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Your club needs a Web site!
A professional-looking Web site is an excellent way to publicize your club and attract new members. Experience indicates that most prospective guests find Toastmaster clubs via the web. To get them from looking for a club to coming to yours as a prospective guest, the prospective member needs to: - locate your website
- find the website attractive and current
- obtain information that lets them contact you or attend a meeting without doing so
More on each of these follows. Locating your website There are three main ways that people might locate your website: Locating your website - Through Toastmasters International Search capabilities Make sure that your club information is current at Toastmasters International. This should include: meeting place; meeting time; website; club email. It is recommended that your club email address is generic and is good from year to year. Club officers should have information on how to login and update this information.
Locating your website - Through District 2's Club Maps As with TI, make sure that your club information is current on d2tm.org. Information is similar to that on the TI website. However, with d2tm.org, you can also provide a blurb/write-up about your club. If you find that your information is not correct, send an email to
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Locating your website - Through Search Engines This is a far from simple topic. If you use your favorite search engine and type in "search engine optimization", you will find lots of advice. The most general advice is a page will rank well for a particular query if the search terms appear in the TITLE tag, the META tags, and in the body of the page.
An attractive and current website Once you have a potential guest to your website, you want to make sure that they find the website attractive and the information current. Consider having photos on the site, including events, club officers, and club members. If you have newsletters on your website, make sure that they are relatively current. If a newsletter is from two years ago, many people will determine that your club is no longer active. Make the information on your website information easy to access -- easy to skim and scan to find the information the potential guest desires.
Contact Information and Meeting Information Now that the potential guest has found your web page and engaged in it, you want to translate that to a visit to your club. Some people will want to contact you in advance of attending. Others will just want to show up. To accommodate both of these, provide information about your meeting time, day and location. Let people know that they can simply show up at a meeting, if that is the case. Also, provide a contact email. A club member should check this email regularly and respond to questions.
Creating a website If your club does not have a website, consider using Freetoasthost.org - Toastmasters International’s official club Web page hosting service, which is free. The Freetoasthost.org site contains lots of information on what functionality it provides. There is also a link for "how to request your free website.
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