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January-March 2008

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How We Doubled Our User Group Membership
Tom J. Thiel, President
Lake Sumter Computer Society of Leesburg, FL.
www.lscs.us
tthiel5@comcast.net

Hello! My name is Tom Thiel, and I’m President of the Lake Sumter Computer Society of Leesburg, FL.

We have been a computer society for over 18 years. We meet at least once every week at the Lake Sumter Community College, which provides us with very good meeting facilities at no cost, but we have sort of compensated them by contributing more than $14,000 to the College’s scholarship fund.

What is this presentation about? It is about how we more than doubled our membership in one year, from 103 on January 1, 2007, to 228 as this is written the second week of November!

Like most other computer User Groups, our membership had steadily declined from a high of 207 in about 2001. Varying reasons were given for this decline, none of which were accurate.

We declined because we let ourselves decline!

But before I tell you how we went about this, first let me tell you a bit about our User Group, the Lake Sumter Computer Society (LSCS).

When our founders met with College officials in 1989, they agreed, actually were asked to agree, to not conduct formal teaching classes. So, we were organized around the philosophy of member helping member. We have seminar types of presentations on a whole host of topics, question and answer sessions, outside speakers when we can obtain them, a monthly newsletter, and a quite good and functional web site where our members maintain their own membership records.

We are also The Campus Computer Society, but students and faculty are a rarity at our sessions. This despite the fact that membership for students and faculty is free.

So, we do not teach!

I’ve been told “you have no hope of growing membership without a formal teaching program.” Well, I admit that I think it would help us, but we cannot.

There is also another fact about LSCS that is most important. We have always had member retention problems. Over our 18+ year lifespan, on average, 43 percent of first year members do not renew. And that rate jumps to 64 percent after two years of membership!

This is a separate, but most significant, problem that I will only touch on in this presentation—I’m following some member retention precepts developed by Sam Wexler of the Valencia Falls Computer User Group, FL, but it is too early to evaluate the success of that program.

Sam is also the APCUG NE Regional Rep, and we are planning on presenting this article at Sam’s May, 2008 Leadership Development Conference in New York.

There is another point that needs to be emphasized. Our LSCS UG is in an open community—any resident of our area, and even quite a number from other states, may, and do, become members. So, our potential member resides anywhere within the normal commuting area, sometimes only electronic commuting.

There are of course a lot of Computer UGs in what I call closed communities, mainly gated retirement communities, where only those residents who live there are eligible to be members. I think these UGs have a much different situation than UGs like ours. This presentation only looks at the open community.

We basically wanted to test the hypothesis that decline is unavoidable, that the decline in vender support will continue to erode membership, and that only by reaching out to young people can UGs increase membership. I have heard all of these at recent UG Association meetings.

Therefore, in January of 2007, we set a goal of 200 members by year’s end. Old-timers scoffed; my own Executive Committee was somewhat dubious, and if you agree not to tell anyone, so was I!

With that background, then how were we able to double our membership in one year?

The answer is simple — publicity.

We have had a publicity program for years. We have a listing in local papers under the hobbies column. And we also have had a self-authored brochure that we placed in local libraries. As best I can determine, over the last year these two efforts provided the catalyst for two of the 112 members we recruited this year. Not a very good return on investment, I’d say.

So, what did we do that was so different? We made a commitment to send to three local newspapers a special press release for every one of our weekly (sometimes bi-weekly) seminars and programs. It is as simple as that.

We found that the papers welcomed these releases, and they carried them prominently and regularly. They actually looked forward to our sending material.

The papers I focused on were: The Orlando Sentinel’s Lake County Edition, The Villages’ Daily Sun, and the Leesburg Daily-Commercial.

In my twenty-seven year career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Research Service, I attended a couple of internal week-long workshop training sessions on how to write for a purpose.

So, I learned about the inverse pyramid form of writing in which the most important item goes right at the top in the lead sentence, followed by items of lesser and lesser importance. That way if space forces an editor to truncate an article, you still have your most important item included.

I also learned something about writing styles and that sort of thing. That is not to say, however, that I think special skills are needed to achieve success with press release type of material, but it does of course help.

And that is about all there is to it, believe it or not! (There are several examples of what was sent to the media, and what the media actually printed in the accompanying slide set.)

I should note that one I sent a couple of years ago just for the heck of it that dealt with a computer karaoke program was an immediate hit; it received top billing “Sing along with the Computer!” I wasn’t even concentrating on this one, and it got headline treatment—I’ve never achieved that again. Now I like it when I get sub-titling!

But these work! We have had programs where visitors actually equaled our members in attendance! And we got almost all our new members from visitors!

There has been another thesis promoted at UG conferences; namely, that most people know most everything they want to know about computers, and it’s best to switch to hot new topics like digital photography, iPods, and the like.

That too, turned out to be a fallacy! The single most responsive program we have experienced was titled “Computer Basics.” The others do well too, but my point here is that computers still attract! (Now Vista attracts.)

Lessons Learned (Writing)

  • What I thought important is not always what gets in the column

    The first thing I learned is that what I think is important is not always what the media person thinks important. For example, we had a Microsoft rep coming to make a presentation. I placed lots of effort into the release, carefully spelling out that this speaker was special, they were from Microsoft, and they have great knowledge that we want imparted to our members. I know our members and visitors will really come to hear this speaker!

    That was the thesis of my release – One of my main papers didn’t even carry it!

    And I have observed this before. Speakers representing larger companies are not carried. I don’t know why this is, perhaps we have somehow moved from service to a community to advertising for a company. But from now on I am not going to mention the speaker’s affiliation when they are from the outside, and I will bet they will be carried! Yes, we lose some in the process; but at least we get in the paper. And if we do a good job we will get potential new members.

    Keep it short and tailored, I mean two sentences maximum – three at the very most! For everything! Definitely not a typical one-page press release! (See the many examples in the slide set.)

    I also learned that the papers like to see people’s names. And they like to also have their titles too, e.g., Colonel (Retired), Retired Navy Dentist, Dr., President, etc. (But our retired colonel, Dr., and dentist are not comfortable with this, so I don’t usually do it!)

    Lessons Learned (Relationships)

    Each paper has a single person assigned to this task. And they have personalities and views. Play to those personalities. Know who that reporter is – by name. If you do not know, ask. It worked for me with one paper, didn’t work for another – they didn’t tell me but I found out another way, and the third has the column by-lined.

    But try to get to know them. And send your releases addressed to them personally. Pump them up in that cover letter/email. Tell them how important they and their paper are to your organization and to the community at large. They are! Give them things they can use to defend their column and their pay! They are still working people and always must be concerned about justifying their own existence.

    You need to recognize these reporters too! Play to their egos—we all have egos. Not out of the ordinary, but just be plain nice to them.

    For example, below is a release I sent to The Village’s Daily Sun newspaper about June 1 – I’ve changed quite a lot since then because of this exchange of emails.

    Dear Mr. McDonnall

    Below is a release for our June 14 Lake-Sumter Computer Society program.

    John, largely through the publicity we receive through the Daily Sun, our Society continues to grow.

    Based on the twenty or so telephone calls I have received from your announcement of tomorrow’s program, we should have several new members this week.

    We sincerely appreciate it, John! Thank you very much!

    Sincerely,
    Tom J. Thiel, President,
    Lake-Sumter Computer Society
    Leesburg, Florida,
    www.lscs.us, 352-357-3943

    Excel Spreadsheet Tips and Tricks.

    Barry Rimmer will present a free two-hour workshop on “Excel Spreadsheet Tips and Tricks” at The Lake-Sumter Computer Society’s Thursday, June 14, 2:45 p.m., meeting in the Lecture Hall on the Leesburg Campus of the Lake-Sumter Community College at 9501 U.S. Highway 441 (at College Drive). Visitors welcome; no pre-registration. Details at www.lscs.us or call Tom Thiel at 352-357-3943.

    John’s response was most interesting and revealing; it actually altered our goals!

    You are quite welcome, Mr. Thiel. It’s nice to hear from people such as you who appreciate our free publicity. You’d be surprised at some of the encounters we have with readers who are, after all, getting free exposure. I also think you’re providing a valuable community service for people at all points on the spectrum of computer knowledge. That’s quite admirable. Thanks again.

    John Paul McDonnall

    Read John’s response carefully. There were two very significant points.

    The first was great. But, the second was startling!

    It’s all about service to the people in our community!

    From that point on, I switched the emphasis of my press releases, and also of my appeals to our own members. From membership to service! Indeed, we developed a mission statement all about Service to People! We have not altered anything we were doing, but have started stressing that what we do is a service! And it is!

    I no longer talked about membership goals; just reported on membership.

    It is also essential to recognize our press points of contact!

    How? I read an article on this at APCUG’s web site that suggested cookies—“reporters always like to eat!”

    I doubted that, and looked elsewhere. How might we recognize our media contacts that would be fitting and appropriate and not too costly.

    We had recently initiated a Volunteer of the Month program in LSCS that recognizes our VOM with a nice canvas tote bag with the LSCS logo and “Volunteer of the Month” embroidered on the side. It costs us about $12.50 each locally after initial setup. It is a very nice tote bag!

    How better to recognize our reporter contact than to name them LSCS’ “Volunteer of the Month,” and award them a tote bag and put their photo in our newsletter?

    It was tremendously successful (see some of the photos in the slide set). But unfortunately, the media environment is not totally static; John McDonnall has since moved to Las Vegas! Our releases in the Villages’ Daily Sun are still being carried, but now I need to again discover our contact’s name!

    But be advised, there is a more sinister aspect of membership growth. Do you really want to grow? Are you sure? Are you really sure?

  • You will always have the “GOBN” (good old boy network)

    The bullets above don’t tell it all. They don’t tell the real pain, which is that some people just resist any and all change. Period! There are a myriad of reasons which I will not enumerate here, but you think of any people problem you want and it will fit this situation. Since my personal philosophy has always been “Damn the Torpedoes; Full Speed Ahead!” I moved on.

    What are the costs of this program? You Must:

    Everything has its costs. These are mostly not out of pocket costs, as illustrated above, but personal costs. They are rather clear so I won’t elaborate, other than to say that “I do the releases.” I may try someone else, but so far I’ve done them all. I take the calls too! That’s where I sell LSCS!

    What are the Rewards of doing this?

    Like the TV commercial –

    Priceless!!

    Remember – The Real Goal is to Improve the Quality of Life for our citizens!

    After nearly one year, which has seen our membership go from 103 to 228, I am totally convinced that there are many thousands of our fellow citizens who are desperate to better understand that strange new tech appliance they just bought into – a computer!

    And I am convinced that we have disproved beyond any reasonable doubt the several postulates in our test hypotheses.

    And finally, I learned, that with Computer User Groups, as in baseball, and in life,

    “If you build it, they will come!” Field of Dreams.

    Editors note: In this article Thomas refers several times to “the slides”. They are available at http://reports.apcug.org/2008q1/images/thiel_doubled_membership.pdf