Using Twitter to promote a Toastmasters club (Part 1)

Part 1 of a 4-part series | Part 2

So you are your Toastmasters club Vice President Public Relations (VPPR) for the next year?

Congratulations!

If you are willing to embrace it, this is one of the most excellent transformative experiences you can have.  As you start the new Toastmasters year, you have two choices:

1. Phone it in. Do the minimum to satisfy the other members of the club executive committee. If you do this, you won’t learn much and will find the whole experience annoying.
   Or you can…
2. embrace the challenge. You can realize that running marketing for a small local organization like your club is great practice for running your own business one day. The skills you will learn will prove to be invaluable.

I say this as someone who has served as VPPR three times on two continents and used the skills developed on my decade-long entrepreneurial journey.  Embrace the opportunity.  Give it your best shot. You will learn so much.

So, let’s start learning. This series is about how to use Twitter in your role as VPPR to promote your club successfully.

What doesn’t work?

The first thing to realize is that Twitter requires much effort. Over the years, I have watched many clubs try and fail to use it effectively, typically using the same strategies (and indeed, I have failed in the same ways myself).  This is what typically happens:

• A new enthusiastic VPPR starts a Twitter account in early July.
• They start tweeting the club meeting announcements every two weeks (or sometimes every week, even for a bi-monthly club).
• They ask their club members to like and retweet those announcements.
• Some club members have Twitter accounts and do retweet the first few times. However, statistically speaking, it is unlikely any of those members have big followings, and even among those that do have big followings, they are most likely not big ‘local’ followings. So, all that effort isn’t very effective.
• After a few months, the VPPR has tired of constantly harassing their club members to retweet their meeting announcements.
• They give up, and the Twitter account is abandoned.
• Even if a VPPR successfully uses Twitter for their year in office, there is a real danger that the following year’s VPPR doesn’t use the account. So many club Twitter accounts become abandoned.

In Part 2 of this series, we will start looking at how to plan for your club’s successful use of Twitter.

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: Planning | Part 3: Content Strategy | Part 4: Audience Building