By Brian Clark, marketing and membership director, Asphalt Institute, Lexington, Ky.

(This is an excerpt from an article that appears in the March 2012 TRENDS.)

Each year, our association enters the annual Association TRENDS All-Media Contest. This year, I’m proud to say we won gold for our 2011 membership directory.

Over the years, we have learned that aside from the tremendous “feel good” that winning provides, there are definite advantages for our association that we try to maximize. Here are a few tips on how to make the most of your award.
1. Tell your members. This may seem obvious, but some winners overlook the opportunity to promote the news about winning their award to their members.
2. Leverage the credibility. Quite fortuitously, we learned about winning our gold award just as we were preparing the advertising opportunity announcement for our 2012 membership directory. The timing couldn’t have been better. We included an “advertise in our award-winning directory” tag in the appeal. The result: our advertising quite literally doubled this year!
3. Motivate your staff. Karen Embs, our member services manager, is the principal editor of the directory but she has never been to the TRENDS Salute to Association Excellence program, where the All Media Contest winners are honored. This year, Karen made the trip to DC to receive our award. Here is what she said about the experience:
“The reception was a real pleasure because it was in a large room where there was space to walk around and see all the winning pieces,”  she said. “I also was impressed with the award presentations for Association Partner of the Year and Association Executive of the Year. Mr. Harris and Mr. LaBranche were both very appreciative and shared great words of advice and inspiration for us all.” Details: www.asphalt.org.

Clark is a TRENDS 2008 Young & Aspiring Association Professional.