time of the year again—the STC membership department is gearing up for the end-of-year chapter membership drives. With your help and encouragement we feel that this year’s membership drive can be the most successful ever.

Remember the best time of year to join is November. Memberships that begin on or after November 1, 2006, are good for 14 months, ending December 31, 2007.

The following materials, available from the Society office, can help chapter efforts to recruit new members.

Brochure. Discover the Benefits, an effective introduction to STC aimed at nonmembers, contains information about STC services, publications, and special interest groups. Keep the brochure on display at chapter meetings, and urge nonmembers to take one home. Fifty copies of the brochure will be mailed to all chapter membership managers at the end of September. You can download the brochure from the STC Web site.

STC membership applications. Membership applications explain the benefits and costs of STC’s membership categories. These are available from STC Web site and the STC office. Please encourage nonmembers to join online.

Lists of limited members. A list of individuals within your chapter’s boundaries who hold limited memberships, sent monthly from the STC office to your chapter. Put this list to good use during your membership drive by calling these members individually or conducting a targeted mailing.

Limited members are a good target audience for your recruitment efforts because they are already familiar with some of the benefits of STC membership and need only to be convinced to spend a little more money to receive the benefits of membership in your chapter. For ideas on how to promote the value of membership in your chapter, see the article “A Bright Idea: Show the Value of $20” in the November 2004 Tieline.

Lists of lapsed members. Contact information of individuals who relinquished their chapter membership within the last five years. To receive contact information for former members of your chapter, send your request to STC’s membership department. The office can provide the information either electronically or in the form of mailing labels.

When contacting former chapter members, outline the benefits of STC membership and the specific benefits of membership in your chapter. These former members may not know about recent changes in STC, including new benefits such as Intercom online and the technical communication career center on the STC Web site. Invite them to attend a meeting, peruse your chapter Web site, or read your chapter’s most recent newsletter. A personal, courteous invitation is often hard to turn down.

Whether you are a new or experienced membership manager, the membership department is always ready to help. If you have any questions, or wish to order additional copies of the brochure, please contact Cara Gardner in the STC membership department at (703) 522-4114, ext. 200, or cara@stc.org. We are here for you and will be happy to answer any questions or requests.

Good luck with your membership drive!

A Membership Resource: Local Employers

An effective way to spread the word about the value of STC membership is to target employers of technical communicators in your local area. For chapters based in the United States, a quick way to identify local businesses that not only employ technical writers but are actively looking for them is to search on any of the dozens of “job hunter” Web sites. One such site is jobsearch.monster.com. For best results, enter a likely job description in the Enter keywords field, and select your local area from the Choose location menu. (Skip the Choose job category field.)

With all job hunter sites, be sure to enter keyword phrases in quotation marks, such as “technical writer” or “documentation specialist” or “information developer.” If you enter technical writers without quotes in the search field, you will pull every listing that contains technical or writer, making your job more complicated.

Other useful Web sites are hotjobs.yahoo.com and www.careerbuilder.com. By specifying the geographic region you want to target and searching for industry-specific job descriptions that are appropriate for your area by keyword, you can quickly produce a list of local businesses that employ technical writers. Use a variety of job descriptions, and be creative and inclusive—you can always pare down the results later. If you aren’t coming up with many listings, try varying or expanding your geographic search area.

A second quick way to target potential employers of technical writers is through the Yahoo Yellow Pages, which allows searches for both Canadian and American companies. Type “technical writers” into the search field and click Search. A page will appear asking you to refine your search location. Once you’ve done that, your search should result in a list of businesses within your search area that specifically advertise technical writing services.

Depending on the site you use for your search, you may obtain the complete contact information of the promising businesses in your area, or you may simply get a name and a city. You might need to do some detective work to come up with all the information you need. The sidebar describes strategies you can use to promote STC when contacting employers.

Your goal is not to sell STC per se, but to lay the foundation for a long-term relationship between your chapter and the employers in your area. A business seeking technical writers is already a prime candidate for interest in STC. It has a bona fide need for technical writers, whatever it may call them in
its advertisements.

If companies are currently interviewing candidates, they will be acutely aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the available talent—a strong argument for the benefits of ongoing professional development. They are likely to be receptive to an organization representing their target audience, and one that can connect them quickly and cost-effectively to a strong resource pool.