The Power of Promotion! On-line Marketing For Toastmasters Club Growth. Rae Stonehouse
a good idea to check on how your Facebook Page looks to a visitor.
The Invite Friends button allows you to send an Invitation to whoever you are connected to as Friends. These are your personal Friends. If you have more than one Administrator for your group, each of you may want to send out Friend invitations to increase your followers.
The Like As Your Page button (see below) allows you to showcase the fact that you Like your Toastmaster’s Club Facebook Page on another Facebook Page’s Timeline you manage. This provides additional exposure promoting your Toastmaster’s club to Facebook members that may not otherwise see it.
When you click on the down arrow beside the Select a Page, you will be provided with a list of other Facebook locations you can post to, assuming that you are an Administrator to any of them. If you aren’t … I don’t know, maybe this box won’t be available to you In my case, I have a few Facebook Pages that I am an Administrator.
The Share button has some similarities to the Like as Your Page button in that it allows you to Share your Page to another Facebook Page that you are an Administrator. (see below) Once again you will be provided with a drop list of other pages that you can Share to.
The View Insights button (see below) takes you to an administrative dashboard that provides you with more tools than you will ever likely need to determine the effectiveness of your activities in raising awareness for your Toastmaster’s club Facebook Page. We explore this feature in depth later on in this manual.
The final Create a Page button allows you to create a new Facebook Page.
Second Navigational Bar
Just below the Cover Photo navigational buttons is yet another row of important links that we will explore in depth in this next section.
The Timeline is probably the feature you are most used to as all of your posts to your Facebook Page are featured here.
Next, we will examine the About section of your Facebook Page.
When you click on About you will be taken to the Page Info section which contains a list of headings for you to add details.
Category: The Company, Organization, or Institution category is best if customers don’t frequent your physical location, or if you hold events at varying places. A Local Business category is best if your agency deals with any locally owned business in your area. It will optimize the search results for those business owners and managers in your area looking for your marketing expertise.
Name: This should be fairly obvious as to what you would enter here, but then again, maybe it isn’t. Under this category you would enter the name of your Toastmaster’s Club, not your personal name. If your Toastmaster’s club name does not actually include the word “Toastmasters”, you might want to add it here to aid in search engine indexing and posting.
Facebook Web Address: This seems a little redundant to me as the url of your Facebook Page would be displaying in your browser, however it provides an additional mentioning of your Toastmaster’s club Facebook Page web address.
Start Date: This would be the start date of your Toastmaster’s club, not the date you started the Facebook Page. If your club has been around for a while it gives you some bragging rights.
Address: You have at least two choices as to what you can add here, either the address of where your club meets or the designated mailing address of your club. I’m in favour of the meeting place address as it provides extra promotional value. I don’t think very many people nowadays would actually send snail mail to a club anymore in favour of e-mail or a phone call.
Hours: Insert the start and end time for your club meeting.
Short Description: You can show a brief description of approximately 155 characters that displays below the Cover Image and the Profile Image at the top of your Page. This is great space to outline a concise statement about your business and list your website URL. Towards the end of this section we focus on search engine optimization to raise awareness of your Facebook Page and there will be some tips offered there as to how you should create your promotional copy for this and some of the following fields.
Tip: Keep it short and sweet, and add your website URL, hyperlinked. Otherwise, visitors have to click on “about”, and hunt for your website URL there. The short description is the best way to add an up front and clearly visible path to your website.
Impressum: Short version, you don’t need to worry about this section. Slightly longer version … this is an optional field. In certain countries such as Austria, Germany & Switzerland businesses may be required by law to include a statement of ownership on their web presence. There is a limitation of 2000 characters.
Company Overview: As a Toastmasters club you aren’t a company so it isn’t crucial that you complete the box, however it is another opportunity for you to add some promotional content that isn’t covered in your Short or Long Description.
Long Description: This area gives you lots of room for promotional copy or a longer version of what your club is all about. You can add over 30000 characters in this section. If you have a dedicated website for your Toastmaster’s club you may want to create promotional copy designed to lure the visitor to your website. The intent would be that the copy on the website would be crafted to encourage a visitor to your site to come out as a guest to your club. Conversely, if you don’t have a club webpage, you may want to take advantage of this space to add promotional copy with the same aim in mind i.e. encouraging them to visit your club. It’s a fact of life that some visitors to your Facebook Page won’t take the extra step to visiting your website. Don’t be afraid to duplicate the promotional copy from your website in this area.
One benefit of utilizing this category is that Google indexes all of the information posted. This can help with visibility in search engine results. We discuss SEO (search engine optimization) later in this manual.
If your club has had a successful history in the DCP (Distinguished Club Program) you may want to highlight it here as Milestones. A brief explanation of the DCP might be helpful for non-Toastmasters visiting your Facebook page.
A valuable promotional tool is to have your members create “toastimonials” aka testimonials. This can be a great place to include them. Once again, if you have a club website, you may want to use different toastimonials here than you would on your website.
How to Promote Your Toastmaster’s Club Facebook Page
You can have the best Facebook Page in the world, but if nobody knows about it, what good is it? Your Facebook Page needs to entertain, inform, challenge, motivate etc. and grab people’s attention, similar to delivering a speech.
Here are some ideas to promote your Facebook Page and increase your Likes & Shares. The more Likes you have the more likely people are going to share your content, and in turn, they too will Like & Share with others.
•Let all your club members know that your club has a Facebook Page and how they can access it.
•Create and present a speech at your club on how your fellow club members can contribute to your club growth by sharing the club Facebook posts on their timeline.