Introduction[]
The Vice President Public Relations (VPPR) responsibilities are outlined on the corresponding Toastmasters webpage. In particular:
"As Vice President Public Relations, you are responsible for coordinating an active public relations and publicity program in your club. By establishing and maintaining lines of communication between the club and its members, as well as between the club and the public, you will increase awareness of Toastmasters through local news and social media."
Recently, we've had enough guests through word of mouth, Facebook and our website, so that we don't actively publicize our club much. As a consequence, the focus of the VPPR should primarily be on maintaining the lines of communication between the club and its members, rather than between the club and the public. However the committee should continuously reevaluate what are the needs of club, as this situation may change rapidly.
The Toastmasters website provides the following public relation resources.
Before meetings[]
If the committee decided to advertise the meetings, they should be announced on Meetup and Facebook. Graham has been advertising them on Meetup, so this task may be delegated to him.
During meetings[]
During normal meetings, the VPPR does not have any special task to do. During special meetings such as contests or workshops, he should take pictures and write some notes to be able to create content for our online social media.
After meetings[]
After special meetings such as contest or workshops, the VPPR may publish a small summary along with some pictures on our different advertising platform. See below.
Beginning of the year[]
The duties of the VPPR at the beginning of their election year are:
- Read the parts relevant to the VPPR in the Club Leadership Handbook.
- Update the info(at)toastmastersberne(dot)ch and officers(at)toastmastersberne(dot)ch aliases according to the new committee.
- Notify the committee of the existence of the aliases and send a test email for each address.
During the year[]
The duties of the VPPR during their election year are:
Website[]
The VPPR is responsible to keep the website up to date:
- Create content in the News section.
- Add a notice on the website if there is any change about a meeting (change of location, meeting canceled, etc). See How to add a notice in the next meeting section for instructions about how to do it.
- Update the Next Meeting section when when there is change in the location or the time of the meeting.
- Create backups with the UpdraftPlus plugin and download them locally before running any updates.
- Run updates for WordPress, the theme and the plugins.
Newsletter[]
Traditionally, the newsletter has been sent once a month on the first day of the month. However the VPPR is free to sent it with a higher or lower frequency according to the amount of available content. The newsletter is currently designed with Mailchimp.
The newsletter should at least contain the following information:
- Brief review of the last events.
- Upcoming events.
- Introduction of new members (ask the VPM or check the club roster).
- Notification of education awards (ask the VPE or check the education award administrative report).
In addition it may also contain any additional content:
- Detailed review of the last event.
- Interview of members or other Toastmasters personalities (Sonix offers a convenient experience to translate interviews).
- Member contributions.
- Links to resources that may interest the club members.
- Any other content that the VPPR considers worth of being included in the newsletter.
Before sending a newsletter, the VPPR should check the club roster in Club Central and update the recipient list of the newsletter accordingly.
Facebook[]
Special events such as contest or workshops should be advertises on Facebook. After the event, some pictures and a brief review of the event should be published.
Meetup[]
We currently don't advertise our meetings on event management platform such as Meetup or Eventbrite. as we have enough guests who find us through our Facebook and web pages. However if the number of active members would drop, it would become necessary to publish them to get new members.
LinkedIn[]
Toastmasters Bern is currently not active on LinkedIn.
Twitter[]
Toastmasters Bern is currently not active on Twitter.
End of the year[]
The duties of the VPPR at the end of their election year are:
- Find a successor for the next year.
- Give them access to the public relation online tools:
- Show them this Wiki and remind them to improve it continuously during their term of office.
- Wish them good luck and success!