Читать книгу The Power of Promotion! On-line Marketing For Toastmasters Club Growth - Rae Stonehouse - Страница 27

•Turn motivational quotes into graphics. Be sure to add an appropriate comment above the graphic e.g., why is this graphic important. Think tweeting! I’ll be explaining this a little later but you should be considering linking your Facebook Fan Page with a Twitter account. Each of these on-line social venues likely reach different audiences. If your Facebook and Twitter account are linked and you post a graphic to your Facebook, no information, other than the link to the graphic will show on the Twitter feed. However, if you post some opening commentary, it will post on Twitter.

Below is one of a series of graphics I created based on quotes from Dr. Ralph Smedley.

Post useful/interesting articles from other on-line sources. Content should be related to communication & leadership skill development, networking, self-confidence, speech/presentation delivery etc.

Two good sources of fresh content that I use regularly are Google Alerts & Paper.li.

Google Alerts: https://www.google.ca/alerts Alerts allow you to monitor the web for any new articles on any subject you are interested in and have it sent to you on a daily basis as an e-mail. You simply insert your keyword and create an Alert. You can have multiple alerts based on your keywords. Google will create a list of articles/websites that it notices on the web and then send them to you. Many of the offerings are not relevant but there can be gems hidden within the listings. After clicking on the hyperlink within the listing, copy the url of the article and the title and paste them into your Timeline.

Here is an example of what a Google Alert message looks like. The keyword was “shyness.”

Paper.li is a free, on-line publishing platform that allows you to create a “newspaper” around keywords of your choice. Many Toastmaster’s clubs are using the free version as a way of promoting their club in addition to Facebook Pages, Twitter, Linkedin and their websites. You can create a daily, on-line newsletter that focuses on your keywords that draws attention to your Toastmaster’s club. You can then keep it private to yourself and use it as a source of new content or open it up and make subscription available to the public. From their promotional copy “Get Fresh, Relevant Content Delivered Daily. Paper.li makes it easy to find, publish, and share content on the web and social media.”

Here is an example of a paper.li newspaper header that I own as part of my business ventures.

Posting fresh content is a great way to build a loyal following and is one step closer to converting a Facebook fan to a club member. One important thing to remember about your fans is that the number of fans that your Toastmaster’s club Facebook Page has is likely nowhere near the potential number you can convert to members. Some of your fans may live anywhere in the world and may be just interested in following you because of your interesting content that you are posting.

While posting fresh, thought-provoking content is integral to the effectiveness of your Facebook Page, it plays only one part of the formula.

Another important part and one that is also time-consuming, is that of keeping the conversation going. You as the Administrator need to add comments or pose questions to posts on a regular basis.

As an Administrator you need to acknowledge Likes or Comments in a timely manner. People tend to check on their posts regularly to see if there are any feedback/comments. An acknowledgement can be as simple as saying thank-you or more in-depth by expanding upon the original post/comment or taking it in a different direction.

Question: “How often should I post to my Facebook Page?”

Answer: It depends on several factors. If you as the Administrator are the only one posting to the Timeline, likely two to four posts a day is adequate. If you only have a small group of followers, any more than four posts a day may not be a good investment of your time. On the other hand, if your following is fairly large and members are actively participating by posting their own posts and/or Liking & Sharing from the Timeline, it might be worth your while to increase the amount of posts you publish to the Timeline as the Administrator. Breaking the day into sections may help to develop a publishing schedule e.g., early morning 8 am, late morning 11ish, early afternoon 1:30, late afternoon 4:30 and mid evening 8:30 pm.

I liken developing and growing a Toastmasters Facebook Page to growing a sour dough culture. To make sour dough “grow” you have to add milk and flour on a regular basis. If you continue to do so, you can have a sour dough culture that can last decades. I’ve heard marketing claims of sour dough starter being available for purchase that dates back to the gold rush days i.e. the late 1800s in North America. If you don’t take care of the culture i.e. store it at the proper temperature, use it occasionally and feed it regularly, it will eventually die out.

Your Toastmaster’s Facebook Page has many similarities to growing a sour dough culture. You have to work at it to get it growing. You have to nourish it by adding interesting content to your Timeline and you have to be expanding it by enticing new “friends” to follow you.

If you only feed it periodically with new content or stop completely, your followers … won’t be following you anymore.

There are quite a few Toastmaster’s clubs in my District that take the summer months off i.e. they shut their club down for the summer, summer being the third week of June until the second week of September. They in turn, stop feeding their Facebook Page with fresh content. Perhaps they think that their Facebook Page is only being read by members or that they are using it as a club newsletter.

Given that every club likely loses members after an extended break, it would be worth their while to continue an ongoing dialogue with existing members and publishing content that not only keeps the members focusing on developing their communication and leadership skills, albeit without attending a regular meeting. Continuing publishing to your Facebook Page even though you aren’t meeting can work to your advantage in promoting your club’s benefits to potential members i.e. your Facebook Page friends that haven’t joined your club yet. Once again … think marketing! You have to be continuously thinking about how you can attract a potential member to make the jump to becoming a club member.