Programme for week commencing 11th April, 2013
Currently there is a great discussion taking place on Linked In about how we can attract new members to Rotary@1100 and during recent weeks it has been good to see more interaction between E-Rotarians on our Facebook Support Page, especially as new people have joined us.
I was really pleased to read about when Sinead recently presented about Rotary@1100 at the District Council, people sat up, were amazed, E-Rotary doing so much in serving our communities. Yes, we need to tell people about what E-Rotary is enabling us to achieve within the restraints of our busy lives and how better to do this is than by posting on your Social Networks or if you are not on these, following the CLICK FOR ACTION News Update and forwarding it onto friends or colleagues.
One of our goals this year was for us all to develop our use of Social Media to help people learn more about Rotary and its activities, whilst using this free medium to build relationships, chat to people and be given the opportunity to join E-Rotary. Yes I do agree we need to ensure people get excited by our activities, so make sure you are telling them, share what other Clubs put about Rotary, it all helps to show the spectrum of choice our world-wide organisation offers. Build up your friendships on these mediums, have fun, share and like posts, encourage and support where needed. When you see the opening perhaps ask if they’d be interested in giving E-Rotary a go.
I always remember when Debbie was at a Zone meeting, the Rotarians on her table asked her ‘why did she join the eClub’ her response was ‘they asked me’ a great opening for her to tell them about the eClub and what we are doing. So its important we take every opportunity to go and meet other Rotarians when we can, as the majority are not on Social Networks and we can help spread the word verbally about our Rotary@1100. It has been put forward that a diary of events in other Rotary Clubs should be put on Facebook so our E-members are aware of these opportunities, let us do it, if it helps to get others understanding more about E-Rotary that will be fantastic, but it must not put pressure on those who joined E-Rotary because they can’t get to traditional meetings and for those who can it would give further chances to widen our personal Rotary experience; we look forward to this being taken forward.
We can do more, to help promote Rotary International and what others are doing with our membership of 1.2 million Rotarians – all we need to do is share and post on our timelines or tweets what is happening and its all free.
During this year Kevin’s introduction of the Facespace Meetings have I believe really helped our E-members to get to know each other and the technology we are using. It would be good if in the coming months we had more of these spread out in others areas, based on the Kevin Model, so again maybe this is an opportunity to invite prospective members. We hope Kevin has another one as well, as I love his little competitions. Rachel Davis has offered on many occasions to help members with social networking, please ask for that help she is really good at it.
To me we have a real opportunity not only to promote our Rotary activities, but to give real Service to our Communities, by helping with E-wareness campaigns, the Autism Awareness Campaign this month has shown that Social Media can help raise awareness. These campaigns can give some real hope that people are seeing and listening, it has been a real encouragement to hear from mothers who have been struggling with Autism and feeling no one understands or cares, but now people are becoming more aware. We want to do this next year with continuing Autism Awareness, bringing Mental Health out into the open and perhaps other such campaigns.
Please see previous post about Michael’s Motorbike Ride across America for Roll Out the Barrel, as this will need lots of us to be posting, retweeting and spreading the word.
Your re-tweets, shares or likes will help get our messages out to even more people, let’s all of us take real action and maximise the use of our social networks.
I’m happy to spread the word if i know what is going on, but increasingly, members are posting a “please spread the word” message, without any back up for the information.
I’m more than willing to spread the word where necessary, but I need to know the information so that I can spread the word effectively.
The Duck race is the perfect example – I’d happily spread the word and encourage others to buy ducks, but I don’t know how people buy ducks or why they should?
We can’t rely on other members spreading the word if we don’t express the importance or the relevance of it.
Good point made Rachel, perhaps I need to ensure everything we place on the News Update is put up in our projects section. However on the March Business Meeting there was a link to the News Update ‘Bats, Balloons, Bling and Busy People’ which did have an article about the Ducks http://1100eclub.wordpress.com. What we need to do is encourage all eClub members to subscribe to the News Update and then you will get it by email when posted. I know also that Debbie put on her post about the Duck Race and what she was planning to do, as she is organising this project.
Sorry you feel out of the loop on this one and we must ensure all our members are kept informed of all developments, things will I’m sure get better as we grow and understand how we communicate better as an E-Club.
Where did Debbie post about the Duck race Tim? I’ve heard lots about selling ducks and the duck race, but I’ve not been asked to buy one, or spread the word about buying them (and actually, I would like to buy one!) I do read the eclub programme each week – but I have to admit that I don’t recall everything I’ve read – especially a month ago!
It’s easy to include a link to events/websites on facebook and twitter (and linkedIn) – and this link should include all the info that we would need to get involved and get other people involved.
There are some learning points for us for our next year’s plan which the duck race really brings home:-
1. Now our membership is increasing we need to ensure that any activity in relation to a project is not carried out by just one person and if time away is known about plans are in place to make sure that there is a 2nd person who can be contacted, or more importantly, if time out is needed without notice we have a safety net for activity to continue smoothly. So for anyone who is planning project activity, please take note – as the eClub matures we need to ensure that we apply effective planning.
2. With Social Media being our main form of communication it is very easy to loose information in the mist of time, especially if someone doesn’t get to link into updates for a period of time. With the development of our website (and after a lecture from Charlotte who knows about these things) we need to ensure that our posts have tags and are categorised. By doing this, if any of you search the website for past posts they will be easily found! This will take a time to get into place, but at least it is a need that has been noticed.
Never fear Rachel, you will have a duck! Once Debbie is back she will be in touch and if all else fails we will have some available at our Charter Celebration on May 18th. The race doesn’t take place until the end of May Bank Holiday, May 27th, we have plenty of time to sell ducks. Can someone from the Swindon area volunteer to be in touch with Debbie on her return and give her a hand in coordinating distribution of the raffle tickets and then the collecting in of the funds raised?
Thanks Janice – Glad to know that I’ll get a duck….!! I think I’d like to buy them for all of my family, so that’s a good few more sold. (I just needed to know how to buy them – nothing i’ve seen so far tells me how to give money!!)