Does your club have a social media presence? If your club is not active on at least one of the main social media platforms, it might as well be invisible.

84.9% of Canadians are active social media users; that’s a growth of 8.0%, from Jan 202 to Jan 2021 (source: Hootsuite Jan 2021 report).

This offers an incredible opportunity for Toastmasters clubs to:

build brand awareness

reach out to potential guests

and sell your club’s value to future members

Here are 3 tips to using social media to market your Toastmasters club.

1) Start with a plan

To ensure you’re using social media effectively, you’ll need to do some research. Who is your audience? Are you situated on a university campus? Are you a community club? An advanced club? Determining who your audience is will help you understand how they spend their time online.

For example, in Canada, the most used social media platforms are:

• YouTube 83.6%
• Facebook 76.2%
• Facebook Messenger 63.1%
• Instagram 54.4%
• Twitter 37.8%
  

(Source: Hootsuite Jan 2021 report).

By being more strategic, your club’s social media will start to develop a bigger following.

Without a plan, you have no clear goal for what you’re trying to achieve. And you won’t be able to tell if you are getting a good rate of return on your social media posts.

2) Find inspiration

Use the 80-20 rule: use 80% of your content to inform, educate, or entertain your audience. Use the other 20% to promote the Toastmasters brand and sell your club to your audience.

Not sure what to post to inform, educate, or entertain? Look to what Toastmasters International is posting; follow them to learn from them. If you are stuck for ideas, its okay to share their posts to your club’s social media platforms.

Look to your members. Do they have Toastmasters success stories? Ask them to post their accomplishments.

Social media is also a great way to update future guests about special events, changes to your meeting time, or share news about what is happening in your community – for example, are your club members emceeing a local event? Post, and tag the event organizers so that they can share your post on their social media channels.

3) Choose quality over quantity

Are you one of the majority of Canadians (86.3%) that uses their mobile device to access the internet? Do you use any kind of mobile phone to view Facebook? You are in the 95.2% majority (Source: Hootsuite Jan 2021 report).

This means that your posts are competing with many other social media marketing options. Before you throw in the proverbial towel, spend the extra effort to create quality content.

Remember the 80-20 rule? Your social media posts should inform, educate, or entertain 80% of the time – in short, offer them value. If all you do is post the same message “be a member because we are great”; there’s little motivation for people to view your posts.

Your audience’s time is divided, so give them a reason to choose your club’s social media posts over someone else’s.

We’re at a point in society at which people expect our clubs to be on social media. If you’re present, then you’re visible. Take the time to create a social media plan, then use your plan to help you post quality content to inform, educate, or entertain your audience.

Created by Nancy Movrin DTM Public Relations Manager 2021 – 2022