Читать книгу The Power of Promotion! On-line Marketing For Toastmasters Club Growth - Rae Stonehouse - Страница 6

Does your club have one? If so, great! If not, why not?

If so … why not have two of them?

Website development has evolved from a skill that only a few possessed and they likely charged a lot of money for their specialized services, to the point that almost anybody with the time and an interest can create a reasonable website. FreeToastHost as well as other Toastmaster-backed club management systems such as SpeakEasy make it easy for a club to have a web presence.

While I think that this is a great idea, I would strongly suggest that if you have website development skills, that you create another site targeted at the public. This becomes your on-line billboard to encourage visitors to your website to actually come out and visit your club.

I’ve recently created a site for my club at http://flyingsolotoastmasters.ca

Here is the header and top navigational bar (above) for my club. Note the top banner which incorporates Toastmasters International’s brand i.e. colours, logo & tagline. There is also a link that goes to our FreeToastHost site via the Member’s Site Login link. Not only does it provide a secondary site to be indexed by the search engines, it also provides a secure site for our members to sign up for our weekly agendas, gain access to some useful resources and provides access to club administrative tools.

As mentioned above, the main purpose for a stand-alone website is to encourage visitors to your website to visit your club. Providing useful content by way of articles gives them reason to dig deeper into your website and while doing so, be exposed to your promotional copy. While your copy should be factual, it should be written in a manner that causes the site visitor to learn more about your club.

For promotional copy I used the following:

Communication Skills:

Find the right words and your audience will find you!

•Develop better speaking & presentation skills.

•Learn to think quickly and clearly on your feet.

Leadership Skills:

Is lack of leadership skills holding you back in your career?

Toastmasters can help!

•Build strong leadership abilities.

Self-Confidence:

The Toastmasters program will improve your communication skills and open doors in your personal and professional life. Instead of labouring in an academic setting or spending money on costly seminars, you’ll learn in a self-paced atmosphere of fun and fellowship.

I’m sure that it has been used elsewhere and it still works.

Your website also allows you to tell a story about your club. It can be accessed by an About Us link. In this case it is ABOUT FLYING SOLO.

Why does your club exist and how did it come to be? This is marketable promotional material that allows you to differentiate your club from other Toastmaster’s clubs. You should also post this same content in the Long Description field in your Club Facebook Page. We discuss Long Descriptions later on.

A promotional video, some testimonials from your members, News Updates and info as to when and where your club meets, add valuable content to your on-line presence. For some light-hearted content I added the Top 10 Reasons for Joining Our Club. You can easily create your own version.

Top 10 Reasons for Joining Kelowna Flying Solo Toastmasters

Better entertainment than Cheap Tuesday night movies.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys. (actually, a lot more fun than playing a Barrel of Monkeys!)

Provides you with an alibi should you need one as to where you were on Tuesday evening.

It is the best place in town to develop your communication skills, including public speaking.

It is the best place in town to develop & hone your presentation and leadership skills. (Industry is desperately looking for leaders that can communicate well. You can be one!)

Where else can you have a panic attack while public speaking, get support from people that have been there themselves and want to get back up and do it again? (yes, it does happen!)

Have you ever been presented with the Bart Simpson Award for being the best Humourist of the evening? (Well you could be … but only at Kelowna Flying Solo Toastmasters!)

Do you struggle with thinking of ideas to fit into conversation? (You will walk away from every Flying Solo meeting with something to talk about.)

Do you like to tell a good story? Flying Solo Toastmasters can help take your story-telling skill to the next level.

You get to hear regular updates from that amazing world of Rae Stonehouse [or not!] (Flying Solo Toastmasters is a club that we choose to belong to. As a member you will make new friends & colleagues, some that will last you a lifetime.)

This custom made Toastmasters club website features a link to Our Blog which allows us to create and publish content that is both of value to our members and to visitors to the website. The Blog articles are also indexed by search engines to help increase our visibility and reach. We’ll expand upon blogging later on in this manual.

The same applies to our Resource Library. Here we have helpful articles on Public Speaking, Speech Evaluation Skill Development & Toastmasters Protocol.

As the site’s Webmaster and the main content creator, when I post a new article to the site I also promote on Facebook the fact that there is a new article available. This in turn will automatically post to our Twitter profile. We talk about connecting Facebook and Twitter a little later on. I also post the article’s content to our club’s Facebook Page Notes tab. We will talk later about how this is a good way to increase our marketing effectiveness.

Your contact info should be easily accessible and visible. You don’t want your site visitor to leave without the opportunity to find out even more about your club. I have found that it doesn’t matter how much content I add to the website describing the Toastmasters program, many people want to know if the program is really for them. When they contact me I provide them with the same info that is available on the site.

Your website should feature an easy to use Contact Us form. Your contact phone number should be readily visible. With the increase of web traffic from mobile devices, your phone number should be hyperlinked so that when somebody clicks on the link, it will call your designated club contact person.

Your website should also have links to your social media addresses as well. You want to make it easy for your site visitor to find out as much as they can about your club. Social media, specifically Facebook, allows you to show what I call “happy, smiling Toastmasters” in action.

Here is the top portion of our club website at FreeToastHost illustrating a different tagline … “We put the ‘fun’ in fundamentals of learning communication & leadership skills.“

I’m finding that this website is appearing higher on the search engine pages than the previously described site but that may be due to it having existed longer. The FreeToastHost site readily substitutes as your club website if you don’t have website development skills or easy access to someone who does.

The club administrative tools provide enough value on their own to make it worth your while to create one of these sites.

From a marketing perspective, the front page of your website provides you with the opportunity to be creative in posting promotional copy that attracts your site visitor and entices them to want to learn more about your club and to actually come out and visit. You can easily add graphics and video to add to the excitement.

One downside that I am aware of is that the Webmaster for this FreeToastHost site must be a current club officer. Access to the Administrative features is restricted to club officers that have been added to the site’s club officer listing through the Administration Panel. It can be accessed by any current club officer that is registered within.