A couple of years ago, I gave a workshop on publicity and mentioned numerous tips clubs can use to promote their clubs. There were a few who really didn’t like the session as I never really discussed club websites, getting comments like “nearly every inquiry about Toastmasters is through the Internet”, etc. I told them I doubt many people just go to Google and put “Toastmasters” in their search or figure out the URL for Toastmasters (I do for so many things, but not many people I know are “web junkies” like myself and a few TMs I know rarely if ever use the Internet), but that didn’t sway them to my point of view.

Rather than just discussing here why there’s more to publicity than websites, let me tell you of my experience with another organization regarding publicity.

About this time last year, I picked up a brochure at a driving range about a singles group for golfers, the American Singles Golf Association, something that interests me being a golfer and nowhere close to getting married. For whatever reason, I never looked further into joining the group that year (probably not different from some of you who took a while to join Toastmasters). At the beginning of this year, I thought a little bit about joining ASGA when I saw a flyer in a golf dome I frequently practiced about an event the local chapter was putting together there. Along with the date and time of the event is the URL of the local chapter, so I contacted a couple of people in the group about the event and not only did I attend but I joined the group right away! If it wasn’t for the flyer I don’t think I’d be motivated to join the group.

The main point I’m giving with this post is that particularly for community clubs, websites don’t mean much if you don’t publicize it through other means such as flyers, press releases, ads in newspapers and other media, etc. You need to find a wide range of ways to get people to be aware about Toastmasters and your club and by just working on the website you are only targeting a small portion of your market and neglecting the rest.

BTW, if your club wants to work on improving the club website, there’s freetoasthost.org, which you can easily put together a club website for both publicity and member resources, even have online sign-up sheets for the next few meetings. Unless someone in your club works on websites as a hobby or a job, you’re basically wasting your time.