Turbocharge Your Club With Social Media

Toastmasters International District 60 holds two conferences each year. Getting selected to speak is an achievement. Promod Sharma and Jonathan Holowka collaborated on an interactive session on social media. You’ll find the live recording below along with a description of the session. The content is also well-suited to other nonprofit clubs.

A healthy club engages members, attracts guests and nurtures the community. Social media enables all that and more. What works? What’s right for your club? How do you decide what to do, get started and keep going? Find out from the real-life experiments at Goodyear Toastmasters.

Meetup, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and a blog help your club thrive in ways your website can never match. You’ll learn how to harness social media in this fully interactive session.
 

Why Bother?

The magic that happens in club meetings vanishes forever. Where is the record of past speeches, lessons and Table Topics? We deprive members and guests — past, present and future. Thanks to social media, we can easily share text, audio and video. For free.

When used well, social media:

1. makes your club easier to find online
2. strengthens the initial impression
3. leaves a lasting impact

You can even help those unable to attend.

You have many options to explore and limited time. There’s Meetup, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and blogging. What about Facebook and Google+? Mistakes are easy to make and difficult to erase. Yet hiding from social media is even worse.

Goodyear Toastmasters, a community club, has been experimenting to see what works. Use their findings to get better results faster and with less effort.

As Toastmasters, we know that feedback helps us grow. Social media gives you analytics to show trends and what’s working now.

As a side benefit, you’ll create a living legacy for your club.

• Engaged members are retained members
• Attracted guests are attractive guests
• A nurtured community is a stronger community

Video

Here is a live recording of the session which took place on November 12, 2011. Jonathan wrote about a related blog post: How to get started with social media. It’s worth reading first.

Links

• How to get started with social media (byeka.ca, Nov 2011)
• Creating your club’s living legacy
• The painless way to blog
• How much time does social media take in a week? (marketingactuary.com, Sep 2011) 
• Are you sick of social media too? (marketingactuary.com, Dec 2011)

Jonathan Holowka is VP Membership 2011-2012 and a social media specialist. You’ll find more details at byeka.com.

Promod Sharma is President 2011-2012 and an actuary. You’ll find more details at promodsharma.com.