Having only one public relations tactic is no longer an option. The use of social media has exploded, and in the two years, has evolved into an important means of connecting with others.

What are the benefits of using social media for your club?

If you’re not taking advantage of social media in your public relations strategy, you’re missing out on a fast, inexpensive, and effective way to reach future members.

However, before you start posting, you need to understand who it is that you are trying to appeal to. The more you know about your target audience, the better you can connect with them.

What problems are they facing that your club can help solve?

Getting to know your audience – your end user- requires a bit of research. What are their frustrations? Their pain points? For example,

• Are they a new manager needing to deliver their first employee review?
• A job seeker stumbling over questions in a job interview?

For your posts to be seen, your posts need to:

• emphasize the solution your club can provide.
• have a strong call to action.
• post quality over quantity.

Before you publish, ask: “What benefit will my viewer gain by reading my post?”

Your answer to this question will help guide you through your content creation process.

Emphasize the solution your club can provide.

A successful post provides answers to a pain point. Don’t market the program, market the solution. Offer a value to your viewer from their perspective (I need help), not your perspective (we’re great!). Tell your viewer exactly how the Toastmasters program can solve their pain point. What question are you answering? What problem are you trying to solve? Your post can bring them hope and show them how your club make that part of their life much easier.

Once you have determined:

• who your audience is and their pain points,
• what benefits to focus on,
• what content to share,

Decide how to engage your audience.

Set aside 15-20 minutes a week to schedule some evergreen content in advance. Evergreen content is content that is not time-sensitive and stays fresh long after it is first published, such as Toastmasters public speaking tips, how-to videos, motivational quotes, etc. Some platforms will allow posts to be scheduled up to 2 or 3 months in advance. If your club has multiple social media platforms and has the budget, you can use schedulers such as Hootsuite to populate your platforms with scheduled posts.

Use of photos to help highlight the benefits, especially photos with faces in them. People-heavy images get more engagement and personalise your club. According to the Toastmasters Brand manual, “The photography style should reflect the Toastmasters environment, where people look engaged, empowered, and supported, as portrayed in meetings, presentations, speeches, networking venues, conferences, training venues, and speech contests.”

Take screen shots of your members (with their permission of course!) or use the free professional stock photos that you have downloaded from the Toastmasters website.

Have a strong call to action.

Viewers will respond to your posts if you address their needs and tell them what to do next. A call-to-action example would be to invite people to visit your next virtual club meeting. If you have free speaking tips on your website or blog page, direct them to the link to download your freebie.

Other call to action ideas include:

• “Sign up for our workshop today!”
• “Book a free session with an experience member for a quick evaluation of your presentation.”
• “Get started by…”
• “Talk to our experienced Toastmasters professionals…”
• “Reach out to us for a 10 min consultation…”

Just like when delivering a speech, you want to involve your audience members. Drive the action. Ask people questions or invite them to comment on a particular post and then respond to their comments. Encourage club members to like, comment, and share your club’s social media posts. If people share or re-tweet a post, thank them for doing that. Welcome new followers.

Quality over quantity.

The pandemic has changed online habits. More people are going on-line for information than ever before. The demand for targeted digital strategies has increased. It getting harder to find the time to manage multiple channels if its just you at the PR helm and your club has more than one platform. VPPR’s are now juggling websites, blogs, emails, and multiple social media sites. You’re writing articles, creating and editing posts, finding images, writing captions, researching hashtags, scheduling content, monitoring metrics, attending club meetings, team meetings, club officer training – the list goes on.

If you don’t have a PR team assisting you, reach out to individual club members and ask them to do one thing for you each month. That can help ease your PR workload while keeping you on top of your digital game.

And you may need to revisit your PR strategy. If you are posting multiple times on multiple channels just for the sake of posting, you are wasting your valuable time. Instead, scale back. If you club has more than one platform, take a look at the analytics. Note which days on each platform gives you the greatest member engagement, then post on those days. Give people a reason to stop and view your post; always choose a quality post over quantity.

Well-thought-out content is important. You and your club come across trustworthy and customer friendly. The quality of the content and social media interaction makes all the difference.

For your posts to be seen:

• emphasize the solution your club can provide.
• have a strong call to action.
• post quality over quantity.

Having only one public relations tactic is no longer an option.

If you’re not taking advantage of posting on social media, you’re missing out on an inexpensive, and effective way to reach future club members.

Created by Nancy Movrin DTM Public Relations Manager 2021 – 2022