The voice of experience

 

Hello, my name is Gavin Dell. I serve as the VP of Public Relations at the Bullring Toastmasters in Birmingham in the UK. And the reason that I wanted to serve in this capacity is because I really love the idea of being able to capture the energy in the room.

We’ve got such a great community in the Bullring Toastmasters, and I wanted to be able to share that with as many people as possible. And so what I’ve taken from doing this role is that it doesn’t matter how great the work that you do. It doesn’t matter how fantastic the community is, the energy in the room, if nobody gets to see it.

And as the VP of Public Relations, I have the opportunity to showcase what our club is doing to the rest of the world. And so I would absolutely recommend it to anybody that’s thinking of becoming a VP of Public Relations. You have the opportunity to showcase the great work that you get to do as part of your club.

And so I hope this has inspired you, and I wish you all the best.

Responsibilities

Hello, my name is Katrina and today I’ll be going through the responsibilities of the Vice President of Public Relations as part of the D71 CRT training. Let’s make a start and go through the very first part of this, which is the club constitution. Let’s find out what club constitution thinks the Vice President of Public Relations should do.

Now, there is a statement that’s right in front of you right now and I think the most important part of that, what it’s really telling us is that the VPPR is responsible for developing and directing a publicity programme. Now, that’s quite interesting because as part of the club, you’ve got your Vice President, you’ve got your Vice President of Memberships, Vice President for Education, they’re all working towards this mission and direction as to where the club is going and you as a VPPR are right in the middle of it, running the publicity programme for the club for the year ahead, which we’ll dive into a little bit later. And again, just at the bottom there, it just says that the VPPR chairs the club public relations committee.

Now, you might think, well, I’m already part of the committee, how could I chair another committee? But indeed, you could have helpers, you could have a person that just takes pictures for you, for example, you could have a person that runs your social media alone and then you could have someone else that’s kind of putting it all together, would it be yourself, so that the job doesn’t seem too overwhelming. So again, you could have a little bit of a committee of your own. Now, let’s break it down a little bit and have a look what it means to actually run the publicity programme.

So again, sharing stories with social media and sharing the benefits that public speaking and your club provides. Now, that’s huge with things like Instagram and LinkedIn being out there for us. We can post stories, we can remind our audience and people and members that we’re hosting sessions.

And again, that will attract more people to the club. So it definitely is a big benefit and worth including in your annual plan for public relations. Celebrate member and club success.

Now, that’s quite a big one, actually, because the members are coming to the club to perform and do well and learn new things and progress personally. So therefore, if you’re celebrating them, whether that’s on your social media or Facebook, it feels nice and it’s great and it’s good to be appreciated. I’m sure we’ll all remember these times.

So if someone has won a table topic today, maybe just snap up a picture and post them on the social media with consent, of course. So that’s just the one little example for you there. And let’s move on to the social media and how to promote the club and raise awareness about the club.

Of course, it mentioned it above just there as well, about just getting out there into Eventbrite and Meetup, making sure the people from outside know that there’s public speaking club by Toastmasters around in their area. It’s huge and it can bring members into the club. Of course, last but not least, is the safeguarding the Toastmasters brand.

So that’s including and tagging the Toastmasters International in LinkedIn, Facebook and social media posts like Instagram. It always benefits and brings us all together under one same umbrella.

Promote the club

Celebrate member and club success

Hello, welcome back. Let’s have a look at celebrating member and club success. Now, there’s two elements we can have a look at here.

First of all, we’ve got to create opportunities and then we’ve got to create stories based on that. Now, creating opportunities, there’s multiple ways how we could share what’s going on in our club with the wider world. For example, if someone is doing their icebreaker, we could certainly get their permission to share their story on our social media.

Pathways level completion, that too is a big achievement. Someone’s completed multiple speeches and finished their pathways level, they should get a recognition for it and they should definitely share the success within our club and the wider world.

Contest winners, every year someone in our club could be going to participate in the contest.  It’s probably a good idea for you to come along and watch them, encourage other members to come along as well and to take pictures and to celebrate and just be there for the contestants. That’s a general one that’s good to do. Promotion at work, at times we talk to our members, we get to know them, we get to know their life stories.

If they’re willing to share that they got promotion and they speak in external events and then they’re getting over their fear of public speaking perhaps, then it’s definitely a story to be shared. And of course, there is the member of the month award or just the general awards that we could do during the meeting for the best table topic or the best speech. It’s definitely worth sharing those because it would happen more often, you would constantly continue the engagement with the members and your followers perhaps on social media, if they would be frequently seeing these posts.

So I guess when it comes to creating opportunities, it’s more about having this VPPR hat on that you are within your club, you know your members, you know the events that are happening and just seeing these opportunities where you try to have an eye for celebrating your people, celebrating your members and obviously having a bit of drive to document it and perhaps creating stories about it. That leads us very nicely to the next part about creating a story about it. Now, the achievements we’ve just mentioned there, they can be put into any format that you like.

So usually LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram, they offer them to be posted in the form of a post where you can add your text at the bottom, you can add your audio if you want. And one interesting fact I’ve learned recently is that people remember stories more than they remember facts. So stories are very memorable and when it makes, when you’re watching it online, for example, it’s quite motivational.

It motivates the people themselves that are perhaps getting over the public speaking fear by being on video and also the people that are watching and thinking, oh wow, I love that, I love that about this club and I love that about the members that they’re sharing their stories. It’s a very powerful tool that can be used. Of course, there’s the club anniversaries and club growth in general that you could share.

So again, being able to grow the member numbers and grow and continue with the retention, that’s a success to be shared as well. Therefore, don’t hold back, share your stories.

Safeguard the brand

Hello and welcome to the section on safeguarding the brand, safeguarding the Toastmasters brand. Now Toastmasters is more than just a public speaking club community organisation, it’s a global movement dedicated to individuals like me and you to become more confident speakers, communicators and leaders. With all of this history of being in over 140 countries, Toastmasters has built a trusted and respected brand that represents excellence, respect, service and integrity.

Of course this reputation doesn’t just come by chance, it’s shaped every single day by how we present ourselves, how we communicate and how we share our stories with the world and that’s why safeguarding the brand is so important. Now let’s have a look at a few elements here that we need to consider when we are looking at safeguarding the brand. We welcome you to use the approved logos, colours and fonts, so that comes to you sharing your stories online and there’s no better way for me to explain it or show it to you than for you to have a look at the brand manual created by Toastmasters.

It’s got the exact specifications for logos, colour coding and all of the other very useful information. In fact if I was you I’d print it out and keep it by my side because it is really that clear and simple and easy to understand. Let’s consider our voice and tone.

Now I’ve got these two quotes from the brand manual that I thought just hit on the spot. So our communication has to be clear yet respectful, friendly and also professional. So when it comes to your captions that you put under your pictures, try to consider these when you’re creating your posts.

The tone has to be positive, upbeat, enthusiastic, encouraging because at the end of the day you’re going to be celebrating your members and sharing important updates with the world. And one more that we have to consider is the copyright. Now a lot of people can get in trouble for using pictures from Google, so therefore Toastmasters got the approved images and photography that we could use.

But you could never go wrong if you use your own images that you take from your events in your meetings and you share those with the world. These are the key takeaways on safeguarding the brand and I welcome you to go and share your stories with the world.