clubs are using the free version as a way of promoting their club in addition to Facebook Pages, Twitter, Linkedin and their websites. You can create a daily, on-line newsletter that focuses on your keywords that draws attention to your Toastmaster’s club. You can then keep it private to yourself and use it as a source of new content or open it up and make subscription available to the public. From their promotional copy “Get Fresh, Relevant Content Delivered Daily. Paper.li makes it easy to find, publish, and share content on the web and social media.”
Here is an example of a paper.li newspaper header that I own as part of my business ventures.
Posting fresh content is a great way to build a loyal following and is one step closer to converting a Facebook fan to a club member. One important thing to remember about your fans is that the number of fans that your Toastmaster’s club Facebook Page has is likely nowhere near the potential number you can convert to members. Some of your fans may live anywhere in the world and may be just interested in following you because of your interesting content that you are posting.
While posting fresh, thought-provoking content is integral to the effectiveness of your Facebook Page, it plays only one part of the formula.
Another important part and one that is also time-consuming, is that of keeping the conversation going. You as the Administrator need to add comments or pose questions to posts on a regular basis.
As an Administrator you need to acknowledge Likes or Comments in a timely manner. People tend to check on their posts regularly to see if there are any feedback/comments. An acknowledgement can be as simple as saying thank-you or more in-depth by expanding upon the original post/comment or taking it in a different direction.
Question: “How often should I post to my Facebook Page?”
Answer: It depends on several factors. If you as the Administrator are the only one posting to the Timeline, likely two to four posts a day is adequate. If you only have a small group of followers, any more than four posts a day may not be a good investment of your time. On the other hand, if your following is fairly large and members are actively participating by posting their own posts and/or Liking & Sharing from the Timeline, it might be worth your while to increase the amount of posts you publish to the Timeline as the Administrator. Breaking the day into sections may help to develop a publishing schedule e.g., early morning 8 am, late morning 11ish, early afternoon 1:30, late afternoon 4:30 and mid evening 8:30 pm.
I liken developing and growing a Toastmasters Facebook Page to growing a sour dough culture. To make sour dough “grow” you have to add milk and flour on a regular basis. If you continue to do so, you can have a sour dough culture that can last decades. I’ve heard marketing claims of sour dough starter being available for purchase that dates back to the gold rush days i.e. the late 1800s in North America. If you don’t take care of the culture i.e. store it at the proper temperature, use it occasionally and feed it regularly, it will eventually die out.
Your Toastmaster’s Facebook Page has many similarities to growing a sour dough culture. You have to work at it to get it growing. You have to nourish it by adding interesting content to your Timeline and you have to be expanding it by enticing new “friends” to follow you.
If you only feed it periodically with new content or stop completely, your followers … won’t be following you anymore.
There are quite a few Toastmaster’s clubs in my District that take the summer months off i.e. they shut their club down for the summer, summer being the third week of June until the second week of September. They in turn, stop feeding their Facebook Page with fresh content. Perhaps they think that their Facebook Page is only being read by members or that they are using it as a club newsletter.
Given that every club likely loses members after an extended break, it would be worth their while to continue an ongoing dialogue with existing members and publishing content that not only keeps the members focusing on developing their communication and leadership skills, albeit without attending a regular meeting. Continuing publishing to your Facebook Page even though you aren’t meeting can work to your advantage in promoting your club’s benefits to potential members i.e. your Facebook Page friends that haven’t joined your club yet. Once again … think marketing! You have to be continuously thinking about how you can attract a potential member to make the jump to becoming a club member.
Additional Tips:
•Do not post negative or “dirty laundry” comments.
•Post lots of club pictures with happy, smiling Toastmaster club members. This works as a visual testimonial. Others will want to join in on the fun.
•Encourage members to create a Bio and use it as a post. Set an example by doing one yourself.
•Deliver a speech on how to create a Bio i.e. self-promotion.
How to Add Graphics to Your Posts
Graphics grab our attention. They create a curiosity in us to read the accompanying text, more so than the same text would if it was posted without the graphic.
It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words. If the rest of that particular saying needs to be completed perhaps it should be that the picture/graphic also has to be self-explanatory. It shouldn’t take a thousand words or so to explain what the picture is about.
Social media platforms such as Facebook readily lend themselves to being very visual. As I mentioned above, we are more likely to read the message that accompanies a graphic than we are to pass it by.
In writing the above passage I started to challenge the thought that went behind the writing. We accept the fact that visuals grab our attention. I think you will agree with me? But is there any science behind it? Why do we accept as fact that pictures do grab our attention? As I do with many other questions I have, I consulted with the world-acknowledged expert of everything … Mr. Google. I found an interesting article entitled The Power of Visual Communication by Mike Parkinson.
Mr. Parkinson provides the following: “What we see has a profound effect on what we do, how we feel, and who we are. Through experience and experimentation, we continually increase our understanding of the visual world and how we are influenced by it. Psychologist Albert Mehrabian demonstrated that 93% of communication is nonverbal. Studies find that the human brain deciphers image elements simultaneously, while language is decoded in a linear, sequential manner taking more time to process. Our minds react differently to visual stimuli.” He also adds “So visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text, graphics quickly affect our emotions, and our emotions greatly affect our decision-making.”
He provides helpful advice that applies to us as Toastmasters for the production of any handouts, Power Point presentations that we create and yes, Facebook Posts that we are focussing on. Have you ever noticed that the topics that you encounter in Toastmasters can easily take you off in a different direction?
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Utilizing graphics in your Facebook Posts can be quite easy or a bit challenging at times.
If you are sharing a post that you have seen on another group’s or an individual’s Timeline, it can be a simple matter of clicking on the Share button. Facebook will load the graphic that has already been attached to the post and
