Toastmasters Networking

It has been a great experience working on this web site and moderating the LinkedIn Toastmasters group. I had no idea what it would be like when I wrote to LinkedIn and requested the new group, and then set up the web site with Laurent. For anyone who is curious, this post should give you an idea of the day-to-day work involved in moderating these groups.

I have a special e-mail folder where all the web site and group e-mails go to. In between my regular work and family life, I check anything new that has arrived. Some days it is empty, but most days there is at least one new member request or other e-mail.

A daily chore is clearing out the “comment spam” from the web site. Some marketers think it is a good idea to post random comments about their services and web sites on any WordPress web site they can find. Fortunately there are not too many of these, but we review each comment and delete the ones that are spam.

Next it is off to the new member requests. These vary tremendously. Many come in through LinkedIn and I get no e-mail notice about them. I just check the moderator’s area on LinkedIn for new requests.

For each request, I check the person’s profile to confirm that they are actually a Toastmaster member. If they have their membership listed in their profile, I approve them right away.

Unfortunately, many of the people who ask to join have no mention of Toastmasters in their profile at all. I have a standard e-mail that I send them asking for confirmation that they are actually a member of Toastmasters. I go through each reply, and approve the people who respond confirming that they are a member.  Sometimes there are people who are not current members, but about to rejoin, and I usually approve them right away also.

My main goal in reviewing all the applications is to make sure that everyone in this group is really a genuine Toastmaster,  or at least a former Toastmaster.

Why Not Let Everyone In?

About half of the people who have asked to join the group have no mention of Toastmasters in their profile and do not respond to my e-mail asking for more information. I have a running list of these people, who are denied membership.

Many are “open networkers” who seem to join many, many groups, and others are recruiters or sales people. I have nothing against people who use LinkedIn to try to get to know more people or increase their sales, but I did not want this group to get filled with people like that. My goal is to create an on-line group that Toastmasters can search through to find other Toastmasters. Letting in everyone who asks to join would create a list where any given member only has a 50/50 chance of actually belonging to Toastmasters or even knowing what it is.

What I Love About It

About 5% to 10% of the people who actually respond to my e-mails asking for more information are unaware of what Toastmasters is, and they ask for more information. They are from all over the world, and have many different reasons to possibly be interested. I send them links to the Toastmasters web site and tell them what I have gotten out of it.

As part of their application, I get a link to their LinkedIn profile. If I can, I talk about how Toastmasters might help them in their business or personal life, based on what I have learned about in their profile.

This is my favorite part about the role, and I hope that I have helped some people become brand new Toastmasters through these e-mails.

Not a One-Person Job

Laurent also helps with the moderation of the group, following the same process I do screening names and responding to questions. If anyone else is interested in helping to moderate, please contact one of us at moderators@toastmasters-networking.org. This is a great way to meet new Toastmasters from around the world, and it is a rewarding role.

Anyone interested in spreading the word about the LinkedIn group or any of the groups mentioned on this site is also welcome to e-mail us. Some of the posts here give great publicity ideas for your group, and we are always looking for more great ideas.

As a current Vice President of Education for one of my clubs, I should also mention that this type of work might be one way to fulfill a High Performance Leadership project or one of the modules from the new Leadership Manual. Anyone with questions about these Toastmasters projects is also encouraged to e-mail us.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Toastmasters Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.