In today's digital world, folks that want to know simply "google it"
So, what do folks in North Central Texas do when they want to know about Rotary? Unless those folks happen to know someone that is a Rotary member, in all probability they will Google (or any web search tool) the name Rotary.
Just for kicks, pretend you are new in town and want to know if there is a Rotary Club. If you are not already a Rotary member, you will probably Google Rotary. When the RI Website comes up, you will see "Club Finder" in upper right. When I did this for clubs within 10 miles of my home, I received a list of the 5 clubs closest to where I live including each clubs Website. A lot of information was available to me about those Rotary clubs and I did not have to even attend a meeting. But, was the information inviting? Did it encourage me to want to know more? Was there a way to contact someone from the club? Did the information about the clubs activities make me want to know more? Did the Rotary brand information mirror what was seen in the Rotary.org Website or did it appear like some other entity?
That is what the District 5790 District Services team wanted to know when we designed the Web Presence survey last year. We performed the first survey in July/Aug of 2016 and for 2017, we completed our 2nd Annual survey last week. The results are extremely encouraging. While many clubs still have opportunities for improvement, the district now has 83% of it's clubs with Website and 80% of the clubs are using Social Media (mostly FB).
To perform the Assessment, the district team did a Goggle search on each of our 70 clubs. We surveyed each answering the following questions:
So, how did we do?
What are our opportunities for improvement?
One of Rotary International's goals for Rotary clubs is for every club to have at least one story broadcast or printed in a local news agency medium. So, we added a question to track how well district clubs are doing in placing stories in the various media. As you can see, 74% of our clubs have a lot of work to do in preparing news releases that will encourage our news agencies to write about our Rotary Clubs.
In summary, most of our 70 clubs have made a great deal of progress this past year. Clubs still have several improvement opportunities in both their Websites and their Facebook pages. We will be sending each clubs president a summary of our findings throughout the remainder of the first quarter.
The District Services team is committed to providing each of our Rotary clubs the training that is needed to make the programs improvements. We have some phenominal training opportunities for your clubs public image committee at the Foundation, Membership and Public Image Extravaganza August 19th at the Tarrant County College Northwest Campus form 8:30 AM to 1:30 PM. Register now by clicking here.