Toastmasters Hsinchu: from ashes to phoenix part III

It appears from the SWOT that the root of the problem is lack of members. Members bring varieties and energy to the club which in turn attracts more members. Large membership means more qualified officers can be elected to manage the club. Our goal was therefore to put together a membership drive to improve our membership stand.

The key to promote anything is marketing. Marketing is expensive. But cyberspace marketing is relatively low cost. Public Relation (PR) doesn’t necessarily cost money. One just has to find ways to publicize Hsinchu Toastmasters without putting a dant on the club treasury.

The Toastmaster Hsinchu Website
In the September 2000, Hsinchu Toastmasters website was officially launched. A string of keywords was embedded in the HTML code, mostly to do with English learning even though in my heart I knew Toastmasters mission is to do with communication and leadership. I even put Hess English School, Jordon English School, KOJEN English Language School as keywords to attract would be English students. The same set of keywords was repeated in Chinese. The idea was that whenever a person search for anything related to English learning, our website will appear first. I also indexed our site with all the major search engines at the time such as Yahoo!, Google, Openfind, Yam, Lycos, AltaVista, and Excite.

The WinFax marketing
In my search for no cost marketing, I came to learn that there was a certain Mr. Lin, a past VP of Public Relation 3 terms before who demonstrated overwhelming success with fax marketing. Having met with him for few hours, we put togethered a plan to periodically fax to all the companies in the Science Park and all the schoools in the Hsinchu district. The act of faxing was easy, but entering fax numbers and updating them in the WinFax database was a real chore; it took me an entire week. (But this was nothing compare with the time I spent putting the website together).

The Grand Science Park Magazine
The Grand Science Park Magazine is the most the popular magazine in Hsinchu. It is distributed free at all companies in the Science Park, major resident estates, and restaurants. I contacted the chief editor to publish an article on Toastmasters but was turned down because an article on Toastmasters was published only a year prior. (Good job former President Chris Chang). But instead she allowed Toastmasters to appear at “What’s New” column.

For a month or so, nothing! then it happened. I began to receive phone calls and enquiries, mostly from fax initially and then the website. By November 2000, we added 8 new members. Andrew Budai and Paul Chang were among them.