Publicizing Meetings *Without* Tons of Effort

To have a successful club, you need people at meetings. To attract people to meetings, you need to get the word out. To get the word out, you need to do continuous publicity. But during the term you get busy. How can you continue to get the word out during the term when you’ve got tests to study for and problem sets due?

The key is to set the meeting schedule in advance. It takes a little bit of work to set the dates and to reserve the rooms before the term starts, but it saves a lot of effort during the term, when you don’t have the time. And it means everyone can plan around the meetings in advance. You lose a little flexibility, but the time saved is far more important.

Once you have the meeting schedule set, here’s what you can do:

1. Post the full schedule with meeting locations on the club webpage. Then, anyone can check the schedule at any time.
2. Create a standard two-sided information sheet on the club. On one side, include a brief description of the club and the club’s purpose, and information on the website and how to sign up for email announcements. On the other, put a meeting calendar for the entire term (or entire school year, if that’s feasible), and include contact information for this year’s officers. By putting the full calendar on your information sheet, you give people a reason to keep it and refer to it when they want to attend a meeting. Most campuses have an activities fair before the fall term begins; if at all possible, get this information sheet finished before the activites fair, then distribute copies at the table.
3. Send a copy of the full schedule to the campus newspaper and enter the information in any online event announcement lists in the area. Doing this once at the beginning of the term is much easier and less time-consuming than posting meetings separately.
4. Hand out extra copies of the information sheet to everyone who attends each meeting—and ask them to pass them on to others to get the word out. Let your information sheet do the work for you.

When you get the meeting schedule set before the term starts, and put the information out into the campus where it’s easily accessible, you radically reduce the amount of publicity needed during the term to keep the club going.

In fact, in my opinion, the only other thing you absolutely need is regular email announcements. Send a meeting reminder 4–5 days before the meeting, and again within 24 hours of the meeting. These announcements don’t have to be fancy—two sentences saying “don’t forget the meeting” with the time and place will suffice if you’re in a hurry. But regular announcements are crucial, not just to to remind people about the meetings, but to confirm that club really is meeting according to its planned schedule.

Everything else that publicizes the club—posters around campus, detailed meeting announcements, letters to the editor of the school paper—is gravy.

Jean Moroney is President of Thinking Directions (http://www.thinkingdirections.com). She teaches thinking tactics to managers and other professionals grappling with the pace and complexity of business. As a graduate student, she ran the campus club at Carnegie Mellon for one year. She has many years of post-graduate experience running a local Toastmasters club, which poses similar challenges.