Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Power of Mass Communication..

Since taking up the role as the Vice President Public Relations of HELP's toastmasters club in July, I have been unconsciously applying mass communication to publicise our club. I used to think mass comm is just a term related to languages, communication, event management, meeting-with/working-for the press, etc. Until recently, I finally took note of the word 'MASS' in this widely used 'career jargon'.

First let me share with you how I came to notice this word.

I started off by creating a database for our club. Business cards and contact details were all that I cared for during meetings. Each time, I made sure every member/guest that visits our club will have my business card and vice versa. Then you have events like Club Officers' training. You meet HUNDREDS of new faces coming to HELP, how're you going to network with SO many people at once?

I was really shy and just stuck myself with the HELP gang.

However, there seemed to be another part of me telling me THIS IS THE BEST CHANCE to expand our database. Its D-chance to make our club successful! But then again, I thought, how am I going to start the conversation with the auditor from KPMG? Come to our meeting every Saturday and exchange business cards? Nah... doesnt sound sincere... Get feedback about the venue from the bank manager of HSBC then exchange business card? Doesnt sound very convincing either... Then I thought....ahhhh, I will ask about how did they get themselves here, was it difficult? Then exchange cards so that they can call me when they get lost!

I've found the PERFECT trigger for my conversation without sounding insincere or pretentious.
You must be thinking, is that the end of the conversation already? Probably, since I didn't prepare much. True enough, the next problem arose, what to say next? "The sky is blue today, dont you think? " Speak that, and they would probably look into your eyes with the 'OMG' kinda face and just walk away. Its just TOO bad don't you think?

NO! of course I didnt say that. Most commonly, you'll get interrupted by somebody else, and you just move away. Or sometimes, just say that you wouldnt want to take away their precious tea break time and then make a move. Afterall you only wanted to receive as many cards as possible, right?

What did I do next with ALL these cards?

Data entry. It was then that I realised how important data entry was. I virtually took my sleeping time just to key it into our HELP's gmail account. Its really tedious, but its the outcome that was in suspense... I told the other Exco to do the same thing whenever they're free.

The time is Perfecto! Its time to prepare my email.

Objectives :-
1. Publicise the club blog
2. Invite them to your meeting
3. Make known to them that they're attending a President's Distinguished Club.
4. Make it clear what is the purpose of their attendance

After that, it's time to put them in words. This was the hardest part as i had to strike a balance between making the write up interesting yet professional at the same time. It was not an easy task. What I did about the club blog is that I told them details about out Club Dinner, but not entirely. I created a link just so the HAVE to visit our club blog.














I was shocked to look at the number of unique visitors to our blog (31st July, one day after I sent the mass emails). It was only about 2 weeks old, and there it is. Obviously thats not the actual number of readers daily. They probably really wanted to know about our dinner, or could have clicked it by accident! LOL. Yup that was when I thought, mass emails, is it like Mass Comm??


Mass communication is the term used to describe the academic study of various means by which individuals and entities relay information to large segments of the population all at once through mass media.

- Quoted by Wikipedia


Then I noticed that the number of readers declined. Sigh.. what to do?

I just continued sending them those mass emails, about our club, and kept updating our blog with Shoes. NOt daily yet, just once a week.


Today, we even have visitors all the way from US, Japan, Spain, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, Italy..etc WOW!


















Not only that, I found out that our blog is actually worth $1,129.08 . I'm still wondering how is it calculated. This blog is still worth $00.00 . LOL

Anyway, still learning how to make successful blogs! Care to shed any lights from you readers?

=)

2 comments:

M.d.Ernest said...

Mine is $500++..lol..don't worry about the worth thingy, it just a system that calculates.

Just put more key words(politics, stars, more network). You will find your worth increase daily..

hehe..who wants to buy my blog..$300 will do..lol..

HELP University TMC said...

I'm still not convinced! Our Toastmasters Blog was started later than this, yet it is worth more! LOL..

If only I knew how it was calculated. At first I thought it was by the number of visits per day, but I have those visits too..LOL.

NVM. will try your key words =D