Almost
every Club
Website should have information to help guests:
- Determine whether
Toastmasters is something they might be interested in.
- Decide
whether your club
is the one they want to visit.
- Know who to contact before coming
to your club.
- Know when and where you meet.
- Have
information that will make them believe they'll be comfortable
once they get there.
Of course, once they get there, it's all up to you.
Also, most of the information that a guest needs doesn't change very
often, so it's easy it to put up once and forget about it ... thus, information
for guests provides a huge bang for the buck.
In support of this, the information that is probably going to be most
useful to a guest includes (in groups of roughly decreasing order of
importance):
- Day, frequency of meeting, start and end times, location, and
a contact phone and email.
- Whether membership is open to everyone or only to a select group.
- Directions and/or a map. Directions could
be from multiple common nearby locations (see the
Lake Ridge Toastmasters Club website for
one example. Also, consider links to YahooMaps and MapQuest (both
Maps and Directions). The District website makes this easy by giving
you a form you can fill in to build
YahooMaps and MapQuest links to directions and maps.
- Process for the guest to come (whether they need to call ahead, when
to arrive for their first meeting, what they need to bring, security
restrictions, etc).
- The Benefits of Toastmasters.
- Why the visitor should attend this Club rather than a different club
(focus on the strengths of your club not the weaknesses
of other clubs).
- Cost, including any club dues and fees.
- What a guest should expect at their first meeting and/or the roles
that visitors will see.
- A description of how the program works and/or the list of Basic Manual
Speeches.
- The club’s approximate size and average number
of people at a typical meeting (some guests feel
more comfortable if they know this information).
- Other “cultural” items such as members' age-range, typical
clothing worn (business formal, business casual, jeans). If it's a
noon-time club, whether people bring their lunch.
See also:
Club Website Content for
Guests ... Club Website
Content for Members
Club Website Help ... Other
Club Websites
WHQ
guidelines ... WHQ clarifying
info