District 70 Public Relations

About Public Relations?

Your club simply won’t grow and realise its mission if the club is content with being “the best kept secret in town”. Sooner or later, a club with no members will wither and die. The best - and easiest - way to add new members is through an active public relations and publicity campaign.

What motivated you to attend your first Toastmasters meeting? Perhaps you were invited by a friend, saw an ad on the library notice board, or read about Toastmasters in a newspaper. Whatever the reason, it was public relations that got you there.

While word-of-mouth testimonials are the most important aspect of public relations they are limited to contacts with relatively few members of the public. The purpose of a public relations program is to spread the message about Toastmasters far and wide, to expose the “best kept secret” of Toastmasters.

Good public relations is anything that produces “awareness” and “positive response”.  It stimulates the reader or listener to do something, such as visit a club meeting, attend a Speechcraft programme, or stop by an information booth at the local fair or bunnings barbeque.

Public relations also helps to position an organisation within the market. For that reason it is important that our PR activities and resources take into account the image the organisation wishes to portray. Toastmasters International considers our organisation a ‘professional organisation’ and as such PR activities and promotional resources should support that objective.

        

Typically a Toastmasters club public relations campaign can include advertisements in local papers or radio, flyers and brochures on a work or community bulletin board, and pamphlets handed out by the members.

The public relations sub-directory contains resources to generate ideas and to enhance your club’s PR campaign in the local community or workplace. Posters, flyers and brochures have been created so that they are consistent with TI’s professional image.

To enter the Public Relations sub-directory and access our resources please click on the link below:

Public Relations Resources & Sub-Directory