file, to go at the bottom of their e-mail messages that includes a link to the club website and the Facebook Page.
•Invite your friends to Like your club Facebook Page.
Where to get Content to Post:
For a new Administrator to a Toastmaster’s Club Facebook Page, or someone responsible for adding new content, this can be a daunting task. The reality is actually quite the opposite. There is so much content available to you when you know where to get it from, that the challenge will be deciding what to post and what not to post.
The mission of this chapter is to provide you with tips & techniques to build your club membership by using Facebook. The term “using” implies that there is some action required on your part to make membership growth happen. I believe a big mistake many Fan Page owners make is that they post their content, then leave it alone. The action required is that your page needs fresh content on a regular basis. If a visitor to your page sees the same content every time that they visit, why should they visit again? Odds are that they won’t!
To be an effective marketing tool for club membership growth your club Facebook Page needs to be the following: informational, entertaining, educational, thought-provoking, engaging, interactive, timely and addictive. Okay the addictive might seem a little odd but you want people to be compelled to see what you are posting on your site and to share on their own Timeline.
Content can be created from within your club meetings, from other club’s Facebook Pages, from Toastmasters District Facebook Pages and/or their websites, Toastmasters International’s website and social media as well as other on-line sources.
Arising From Within Your Club:
•Highlight member’s achievements from within the club and without. Recognition is important. Write a short posting recognizing the member and their achievement. (see graphics below recognizing a member for achieving their Competent Communicator Designation and myself for a achieving a second Advanced Communicator Gold.)
•Take photos of members delivering their speech or receiving an award or recognition. Consider capturing or adding video.
•Create a series of posts based on a theme. Examples: your club history, leadership tips, evaluation tips, Educational Moments etc.
•Celebrate member milestones and club achievement.
•Throughout the year post updates as to your club’s standings in the Distinguished Club Program (DCP). Create some excitement. Then add a call for action.
•If a member participates at an Area and/or Division contest, wish them well before the contest and provide congratulations after the event, despite the results. Include photos.
•Events: post club, area, division & district TM events with dates, times and a message encouraging members to attend.
•Post club speech contest results with photos.
•If your agenda is created in advance of the meeting either post the entire agenda or just the highlights. Post the Chair, the theme, speakers etc. or anything special happening during that meeting.
•Have a member collect sound-bytes from member’s speeches and post on Time Line.
•Promote elements of the Competent Leader manual, focussing on specific tasks that can be achieved in the club.
•Create Did You Knows i.e. short articles of useful information e.g., How your Toastmasters experience can add to your resume.
•Encourage your members to write out their speeches and submit as a blog entry.
From Toastmasters International:
•Repost articles from their website, Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Repost means that you are sharing content on your Facebook Timeline that originated elsewhere.
•Capitalize on Toastmaster International’s membership campaigns.
Below is an example of a photo shared from Toastmasters International’s social media, linking to their website.
Within Your Local Community:
•Create an open invitation to local politicians or public figures to come out and hone their speaking skills at your club meeting. Offer them a free evaluation and if they accept, invite the public to attend your meeting. Most politicians love to speak and many of them aren’t as good as they like to think they are.
From Your Own Computer & Imagination:
•Turn motivational quotes into graphics. Be sure to add an appropriate comment above the graphic e.g., why is this graphic important. Think tweeting! I’ll be explaining this a little later but you should be considering linking your Facebook Fan Page with a Twitter account. Each of these on-line social venues likely reach different audiences. If your Facebook and Twitter account are linked and you post a graphic to your Facebook, no information, other than the link to the graphic will show on the Twitter feed. However, if you post some opening commentary, it will post on Twitter.
Below is one of a series of graphics I created based on quotes from Dr. Ralph Smedley.
Post useful/interesting articles from other on-line sources. Content should be related to communication & leadership skill development, networking, self-confidence, speech/presentation delivery etc.
Two good sources of fresh content that I use regularly are Google Alerts & Paper.li.
Google Alerts: https://www.google.ca/alerts Alerts allow you to monitor the web for any new articles on any subject you are interested in and have it sent to you on a daily basis as an e-mail. You simply insert your keyword and create an Alert. You can have multiple alerts based on your keywords. Google will create a list of articles/websites that it notices on the web and then send them to you. Many of the offerings are not relevant but there can be gems hidden within the listings. After clicking on the hyperlink within the listing, copy the url of the article and the title and paste them into your Timeline.
Here is an example of what a Google Alert message looks like. The keyword was “shyness.”
Paper.li is a free, on-line publishing platform that allows you
