VPPR Spring 2012 TLI (Toastmasters Leadership Institute) Officers Training

2012 Spring TLI Toastmasters Training VPPR from Forfeng Designs

Handouts:

20 Blogging Ideas for Toastmasters http://cromwelltoastmasters.blogspot.com/2011/11/20-blogging-ideas-for-toastmasters.html

10 Social Media Insights for Toastmasters  http://cromwelltoastmasters.blogspot.com/2011/10/10-social-media-insights-for.html

VICE PRESIDENT PUBLIC RELATIONS DUTIES

• You are the club’s link to the outside world, the person in charge of notifying the

public about the club’s existence. You are webmaster, social media specialist, and

brand manager for the club. It’s your job to notify the media whenever your club does something newsworthy.

• As vice president public relations, you’ll find yourself writing news releases,

creating and distributing fliers, and maintaining the club’s presence at various key

places on the Web.

• Stay current on all new developments via the Leader Letter and the announcements published on the Toastmasters website.

• The vice president public relations is the fourth ranking club officer and is responsible for developing and directing a publicity program that informs individual members and the general public about Toastmasters International. The vice president public relations chairs the public relations committee.

Responsibilities

• Link to Outside World
• You publish club meeting times and location.
• Maintain club presence in the local newspaper’s events calendar.
• Publish the club newsletter featuring important news, upcoming events, and
• members’ award accomplishments.
• Create and update the club’s site on Facebook, Meetup, and other social media sites

Webmaster

• You maintain the club website
• Update the site as necessary to include upcoming events, membership contest
• results, speech contests, and so on.
• Use the website to recognize achievement, such as education awards, speech
• contest winners, and Distinguished Club Program goals met.

Brand Manager

• You protect the Toastmasters brand
• Make sure to use Toastmasters logos, emblems, and trademarks appropriately.

Use the Virtual Brand Portal (www.toastmasters.org/vbp) as a reference.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Useful Online Links and Applications

Free photo editors – lets you edit all your photos online, from one easy place. If you don’t have a desktop photo editor these are great.

http://pixlr.com/editor/

http://splashup.com/

http://www.citrify.com/

http://www.lunapic.com/editor/

http://fotoflexer.com/

Image editing (advanced) these are downloadable programs that are opensource

http://www.gimp.org/

http://inkscape.org/

http://www.getpaint.net/

http://www.blender.org/

CutePDF (create PDFs from any type of document or file) – FREE http://www.cutepdf.com/products/cutepdf/Writer.asp Make sure you download both the file and the converter. The converter will show up as a Gray G on your desktop; make sure you install it first, or the program may not run properly.

Print Friendly- turn any webpage into a PDF- FREE http://www.printfriendly.com/

PDF to Word Converter (Free) http://www.pdftoword.com/

Teach Parents Tech: http://www.teachparentstech.org/- FREE  The folks at Google put this together to help their parents, but I have found the tutorials are great for any age!

WorkFlowy - Organize your brain: https://workflowy.com/ – FREE

A way to organize your to do list online

Nutshell Mail: http://nutshellmail.com/- FREE

NutshellMail from Constant Contact tracks your brand’s social media activity and delivers a summary to your email inbox on your schedule. A terrific tool for keeping track of your social media.

EverNote: http://www.evernote.com/ -the free version does quite a bit.

“Remember everything, capture anything, access anywhere, find things fast.” Very useful if you come across interesting things on the internet and want to keep searchable track of it, as well as other uses as well.

Faststone Photo Resizer: http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm – FREE

A great application for mass resizing photos, works quicken then Photoshop, and you can also custom watermark them as well as add borders.

Foxit Reader: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/Secure_PDF_Reader/- a quicker PDF reader- FREE

Ping.fm:  update over 40 social networks with one click including twitter, Facebook, your blog etc. http://ping.fm/

Hellotxt: update over 50 social networks with one click including twitter, Facebook, your blog etc. http://hellotxt.com/

Social Media Publishing Feeds:

Twitterfeed: http://twitterfeed.com/  feed your blog into twitter and Facebook

Networked Blogs: https://www.facebook.com/networkedblogs  Blog to Facebook

RSS Graffiti: https://www.facebook.com/RSS.Graffiti  Blog to Facebook

Facebook to twitter: https://www.facebook.com/twitter/

Twitter to Facebook: https://apps.facebook.com/twitter/

Twitter http://twitter.com/

Twitter Specific Links

Twitterfeed: feed your blog into twitter and Facebook  http://twitterfeed.com/

Twitter search and advanced twitter search: http://search.twitter.com/ and http://search.twitter.com/advanced

Tweetdeck: http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Hootsuite: update multiple twitter accounts and pre-schedule tweets http://hootsuite.com/

SocialOomph: pre-schedule tweets, set up keyword alerts by email, the pro version has more options for scheduling posts to other networks as well  http://www.socialoomph.com/

Friend or Follow: An easy way of finding out who is following you, and who you are following who is not following you back http://friendorfollow.com

Twellow: a good twitter person/business directory  http://www.twellow.com/

Buffer: http://bufferapp.com/ a tweet scheduler, up to 10 scheduled tweets free at a time, there is paid version as well.

Locafollow http://www.locafollow.com/ find tweeters by location or bio

Google+ For Personal https://plus.google.com/

Google+ For Brands (or groups and associations)  https://plus.google.com/pages/create

or http://www.google.com/+/business/

Google+ Banner Profile Picture Splitters:

http://gplusbanner.com/

http://gpluspic.com/avatarbanner

Video

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/

Youtube video editor  http://www.youtube.com/create_detail/YouTubeVideoEditor

Blogging Specific Links (Free)

Blogger  http://www.blogger.com/

WordPress  http://www.wordpress.com, (there is an installed version at http://www.wordpress.org that can replace a website as well but requires hosting)

Tumblr  http://www.tumblr.com/

Posterous  http://posterous.com/

How to text to WordPress.com: In your dashboard go to “Settings” then “Text Messaging” and it will send a code to your mobile phone.

How to email to WordPress.com: In your dashboard go to “Your Blogs” and then you will see a button to the right that says enable Email to post, Clicking this will create an address to email to. The Subject Line of your email with become the post title and the email content will become the post content.

How to email/text to Blogger.com: In your dashboard, go to the “settings” tab and then to Mobile and Email, this will give you the ability to add a mobile device as well as create a unique email address to email posts to. The Subject Line of your email with become the post title and the email content will become the post content.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Components of a Press Release

Title / Headline

The title of your press release should be informative, intriguing and optimized for search engines. The goal is to get the point of the story across in a manner that attracts readers (and potential members and visitors) and adequately conveys keywords to search engines. In pitching to a journalist, you want to get their attention with the title.

For online press releases, the headline is not only the title of the text, it's the title tag of the web page. That means it will be crawled by search engines and used to index it in search engine result pages. Take the time to write a factual press release title that also incorporates significant keywords browsers can use to locate it.

(Try to start with a attention getting headline, but not over the top) Also include if applicable:                           If there is a Photo opportunity: (What it is, where it is, when it is and contact details)

Sub-Title / Sub-Header

Subtitles aren't always required, (but maybe for certain online press release sites) but take advantage of the opportunity to incorporate more relevant keywords in an that area of your press release.

Introduction / Lead

In the introductory paragraph, quickly but effectively incorporate the who, what, when, where, why, how content you outlined in the title. This paragraph is, in many ways, the most important but also must be the most straightforward and to the point. Its purpose is to give readers the essential information while encouraging them to continue reading.

Summarize the story, who, what, where, when and why. All key information needs to be in this paragraph

Body / Content

Once you've explained the essentials of the press release, you can use the body of the press release as a place to elaborate on the who, what, when, where, why and how of the story. If possible, integrate quotations from persons involved in the story, in the case of a club, use members, guests and officers. These help add authenticity to the press release and zip up the content.

Put in more details to flesh out the story you have outlined in the first paragraph

Company Bio (in this case Toastmasters club bio)

Ideally, your press release should not exceed ¾ of a page in single-spaced font. This leaves enough room for a brief club bio to conclude the copy. If you're writing the press release about your club, you may use this space to write a short paragraph about who you are and what your club does. It doesn’t hurt to include any awards your club or club members have received.

Ending

The traditional mark used to indicate a press release is finished is a series of three pound signs, or, ###. At the bottom and centered.

Contact Information

Include your contact information at the end of your press release so that members of the media or potential customers know how to get in touch with you (and your club). Traditionally, you're encouraged to include your name, website, company or association (in this case Toastmasters club) name, address, email address, phone number, fax number, toll free number, and any other relevant contact information.