Initiatives in order to keep the chapter going strong

During 2013 the Southern Connecticut BOMA chapter is going to put a concerted effort into several initiatives in order to keep our chapter going strong and hopefully grow. The initiatives that we feel we need to invest both time and money in are the following: communication, media and membership. While communication and media are related, we have segmented them separately. Communication will include how we reach out to our local members as well as prospective members. This will include print communication as well as social media avenues. Our print communications generally go out both via email and USPS mail services (which has been effective). This year we are going to try to incorporate some social media avenue, such as LinkedIn, to provide our members and non-members information about our programs and the benefits of being a BOMA member. When it comes to media, we have already reached out to several media agencies and have begun inviting them to our local events and programs in order to create more visibility for Southern Connecticut BOMA in that realm. We have had great success in getting them to post information about our events and programs. We are hopeful that this, too, will create more interest in our chapter, thus allowing us to attract new members. When it comes to membership, we have enlisted several long-time members to join our membership committee to be our voice and to reach out to local firms to seek information from them on why they are not members of BOMA and to provide them information about member benefits. Recently I attended our winter business meeting, and there were several sessions discussing the benefits BOMA International provides to the real estate market as a whole. We will also be reaching out to existing members to inform them of the work that BOMA International does to advocate with our legislature regarding passing of bills that keep the real estate industry in check. While these are things that Southern Connecticut BOMA will concentrate on in 2013, these initiatives are what all companies can concentrate on regardless of service. Keeping your company's communication and media program up to date and ensure you are meeting the needs of existing and prospective clients is always essential to grow your business. Regarding membership, this could be changed to talk about employees and to keep them happy and attracting new talent to your firm to meet your business model. 2013 will continue to be challenging to all, so to keep our businesses viable, we need continually to look at new ways to market ourselves and ensure we have talented personnel on our staff at all levels. Debbie Korf, president of Southern Connecticut BOMA, is with Cartus, Danbury, Conn.