Published in a new ASAE book

Y'all must be getting sick of me, although I saw my subscriber count more than double overnight.

Well, in the unlikely event you haven't had enough of Ben Martin, now you can find me in a new book from ASAE & The Center called Membership Essentials. This book is the culmination of about five years worth of work from ASAE's Membership Section Council, which I currently vice-chair. Several members of the council as well as some at-large ASAE members authored the chapters. But Sara Miller, CAE of the Humane Society (another of the 5 to Watch) and Sheri Jacobs, CAE at McKinley Marketing are the two council members who championed this book and deserve the credit for bringing it to publication. Membership Essentials updates and replaces about five badly outdated books about membership that ASAE had on its shelves up until the release of this book.

Membership Essentials is a desk reference guide for membership directors and managers, covering everything from nuts and bolts topics like how to organize your new member welcome process, to intermediate topics like computing lifetime value of a member, to more cutting edge topics like using social media as a member engagement strategy. I wrote a chapter in collaboration with Jay Karen, CAE, who is the CEO at Professional Association of Innkeepers International.

Every copy of Membership Essentials ships with a CD-Rom containing a boatload of practical models and samples that anyone with membership responsibilities will find useful. If you're an ASAE member, it sells for $49.95 at the ASAE bookstore, and it will also be available for purchase at the Marketing & Membership Conference in Baltimore this May.

Pick up a copy, because I'm not the only blogger published in Membership Essentials. The proprietor of 2007's best new blog about associations, the always insightful and astute Tony Rossell penned two chapters (one on recruitment and another on retention) and "always a bridesmaid, never a bride" Wes Trochlil wrote one on association database management systems.

If you enjoy writing, I've found that blogging is a great stepping stone to getting published on paper.

Tagged: Association Management; Associations; CAE; Certified Association Executive