Throughout the coming year, we will share information about what your Committees are doing "behind the scenes" - let's start with the newly formed Communications and Public Relations Committee. Although no meetings have been held yet, lots of hours are invested every week in external and internal club communications, Here are some highlights:
Social Media:
• Facebook "reach" was up over 500% during the last month - the Romper Day and Allentown Band posts were the big reasons for this jump. To further extend our impact, we encourage members to "Share" our Allentown Rotary posts on their personal timelines. "SHARE A SMILE" - it is much more powerful than just a LIKE! The Facebook stats below show how we are extending our message, "#People of Action" far beyond our Friday meetings and project days!
Thanks to Chris Bauder and Ethel Drayton-Craig for providing
photos of weekly meetings (their "action/discussion" photos are serving double duty on social media and in the SMILE.
• we have 358 Facebook followers - have you visited our page yet? You don't need to be a Facebook user to view it, but if you are on Facebook, be sure to follow us too!
• You don't need to be an Instagram user to see us at https://www.instagram.com/rotaryallentown/
• We have over 535 followers on Instagram in just 2 months - that's EXPONENTIAL growth and it's more followers in 2 months than we've accumulated in several years on Facebook! Rotarian Jason Worley explain it this way: "The Instagram platform is more visual than Facebook which tends to be a louder platform with "a more is better" approach works. Similar to Twitter, loud, because they are searchable... on Instagram be visually engaging and tell stories. Less is more on Instagram. "
• A strategy to utilize Instagram to help attract new members will be developed over the next few months - the Communications Committee will be working with the Membership Committee and looking to our new "Next Gen" members, like Jason, who have social media expertise, to help in this effort.
SMILE:
• Frank Whelan and Jim Harper continue to be our faithful meeting scribes - THANKS, guys!
• We instituted 3 new features in the last 2 months:
· The first SMILE archive PDFs appeared last week - it was the Jan 1985 issue of the SMILE. Look for more in coming issues!
· We initiated a series of "NextGen" articles written by some of our 40 and under Rotarian.
· "Song of the Week" is an occasional feature - Past President Jamie Kratz submitted this week's choice.
Club Runner
• We are creating a secure folder/link for Board minutes and other Club documents to make them easily accessible to our club members, yet shielded from the general public.
Are you interested in helping "spread the word"? Contact me or Marci to find out how you can contribute. The Committee's #1 Goal is to "Engage a team of volunteers in generating content for the SMILE and for a dynamic website, social media, local media outlets and other club/district Rotary vehicles."
