JonLowder.com

A Fun (and Inexpensive!) Member Recognition Idea

At PTAA our membership director and Ambassador Committee came up with a really fun member recognition program:

• They ordered blank Chinese take-out boxes
• They ordered fortune cookies with fun messages including:
  • We can see your future with PTAA!
  • For a good time call 336.294.4428!
  • LIKE us on Facebook!
  • Happy Anniversary from PTAA!
  • Legislation and Education. We do it all!
  • Your lucky number is 33.62.94.44.28 
• They put eight cookies in each box and sealed the box with a sticker printed with our logo.
• Then the ambassadors split up our member list and each agreed to visit six of them to hand deliver each a box and window cling with our logo printed on it.

It's a really creative and inexpensive way to acknowledge our members, and of course you could use it as a customer recognition tool in non-membership businesses.

Easy Way to Record a Meeting

Today at our office (I work for a trade association) we hosted a board meeting and the secretary asked if we could record it so that she could reference the recording later in case she missed anything for her notes. We don't have a digital recorder in the office so our solution was the following:

• Signed up for a free Google Voice account. 
• Tied the Voice account to my office phone since you have to tie the Google Voice number to an existing number. 
• From our conference room phone I called my office phone and had someone answer it and then press "4" to start the recording process. (Google Voice allows you to record any incoming call, but currently you can't record outbound calls which is why we called my office phone from the conference room and not vice versa).
• The recording is automatically saved as an MP3 in your Google inbox which you can then share as a link you email to whomever you want, embed in a webpage/blog post or download to share offline. 
• When the meeting was over I simply hung up the phone which ended the recording.
• After the meeting was over I emailed the secretary the link to the recording and that was that.

Other uses I can picture for this setup:

• Recording interviews with industry experts over the phone to share on our blog.
• Recording our educational offerings to be archived or posted online for others to access.

All of this was unbelievably easy to do and the price was definitely right.