Electric Co-op Today

As young co-op members increasingly use social media sites, a new survey finds the writing is on the wall—the Facebook wall—for skeptics.

Results of the new Survey on the Cooperative Difference show that co-ops need to be actively engaging members via social media, including Facebook and Twitter. (Photo By: jbk_photography)

“We have better than three-quarters of our youngest members participating in social networks,” said Tom Laing, director of market research at TSE Services. “We’ve known all along that our greatest challenge in engaging our membership is with the younger members. So if this is where they are, that’s where you need to be.”

Laing’s assessment stems from the results of the Touchstone Energy® Cooperatives 2010 National Survey on the Cooperative Difference. For the second straight year, members were asked if they consider it acceptable for businesses to communicate with them via social networks.

“It’s gaining greater and greater acceptance among our members, with now better than half being open to that. It’s particularly strong in the groups that you would expect to be most engaged in social networking, the 18-to-44-year-olds, where nearly two-thirds are now receptive to hearing from businesses over social networks,” Laing said. “So it doesn’t appear to us that there’s going to be a lot of pushback.”

At May’s Connect Conference, many co-op communicators expressed frustration with boards and managers leery of social media. Laing agreed it’s the way to go today, especially to reach younger members who are more likely to see themselves as “customers” rather than “members.”

“If we’re not playing in that space, we’re just missing out,” Laing said. “And we may lose one of the most important channels for communicating with the folks we need to be communicating with the most.”

And what should co-ops be doing with social media? Laing cautioned not to spend time talking about what a great co-op you have, but to instead offer useful information.

“Give status updates on an outage, allow them to post pictures of the outage restoration, tell them about discounts we’re offering through our Co-op Connections Card program,” Laing said.

“Things that are directly meaningful and useful to them are the way to engage them over social networks, and it will lead to them having a higher impression of the cooperative without us using it as a place to sell them on the co-op.”

Related content: Survey on the Cooperative Difference

Tags: Co-op News, Consumer-Members, R&D, Survey on the Cooperative Difference, Touchstone Energy