The aim of Katie's talk was to explain to Ewell Rotarians how Facebook can be used to promote Rotary and Rotaract and to inspire the club to give it a try.
After introducing herself Katie explained she thought it was essential for clubs to fully embrace social media and the opportunities it offers for promotion and engaging with new audiences if the Rotary movement is going to modernise and fully move into the 21st century.
Katie explained how she set up the Facebook page for the Epsom and Ewell Borough Family Fun Day in July and how she used the page to promote the event. She highlighted how effective a page can be for promotion and gave the example of one post on 20th September reaching 674 Facebook users.
Katie explained that her main involvement in social media is for Epsom Rotaract. She stated the primary aim of the Facebook page was promotion of the club, both its ethos and activities. She explained the first way she does this is regular posts. She does posts to promote club activities and charity events as well as to promote Rotaract and Rotary locally. Katie emphasised the importance of creating an image of an active club with varied and regular activities. She also explained how tagging can be used to increase a page's reach. Katie stressed how important it is to utilise local community pages such as 'What's On in Epsom' and 'The Best of Epsom and Ewell' to promote charity events and also advised contacting Rotary and Rotaract at national level via social media for extra coverage.
Katie showed the club the last week of posts on the Epsom Rotaract Facebook page to give them a flavour of what posts she does.
Katie also gave examples of how Facebook can be used to promote club charity events.
Katie explained how important it is that a Facebook page is set up correctly. She highlighted a number of issues with the current Ewell Rotary Facebook page, in particular the lack of details in the 'About' section and the lack of recent activity and photos. Katie suggested in some ways the current page is worse than not having a page at all because it is creates the impression that Ewell Rotary is no longer an active club. Katie recommended creating some photo albums of the last year and doing some posts on big events in the Rotary year so far and after that doing regular updates.
Katie then explained the benefits of having a Facebook page. Firstly she told the club it is a brilliant promotion tool. It is free and easy to use she explained and moves Rotary into the 21st century. Secondly she explained it can be an excellent way to increase awareness of Rotary. Katie informed the club one of the most common things Epsom Rotaract hears from new members is 'if I had known about Rotaract earlier I would have joined sooner'. So increasing awareness of Rotary and Rotaract generally is vital and Facebook can be one of doing this, Katie explained.
Lack of self-promotion seems to be endemic in Rotary, she explained, as highlighted in Nisha Kotecha's recent blog post 'Why we need to share Rotary's good news' on the Rotary Voices blog. Katie explained that she had definitely found this to be the case locally when she searched online for news on local Rotary clubs' events and fundraising to post on the Epsom Rotaract Facebook page. Websites and other social media for Rotary clubs are often not up to date. Rotary and Rotaract need to be shouting out about all the fundraising and community events we do Katie explained, so the local community are aware of us and our existence does not come as a surprise to potential members who often stumble across us by chance if they don't come from a Rotary family. Katie informed the club that Mole Valley Rotary clubs have recently launched a 'Play Your Part Campaign' to raise awareness of what Rotary is doing in the local community and to encourage new members to join. She suggested perhaps this is something which should be replicated throughout Surrey.
Thirdly Katie explained having a Facebook presence can aid the recruitment of new members. She said having an active online presence has really helped Epsom Rotaract's recruitment. Being active on various social media accounts, she explained, means Epsom Rotaract are near the top of Google searches on Epsom social, Epsom social 18-30, Epsom community, Surrey Rotaract so when potential members are searching online for a social community group for under 30s Epsom Rotaract are right there. Katie also explained how Meetup has been very beneficial to Epsom Rotaract.
Katie then explained how Facebook allows page administrators to monitor the impact of their page through Insights which displays information on Page Likes, Post Reach, Engagement and Audience. As this feature is only available to pages with 30 likes or more she suggested Ewell Rotary's first target should be to get 9 more likes to unlock this feature. Katie explained how useful this feature is as it allows administrators to see which posts have the largest reach so this type or style of posting can be replicated in future.
Katie finished by saying that Facebook is an easy and quick way for Rotary clubs to start to engage with social media and if used effectively is a brilliant way to engage with a younger audience, promote themselves and raise general awareness of Rotary. She explained Facebook is not something to be scared of, but rather something that Rotary should really embrace along with other forms of social media if the movement is going to evolve and adapt to the 21st century and its ways of communication and promotion. Katie urged the club to follow some of the tips she had spoken about this evening and make the Ewell Rotary Facebook page something which represents the club, what they do, what Rotary means to them and something which the club can be proud of.
Katie thanked Ewell Rotary for inviting her to speak at their meeting. She said she hoped she had been able to give the club an insight into how she used Facebook for Epsom Rotaract and the Epsom and Ewell Borough Family Fun Day and that she had encouraged the club to embrace Facebook.
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