I like the ideas you have here!

Lynn Thomas, incoming PRO, District 30

As the incoming President of the Arlington Heights club, I’m really looking forward to working with you on your ideas. The VP of Public Relations was an officer role that really didn’t get much attention last year as the current officer slowly disengaged himself from the club and eventually did not renew.

If a similar situation happens with any of the officer roles this year, I have no qualms about asking that person to step down so that we can replace them with someone willing to put in the effort.

Although I was Treasurer last year, I did actually implement some things that should help you along with your ideas.

A year ago, if you were to type in “Arlington Heights Toastmasters Club” on Google, you would have had to page through 8 pages of results before you got to the entry for our current website. Today, not only do we appear on page 1, we also appear in position 1 at the top of the page. Although we can’t force Google to keep us there, there is a lot we can do to make sure we stay as close as possible to the top.

Also, each page on our website is now imbedded with tracking software so that we can track exactly where our visitors are coming from. If they use a search engine, we can see what keywords they actually used to search. If they come from a direct link at another site, such as our entry in the directory with the AH Library or your blog, you can see that too.

Finally, one of the most successful things done last year was to make sure our homepage had our next meeting prominently displayed along with mentioning that guests are always welcome. Improving directions to our location and adding parking information really helped too.

As you know, the number of guests at our meetings has been growing (8 at the last meeting alone with 4 joining the club). When I’ve asked our guests about how they learned about our club, almost all mentioned seeing the website and noticing that our next meeting was open to guests. 2009 is the first year we’ve exceeded 20 active members since I became a member two years ago so I think we are headed in the right direction.

With your ideas above, and some of the tools now in place to support you, I think we are going to have a very successful year.

Best regards,
Rich Hall, President-elect
Arlington Hts Toastmasters Club

I was in that position for two years with one club, took a year off to be my District’s Public Relations Officer, took a year off again to be a Plain Ordinary Toastmaster and now look forward to being the VP/PR in a different club.

Keys to success include having your phone number on the website, having your picture on your website (portrait preferred), having pictures of all your club officers on the website, especially your Sergeant at Arms and your VP/Membership.

If you get a phone call from a possible guest while you can bring up your website, direct the guest to those pictures, get contact info from the guest, and get the guest’s OK for you to pass the info on to the VP Membership, so the VPM will know to look for the guest.

Having a partly-completed application form with your club name and number and District number on your website will also help. Having a document that shows initiation fee and dues will go a long way to setting up the guest’s expectations.

Consider your club secretary part of your team. Posting the secretary’s club minutes will help sell memberships!

Remember that your PR efforts also have to be directed inwardly to the club as you go along. That way your club will not have to suddenly turn your Treasurer into a combination of VP/PR and VP/Membership in March and September. B-)

Best,

Susan Ellsworth, DTM