The Art of Stealing Exam Questions

Every time I receive "Cheating in the News," Caveon Test Security's informative (and rather witty) electronic newsletter, it's among the first things I open. Today's issue is a perfect example of why I read it. Don Sorensen goes undercover with a ButtonCam and a DocuPen at a local testing center to test these cheating devices. Check out the results here. Props to Don for showing...not just telling.

How often do we communicate with certificants?

In a recent post on Tony Rossell’s “Membership Marketing Blog”, he talks about the number of times we engage our members. Or, better yet, the lack of effort we make in engaging our members. Let’s think of this in terms of our certificants. How often do you communicate with the professionals who have earned your credential?

For many certifying agencies, communication happens when a candidate passes our exam (and we send them their certificate or card) and when they’re due to recertify. Is this enough? We don’t think so. Certifying agencies are continuing to diversify their activities and they have information to share. It might be research they’ve conducted, news from the industry, journal articles, or new products or services.

The point is that we have to share this information and provide our certificants with more reasons to come to their certifying agency for information and stay with them throughout their careers.

We Use Search Engine Optimization – Right?

We attended a session at the NOCA conference on marketing for certification programs featuring Don Sorensen from Caveon. He spoke about search engine optimization or the process of increasing (and improving) traffic to a Web site from search engines via natural or “organic” search results for keywords. SEO is something we should all be doing, but are we?

If we’re doing things right, our Web site content should be focused on the key words that we’re using for search terms for engines like Yahoo and Google. But, we also should be updating our content to keep it fresh and relevant. Is SEO part of your annual marketing plan? Do you review and update the keywords annually? Or, was the last time you updated key words when you launched your Web site.

We have good intentions to keep things, like our search engine terms, updated. We should.

Are you venting about members or just making fun of them?

Having worked in the association industry for as long as we have, we’ve done our share of venting about members. We’re pretty sure you have too. But, in a recent post on his blog, Certified Association Executive, Ben Martin made an interesting point about criticizing members. His bottom line is, don’t do it.

It’s understandable how making fun of members happens, but Ben’s message is that the members that we make fun of are most often our most passionate volunteers. They care about the profession and the industry. Why do we criticize that? Would we rather have them disengaged from our organizations? These are the members that communicate with us and give us the feedback that we need to make positive changes. To quote Ben’s blog posting, “Criticism is free consulting.” When anything is free…you take it!

One other point we’d like to add about making fun of members is to consider the type of office environment it creates. Sure, jabbing fun at the volunteer committee member may seem funny, but be careful how often it happens. As staff, we expect a certain level of professional respect. Wouldn’t our members expect the same respect?