The Arlington Heights Toastmasters Club will have an Open House this Wednesday at the Arlington Heights Historical Museum, starting at 7pm Central time.  While we have been doing very well this Fall with 15 new members since July 1 and currently at 30 paid members, it doesn’t hurt to bring in more guests and add more members as we have a few who haven’t attended a meeting in a while plus members can have a sudden change in plans that prevent them from continuing their Toastmaster involvement.

For publicity, we have a flyer for the event which we encourage members to post in a variety of places, such as eateries like Panera Bread and Potbelly’s.  We have a press release (with the help of the wife of our VP of Membership) that we sent to the local papers, not sure if they will be posted or published prior to the meeting.

As far as an online presence, we did update the club website to show the event, then afterwards we revert back to promoting the regular meetings.  In a June entry that I put in about becoming the VP of Public Relations, I mentioned “Find local websites to put a link to our club website” as one of the things we need to work on for PR.  Rich Hall, our current Club President, replied that he already implemented that for a while and has continued to do so for the Open House.  Here are some places Rich posted that can be easily accessed by our local folks:

http://chicago.craigslist.org/nwc/eve/1488832094.html

http://arlingtonheights.org/forum_posts.asp?TID=96976

http://eventful.com/arlingtonheights/events/does-public-speaking-make-you-nervous-/E0-001-026627961-8

http://chicago.kijiji.com/announcements/arlington-heights/does-public-speaking-make-you-nervous-arlington-heights-toastmasters/?ad=923600

http://www.adoos.us/post/9958333/does_public_speaking_make_you_nervous_arlington

http://www.when.com/arlington-heights-il/events/show/89450421-does-public-speaking-make-you-nervous-arlington-heights-toastmasters

http://www.freelistingsonline.com/?view=showevent&adid=2335&cityid=-14&lang=en&date=2009-12-09

If you belong to an open club, we encourage you to look at posting your club information and website at these places as well as your local-only event websites.  As Rich mentioned in his reply, it moved our club to the top of our local Google search.  It probably was a major reason why we’ve been attracting plenty of guests in recent months leading to the 15 new members!