Building a great club website
The club website is the FOUNDATION of all your publicity and communications activity so needs to be a good one.
It is possible to create a great looking website that has all the information the public and members want. 90% of this will be static content and well-written will not date although will need a annual review to keep fully up-to-date. The other 10% will come from material you produce anyway and will ensure your club page looks active and interesting.
If you are starting out, break things down into small sections and keep going over a period, say 3 months, so as not to become overwhelmed. Also do not procrastinate - get going in the knowledge that as you gain experience in improving the club website your technique will become quickly better and this will accelerate your ability to make improvements.
WHO is to do this? Find someone willing to stick with it. The skills needed are small; if they can use a computer, the internet and Google plus software such as Word then add some creativity and willingness to learn about what the club is doing and something of what Rotary in general is doing and you are all go.
The following concentrates on the Homepage from a general publicity perspective with some information for overall understanding and some that you will use in creating actual improvements.
The District 9920 website www.rotarydistrict9920.org shows most of the features that you can use, for example:
- Banners - create your own
- Contact information
- Picture carousels - refresh these, say six monthly, from pictures used elsewhere such as club bulletins - just file these pictures to a folder for later access
- Facebook plugin - helps keep the page looking up-to-date
- Stories - helps keep the page looking up-to-date (do not include author and date of publication) - remove from the homepage any that will date such as for events that have passed and finally, only have 5 or 6 showing on the homepage at any one time.
- Club bulletins etc
- Tabs - create as many as you need but make sure you put on accurate content, preferably written so it will not date.
While the following is based around the use of Clubrunner, much is relevant if by chance you have a website elsewhere. This guidance does not cover club administration aspects for which you need to approach the ICT Committee for any help needed.
Who to contact?
- Refer to the District Directory and if needed contact your Assistant Governor for guidance
- District 9920 ICT (Website) Committee
- District 9920 Publicity Committee (including Colin Robinson cs.bg.robinson@xtra.co.nz )
Clubrunner guides:
- Using Clubrunner
- Guide for logging into Clubrunner (at Club, District and / or Rotary Oceania sites - all SAME login)
- Short overview of Clubrunner (Word doc)
Guides useful for the development of content:
- If you can master taking a good photo, writing a story and creating this in Clubrunner you suddenly have most of the skills you need for the 'day to day' functions needed to keep the club website looking fresh and informative!
- Basic overview of what good publicity might involve (Word doc)
- Taking great photos (Word doc)
- Writing a great story (Word doc)
- Using photos to create new and interesting banners on your website (PPT) - to replace those awful generic ones that come with Clubrunner
Other:
- Starting out using Facebook for your club (Word doc)
- Send your stories to the District Newsletter Editor as created
Some example club websites:
- http://pakuranga-rotary.org.nz/
- www.rotarystjohns.club
- Even these clubs would acknowledge that more needs to be done with their sites but they are reasonable examples of what is possible.