For 35 years the American Association of Sleep Technologists (AAST) has served to promote and advance the sleep technology profession. Despite its wealth of industry knowledge and abundance of resources, the AAST was failing to fully communicate its value to its members, and faced a decline in membership in 2015.
According to Laura Linley, President of the AAST, the organization knew it had a problem. “We knew we had to do a better job of telling our members who we are” said Linley, “because there are several similar organizations out there, it was confusing—what one organization did, or what its mission was—versus another.”
Like many other associations, the AAST had the means to distinguish itself by providing resources members wanted, but lacked an easy way to distribute these services and information.
Up against a projected 5% decline in annual membership, the AAST took the advice of Board Member, Kevin Asp of inboundMed, and reached out to learn more about HubSpot's software and inbound marketing.
After reading reviews from HubSpot users online on sites like G2Crowd and careful consideration, the AAST decided to go inbound.
Once the team was fully onboarded with HubSpot, they immediately began to use HubSpot's Blog App and leveraged anyone and everyone from staff members, to volunteers for writing contributions. AAST President Elect, Rita Brooks, explained that blogging gave the organization the avenue they so desperately needed to distribute its vast library of content. She said, “We are proud to have a strong library of excellent educational materials and as a result of our blogging efforts through HubSpot we have been able to get the word out that we have these resources.”
Seeing quick initial success with blogging, the AAST brought on a dedicated Content Manager, Yoona Ha, to really ramp things up.
Attracting and Engaging Members with ContentWanting to get the most of out HubSpot, Yoona began her Inbound Certification training immediately upon starting at AAST. She was excited to find that, “You actually get to practice a lot of what the program teaches you." She explained, "Content marketing isn’t just about writing. You have to think about how to use content to engage the constituents that you want to connect with.”
Publishing new blog posts almost daily, the AAST repurposes a lot of content to guide constituents to resources they have, sharing basic information on sleep technology, educational opportunities, and more. Yoona doesn’t just write a post and hit publish, she also uses HubSpot's SEO tools within the Blog App to make sure content is fully optimized for mobile readers and organic search.
After its first year of consistent blogging, the AAST saw a 5.5x increase in blog traffic. These new readers didn’t just hang around the blog however, traffic to the AAST homepage also increased by 131%.
“I really like the blog tool a lot." says Yoona, "the optimize button helps keep me on track. Now I have a way of working that comes with me wherever I’m working or whatever I’m doing—I always think about, ‘how am I going to optimize this content.’ That has been huge for us because it’s obviously bringing results. People are actually attracted to what we have to put out ther and we’ve never invested any money in promoting people to like our site.”
Beyond using HubSpot to write and publish their blog content, the AAST also uses HubSpot software to distribute it—taking advantage of HubSpot’s integrated Social Media App to post content on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This has garnered a 224% increase in social following.
Turning Readers into Members