APCUG Reports
April-June 2007

Local owned newspapers have long used this technique to increase their readership and subscription rates. Everyone likes a human interest story about someone in their community.

I do not think that it is possible to get either newspaper or TV publicity, unless the newspaper - TV is locally owned. Big media just doesn't have time for local news.

However, the Hearst Corporation is the exception to this rule. I have been reading Dwight Silverman's blog at http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/ for several years. For the past year, I have posted announcements about NTPCUG's meetings on Friday, when Dwight sets up the Open Comments for anything technical. People all over the world read Dwight's TechBlog.

By comparison, the Dallas Morning News no longer has a technology section and their website is equally lacking. I checked out the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and they appear to have the same policies as the Houston Chronicle. For instance, if you are a resident in a city where they publish a newspaper and are passionate about a particular subject, for instance "user groups", then one of your members might be selected to be a blogger on their website. For more information on this, check out http://blog.seattlepi.newsource.com/solicit.asp.

The Hearst Corporation, http://www.hearstcorp.com/, also owns radio and TV stations, so there may also be opportunities there as well. Unfortunately, there is not a Hearst publication in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. I even applied to be a blogger for the Houston Chronicle, since Dallas is a suburb of Houston but it was a no-go, although Dwight did get a good laugh out of my comment, since there has always been a great competition between Houston and Dallas.

At various times, NTPCUG has hired a PR firm, run radio commercials, advertised in local college newspapers, 1/4 page ad in the Dallas Morning News, and had booths at every tech show between 2002 - 2005 and none of these efforts produced a scintilla of positive results in terms of new members.

However, we have discovered that our best marketing tool is our website and the more dynamic the content is, then the higher we are in the search engine results. Better than 80% of NTPCUG's visitors find us via our website. I would bet that this statistic is also valid for most user groups. Is your user group deploying a marketing strategy, which is geared to hook the visitors to your website?

Too many user groups still have what we used to have, which is a static homepage that never changes. Most visitors never go beyond the homepage, unless there is something on the homepage that hooks them. Many user group members also never go beyond the homepage, unless there is something on the homepage that entices them. User groups can attract visitors to their website, if it is also a source of information pertaining to high-tech issues, such as Net Neutrality, Internet Radio, etc. or the latest information on leading edge technology.

Does your website's homepage answer the following questions?

• Who, What, When, Where, Why and How?
• What is the focus of your user group's presentations?
  • end-users
  • developers
  • It Professionals
  • Small business owners
• Who should consider joining your UG?
  • end-users
  • developers
  • It Professionals - system analyst, network administrator, system administrators, IT Managers, etc.
  • Small business owners
• What international organization(s) is your UG affiliated with and are these logos on your UG’s homepage?
  • APCUG
  • International NET Association (INETA)
  • Culminis
• Do you feature new SIGs on your home page for at least 90 days before and after the date of the new SIG’s first meeting?
• Do you feature topics with broad appeal on your home page?
• Do you feature information about hot technology topics such as Net Neutrality on your homepage?
• Do you feature product reviews on leading edge technology on your homepage, such as the new solid-state hard drives or road warrior new security devices such as the Yoggi GateKeeper Pro?
• Do you have links to any awards that your UG may have won?

Check out http://www.ntpcug.org/ for other topics that I have not covered.

SharePoint Services makes it easier for different people to post updated information, which they can flag with an expiration date. This reduces the amount of time that needs to be spent in housekeeping duties. I will talk more about SharePoint Services in the APCUG’s 3rd Quarterly Reports.