Archive for October, 2007

Howto - XING event creation

Friday, October 26th, 2007

Hello,
You are Vice President of Public Relations (VPPR) or do you help recruit members for your Club? XING events services can help.

Guide to the Events services of XING

This is just an overview, not an exhaustive document.  Explore the service and use your own common sense to figure out how to use it best at your club.

If you are not an XING member yet, please click on this invitation to join.

Step 1: Ask to be a temporary Co-Admin of the XING Toastmasters group

You can create events without doing this step, but it will offer more visibility for your event. Only the admins can create a group event for the XING Toastmasters groups. Benefits include:

  • A Toastmasters logo on your events
  • Your event appears in the Toastmasters International event list on XING

Before creating your event in XING, post a request on the XING Toastmasters forum. We’ll add you in the admin group and you will have the option to create XING Toastmasters events, as explained below.

Step 2: Create your event

First Page
Xing Event creation page one

  1. To create a new meeting, go to this page:
    https://www.xing.com/app/events?op=new
    * You have a limit on how many events you can create in XING. If you have reached your limit, ask another XING Toastmasters member to create it for you.
  2. Title
    Pick an interesting title. You are marketing your event!
  3. Description
    Add a phone number, so you can be easily contacted.
  4. Category
    Social events are more attractive than Course or Culture :-)
  5. Geo-Localization
    Add the Full address in the City field.
    The geographical search (near to you) is very effective in XING. Visitors will know where to go for your event.
  6. After creating the event, check the link Show locationShow location and modify the location if necessary

Page 2
Xing Event creation page two

  1. Choose the Toastmasters group ( only available if you are a co-admin)
  2. Promote your Local Club
  3. Overbooking
    Because some people who accept the invitations will not actually show up, overbook!
    Offer up to 15 places if you have only 10
  4. With or without guest
    I recommend not allowing guests. You will loose the ability to track some of the attendees. Ask everyone to register separately.
  5. The language option is very useful. If your club is limited to a certain language, pick the one spoken at your club.

Step 3: Manage your event

  1. Booking external contacts
    Use the XING function to invite people by email and to add the email of your guests
    firstname name < adresse@email >
    As an organiser, you can confirm whether people will attend. This is especially helpful for people who are not yet on XING, but who might be happy to join.
  2. Export
    Export the list of the participants and send it to your address book or other program (Personally I use Google Docs for sharing the Excel file with my VPA)
  3. Use the list of “Maybe” and “Yes” people who did not actually attend. They are your invitation list for the next event.
  4. After the event, use the function, “Send a mail to all the participants.” Send a message thanking everyone.

Step 4: Share your experience

  1. Give us your feedback. Did this HowTo help? Use the “Comment” feature here.
  2. Share your best practices.
  3. Spread the word to the Toastmasters community.
  4. Let fellow members and officers know about the new tools available to them and how they helped your club.

The amazing XING Events Service !

Thursday, October 25th, 2007

My Parisian Toastmasters club publicizes its meeting with the XING “Events” function. Here’s an example:

https://www.xing.com/app/events?op=detail;id=146189

Thanks to XING, we’ve received 18 guests in two meetings! (Our venue can’t handle many more.)

Five of the guests decided to join club Lutèce 75. Two others have already joined another club in Paris.

In one month, with its 268 members, the XING Toastmasters Group generated more than 50 visitors to member clubs across the world.

Well done XING, and well done to you!

How To Use This Service for Your Club or Other Toastmasters Event

XING offers a full free Event Service for announcing Toastmasters Events:

Xing

The system allows research by language, localization, topic, and many other criteria. It offers amazing visibility to 4.5 million XING members.

Xing Events list

The most important Point :

The default XING start page shows “Events in my area”. Every XING member, whether or not they are in Toastmasters, is informed of your event, if it is in their area !

Xing Front Page

Make your Toastmasters Club more visible ! More visibility means more guests, and more guests mean more members. Join XING Toastmasters and use this events service !

There is no cost for the service. There is no cost to join XING and the XING Toastmasters group. Join today and post your next event now.

Follow this link to join XING and the XING Toastmasters group :

http://www.xing.com/go/invita/4225366/10139

Progress Report: LinkedIn Group Over 100 Members and XING over 300!

Saturday, October 20th, 2007

The Toastmasters LinkedIn group just passed 100 members today!

We now feature members from all over the world, including Europe, Asia, Middle East, and North America. The only major parts of the world missing are South America and Central America. We even have a New Zealand member.

On other news, the XING Toastmasters network passed 300 members. I just joined the Facebook group, which is now close to 800 members.

This is an exciting time to be a Toastmaster, and I encourage you all to join Toastmasters and these networking groups.

Google Has Picked Up Toastmasters Networking

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

Google has started indexing this site, Toastmasters Networking. One of my main goals when launching this site was to have a useful, helpful place for people to go and look when they searched for “Toastmasters LinkedIn” or “Toastmasters XING” on Google or other search engines. This web site is in the first page of results for both searches!

This site does not have the top spot, yet, though. That is reserved for the many posts that Laurent Dubois has made, as he promoted Toastmasters on-line. I am happy to see that many of his posts direct people here to this site for more information.

There is still much more work to do, promoting Toastmasters and these on-line groups. Please let your fellow Toastmasters know about this site, and how they can join these on-line groups. I really think they improve the Toastmasters experience, helping people connect across distances. Toastmasters International has created great local clubs for us to learn from. Now it is time for us to build larger networks that cross national boundaries.

Having this site on the Internet search engines is just one small step towards making that possible!

More Social and Business Networking Sites

Monday, October 1st, 2007

Thanks to a friend, Thomas Löb, we have a list of different social and business networking sites. If anyone knows of a Toastmasters group on any of these, or if you want to start one, let us know! We are happy to mention the group here and help promote it.

Wikipedia Entries on Social and Business Networking:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_community
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_networking

Examples of exclusive networking include:
http://myyesgroup.com
http://bni.com
http://letip.com
http://cralliance.com
http://skillipedia.com
http://aba-ny.com

www.Sermo.com for doctors
www.AdGabber.com for advertising industry
www.myCORNERS.com

Turkish business club
http://www.turkbc.net/

http://www.Ecademy.com
http://www.Qype.com
http://www.Yelp.com
http://www.pownce.com/
http://del.icio.us/
http://www.Jumpcut.com
http://www.Eyespot.com
http://twitter.com/
http://www.akela.it/