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Affiliation Logos are a Powerful Trustmark
They'll know you by the company you keep
If you belong to trade associations, chambers of commerce, technical groups, etc., you should tell your website visitors. Why? Because they probably don't know you and you want to do what you can to help them get to know you. People work with and buy from people they know, like and trust. If they know you are a member of a well-known group, it helps them understand the kind of person or business you are and what's important to you.
Of course, the more groups you associate with, the more detailed a picture you create for your website visitor. Some of you more modest people might think that's name-dropping. It's really more like what you'd do for your resume. To your prospective client, your website is at least one part company resume, even if it fulfills other roles, so put your company's best foot forward by showing your associations just like you would on your resume.
How do you do it? It's best to check with each association. One of our associations, the Conejo Valley Chamber of Commerce in Thousand Oaks, California, recently offered a code generator on their website to provide not only their logo, but our name tied with it. We thought it was great, and so we immediately started using it.
Other associations may have a simple image file somewhere on their website, likely in the members only section, so you may need to login to the site to find it. In the case of the Conejo Valley, we did just that. Once we logged in, we looked for the "Membership Badge" link and found it right away at the bottom of the page. We then saw a new page with a sample of the badge and a button to generate our own custom code. If you want the details, here's their tutorial on adding a Membership Badge.
Since we're a web design firm, we had no trouble with using the code. You may want to call your website manager (if you don't have one, we could help :-), and he or she will take care of it for you.
The code as-is created a logo that didn't quite fit on our page alongside the other affiliation logos, so we simply tailored it. (If you're a fellow Conejo Valley member, change the top line from:
<div id="mini-id-YOURMEMBERCODE"></div>
to
<div id="mini-id-YOURMEMBERCODE"
style="width:200px; padding:0 6px 4px 6px; border:1px solid #c3c3c3c"></div>
and you'll get a logo on your site that looks like ours on our About page.
Be proud of the organization you belong to. I'm sure they're proud to have you as a member. And your visitors will move that much closer to liking you, trusting you, and ultimately working and buying from you!
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Don Gingold
Co-Founder and Managing Director of Sprocket Websites, Inc.; Co-Founder Chicago Area DotNetNuke User Group
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