Adding a touch of 2.0 to SOCAP in Europe

I've been spending the last few weeks overseeing the implementation of SOCAP in Europe's new website and integrated CRM system. The objective has been to provide online features for some of the more 'admin heavy' tasks such as event and membership sign-up and, of course, to make everything work that much better for our members!

I haven't worked on any IT projects that don't have their problems and we have encountered a few along the way. Our email notifications have had links that didn't work (but should work from today... fingers crossed!), someone (me...!) mistakenly set the notification of newly added content (about SOCAP South Africa's latest newsletter) to post out to members twice and we had rogue software issue to do with our new automated reminders for membership (ie renewals, signup, cancellations etc). However, overall, I think that the implementation has gone smoothly and we now have a new site that provides us with blogs, polls, forums, news feeds, ads, membership directory, event management, calendars, suppliers marketplace and Twitter integration - we can now post content to our SOCAPiE Twitter account and members can also link their own SOCAPIE accounts to their Twitter accounts.

What's in store for the future? Well, LinkedIn integration will definitely be coming soon and a Facebook fan page. I'll also be investigating some tools for simple benchmarking questionnaires together with analytics so that we can go out to members with short surveys on key topics and feedback the results.

Well, that's my first blog post completed - I'll be using the blog in future to keep members updated with all developments related to SOCAPiE and the web (and beyond...!). 

Best wishes and see you all here soon - remember, make use of our forums and let me know what you think of the new site and any ideas on what else we should be doing!