How You Can Help the Association

The Big Picture

The Association of Due Diligence Professionals (ADDP) needs short-term and long-term support, including volunteers, staff, and cash. The best way to market the Association is to use the latest social media techniques.

We have designed this program for the ADDP using all of our best ideas so that you can be extremely productive, and we are asking you to spend only 15 minutes per day!

Here is how you can help the Association:

You can strike up conversations and foster relationships of trust with people everywhere who will become our members and supporters.
You can spread the message that the term due diligence means something much broader and more exciting than the traditionally accepted understanding of the term, and that the ADDP provides highly valuable information, news and resources to help members improve their decision making processes in every aspect of their personal and professional lives.
To help you help the Association, we will give you the tools you need, including ideas of what to say, announcements about products and services, educational articles, ideas for posting on discussion forums and blogs, and other items which you can use to converse with interested parties. These items will help you have good conversations that lead to strong relationships.
All Association Members, Advisors and helpers can create or help to create these items and we welcome all such contributions.
Together, we will build several powerful online destinations where people can discuss the Association with us, beginning with our official website. Besides the website, we are starting up strong official channels at all the major social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to name a few – and we will start making friends with big and small players through those venues.

Why Focus on Social Media to Promote the Association?

It is inexpensive.
It requires very little time to set up and deploy promotional campaigns.
It is extremely effective if used intelligently.
Its usage can be measured and evaluated in much closer detail than traditional marketing methods.

How Will This Plan Work?

We will coordinate all of our online efforts to promote the ADDP while our worldwide team of helpers creates the body of content to be used in marketing activities.
We are working with our core team members to help me determine some initial content topics for each helper. Our plan is to give each of you a set of drafts and templates that you can quickly and easily adapt to your style, and then publish in specific online areas.
As you publish and promote highly useful and interesting content, we will track the traffic and other data to see which content pieces are getting the best responses. Then we can work together and adjust our publishing accordingly.

Keys to Successfully Promoting the Association

Show and tell people: This is not your normal due diligence!
Show people everywhere how they can benefit by actively supporting the Association.
Keep close track of our contact relationships. We are working on our CRM system.
Set clear goals and work closely together to meet them.
Measure and evaluate our performance regularly.

Goals

We will establish clear goals to inspire and guide our efforts, including:
- Cash goals.
- Branding goals.
- Marketing goals – number of contacts, website visitors, prospects, and so forth.

Content Ideas

The purpose of our content is to provide so much intelligence and usefulness to readers that they cannot help but inquire about how to connect with and support the ADDP.
We will develop and offer a link to a survey for prospects to tell us about themselves and how they might wish to connect with the Association.
Articles about hot news topics and how they relate to the new due diligence
Articles about different industries and what the current state of due diligence is in each industry
How a hot news topic can affect you
How to achieve a goal
How to solve a problem
How to do things
The best or worst things
The top 10 things
The results of your research on different topics
Compare and contrast two interesting things
The sad, funny, inspiring, or lesson-filled story about an interesting topic, or about an interesting person
The history of something
The surprising, puzzling, scary, or otherwise fascinating thing about an interesting topic
Ask readers: What do you think about (various interesting topics)?
Ask readers: What would you do if (an interesting topic) happened?
Exposing a misdeed by a well-known person or mistake about a well-known thing
Debunking myths or stereotypes about something interesting
What one thing can teach you about another
Do you make these mistakes related to this (interesting topic)?
The secrets of a certain topic or niche

Content Template

Headline that sparks curiosity and promises a compelling benefit.
Lead with a hook – e.g. a question, story or quote – to grab attention.
Explain what you will cover in the post or article, and what benefits the readers will receive as a result.
Write at least 3-5 paragraphs of content.
Include 1 or more photos, graphics or videos.
Include links to useful online resources.
Ask topical experts for quotes to include in the article.
Try to include 1-3 links to previously published Association publications, or links to various Association website content.
In closing, review what you have covered, and make a clear call to action to the readers to do something about what they have just read.
If appropriate, close with a question to encourage comments.

Social Media Outposts

We will share our message starting with what is on the website and talk to people about it. In addition, we will coordinate our team of helpers like you, to go out and meet people online, share links to content by them, and so on.

Distribution

Each member of our internal team will write and publish content at the Association website.
You can also write and publish content at the Association website, or can help with various parts of the process, such as suggesting topics, editing, and so forth.
Each member of our internal team and each helper will promote the content via their own channels – email, social networks, blogs, and other channels. We will coordinate with you, and help you decide which of your channels would work best, how to do each step of the postings, and so on.

Each member of our internal team and our helpers can also promote the content via our official online channels, and we will also coordinate these efforts.

Your Task

You can either write and send us content, or you can help assemble and send us content.
You can contact your everyone in your network, including your friends and associates, about supporting the ADDP by joining, starting chapters, sponsoring, donating, taking the Exam, buying the publications, passing on article links, submitting their own content that we can publish and spread, and so forth.
When you talk to people, tell us about your conversations, so that you and we are up to date, and we can help each other to help those people understand why they should be involved with helping the Association. Once we finish our new CRM system, you will be able to send your work and conversations directly into the CRM system.
You should subscribe to our Website’s new stream of articles. This way, you can stay current on what everyone on our team and in our network is publishing to help the Association.

Worldwide Chapter Creation

You can look for people you know who might like to add to their resumes, either being an ADDP Chapter leader, or being an ADDP Advisor, or being an important member of a Chapter team.
Invite them personally and send them to the website and send us an email letting us know. We are working on a page on the website where they can apply for Chapter leadership, Advisory Board, Chapter team and volunteer tasks, and do other things.

Thank you for your help, and please email us with your questions, suggestions, and ideas how we can improve the marketing program for the Association.