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!

• Haven’t done much with publicity since taking over as VP PR.  Started to add files in the Arlington Heights club website and contacting nearby VP PRs to break the ice and see what they need.  Probably is going to be hard to get together until September due to summer vacation for several folks, including myself.   I’ll try to get a few things going the next couple of weeks.
• Will be at the Toastmasters International Convention at Foxwoods on Saturday morning to watch the World Champion of Public Speaking.  As I indicated in an entry last year, my 20th high school reunion will take place that evening on Long Island and will be in the area most of that week.  For those outside of Chicago that are reading this blog and will be at Foxwoods, I look forward to meeting you.
• Will try to get at least a couple of entries within the next couple of weeks, in particular regarding the upcoming changes and elections coming up for vote at Foxwoods.
• I recently joined Facebook due to my high school class reunion and have been checking their Toastmasters International Members group occasionally and mentioned some of my experiences and views on my page.  Already have several members outside of Chicago connected as friends.  Feel free to send me a friend request here if you have a Facebook account.

One Toastmaster blog that I’ve been checking often is one created by Lynn Thomas, the new District 30 Public Relations Officer.  It has some press release examples and she’s planning bigger and better ways to promote Toastmasters here in Chicago.

This is going to be an interesting year in Toastmasters, both at the International and local levels.  Looking forward to seeing what will happen.

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.

I’m not sure how this billboard made a difference in getting members there – it turns out that there’s only one club in Frankfort and that meets during the day. The nearest evening clubs are in Lexington which is the nearest (relatively) big city. I did search on the net about TM billboards in Kentucky and I did find the Central Kentucky Toastmasters blog which did mention of a billboard but not specifically this particular one, so there may have been other billboards, perhaps in Lexington as they’re in the same district (Louisville is in another district). I did try to post a question on the blog but haven’t heard from anyone running it.

I forwarded a photo to the District 30 Public Relations Officer and he mentioned that they’re very expensive to put up in Chicago. I’d assume it’s a lot cheaper to put one in KY.