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April-June 2007

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Publicity
by Don Singleton
APCUG President

Are you having trouble with declining membership? People die, or move out of town, or lose interest, so if you want your membership numbers to increase, rather than spiral downward, you need to bring in new members, and that means that people need to know you exist.

Last month I wrote an article “Increasing Membership Using a Tabloid Newsletter” (http://reports.apcug.org/2007q1/r08.htm) which suggested publishing a monthly tabloid newsletter and distributing it for free all over town. When we did that, our membership increased every year, and when we were forced to stop publication, our membership began to drop. I still think this is the most effective way to grow your membership, but this quarter we will take a look at some other ways of letting people know you exist, in the hopes that they will visit a meeting or two, and hopefully join.

Trifold Brochures

One very effective way is to print up some trifold brochures. Take a sheet of paper, and lay it on the table horizontally. Fold one third of it over, and then fold the other third over. This is basically a Trifold Brochure (you can also do it with a sheet of legal size paper and make a quad fold brochure). If you go to http://apcug.net/help/trifold/ you will see a dozen trifold brochures (and one quad fold). Notice that the front "page" identifies the group and gives a small amount of information, and as you open the folds you learn more and more about the group, until hopefully you will want to visit the group some time, and possibly join.

If you would like to add your group’s trifold to the list, email a PDF of it to president@apcug.net.

You should be able to take a stack of trifold brochures to the local computer stores, and persuade them to let you leave a stack of them on their counter. They should allow this, since they want your business and that of your members. Then if someone comes in with a question they can't answer, they may give that person one of your brochures and tell them to "see if they can help you".

A trifold brochure is also already folded and ready to insert in a letter, so if anyone contacts you by snail mail, and you answer their question, include a copy of your trifold in the envelope.

Table at a Computer Show

A number of years ago ITEC (http://home.goitec.com/itec/events/Index.htm) and the The Computer & Technology Showcase (http://www.techshows.com/) had a LOT of shows around the country. We had one of each in Tulsa every year. They have cut back on the number of shows, but you might see if there is one in your city, and if so, contact them to see if you can get a free booth in exchange for helping to publicize their event. As you can see at http://www.tcs.org/ioport/nov99/itec99tcs.htm during the ITEC show in 1999 we not only had a free booth, we also presented ten seminars at the two day show (basically the sort of program that we would put on at a General Meeting).

If ITEC and C&TS do not have shows in your city, check with your city's Convention Bureau and see if there are any Business and Technology Showcase shows in your area, and approach them.

You might also see if there is a local swap meet in your city. http://www.computershowok.com/ is the website of one such show in Tulsa that hosts a computer show and super sale on the third Saturday of each month in Tulsa, Oklahoma, (7th & Garnett). The man that runs that show offered the Tulsa Computer Society a free table at each of his shows, in exchange for our reminding members about his show.

Radio / TV Show

Does your city have a Radio or TV show about computers? Contact the person in charge of that show and see if he/she would be willing to have one of your members appear to talk about computers, and particularly what you do at your User Group. I suspect they would be very happy to have you on.

Computer Column in the Local Paper

Does your local paper have a Computer Columnist? Contact them to see if they would mention your User Group. And if they don't have such a column, contact the editor to see if he would be interested in having one of your members write a weekly column on Computers.

If you want people to visit your User Group, they need to know your group exists, where and when it meets, and a little more about your group, and the way for them to learn that is PUBLICITY.

If you have any additional ideas for publicizing your group, or helping membership grow, please write them down and email them to president@apcug.net. I would like to be able to publish them next quarter.