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.

Toastmasters is all about community involvement and taking leadership. Laurent and I have been writing all the articles on this site, but we decided to offer a way for everyone to contribute.

If you have an announcement, tip, or other article on the topic of on-line networking for Toastmasters member, please write and post it here. Here are the instructions:

1. Register on this site as a new user. You will be asked for your user ID and e-mail address. The link is http://www.toastmasters-networking.org/wp-register.php
2. Log on with your new user ID (you can do this as part of the registration process)
3. Create a new post.
4. E-mail one of us at moderators@toastmasters-networking.org to let us know that your post is ready for review and approval.

Here are some important things to know about posting articles:

• They will NOT immediately appear on the web site
• A moderator will review the article before publishing it to the whole site
• We might change or rearrange information in your article, editing it for clarity
• Your e-mail address must be valid for you to register and to post. No exceptions. No phony e-mail addresses allowed.
• If you write articles that are commercial, self-promotional, or offensive, the moderators will not publish it. The moderators might delete your contribution without contacting you for revisions. The moderators might disable or delete your user ID on the web site. The moderators might delete or remove your name from previous posts to the web site.
• By submitting your article, you are giving Alex S. Brown and anyone he designates the right to publish this article or any modified version of it on toastmasters-networking.org, any related web site, and any print, on-line, or electronic format. You still retain copyright to your own article, but you have given us the non-exclusive right to publish your article.
• The moderators have full right to edit, modify, delete, publish, or not publish your article at their own discretion.
• Do NOT post anything here that is already copyrighted by someone else. If you wish to repost an article already on the Internet or in a printed magazine here, get permission first.
• If you cannot get rights to reprint material here, feel free to submit a short announcement or summary that includes a link to the material.

If you have an article idea, but do not want to write it yourself, feel free to contact us at moderators@toastmasters-networking.org. We can help write up your idea, or publish your article anonymously on this site.

Also, if you want to upload pictures or files along with your article, then you will need our help. Please contact the moderators and we can add the pictures and other uploaded files.

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 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!

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/

Today I bought the domain and set up the first version of the web site at www.toastmasters-networking.org.

Right now the LinkedIn Toastmasters group is at 30 people, and XING is at 272. We started this group to promote Toastmasters and to promote membership in the Toastmasters groups within LinkedIn and XING. We will be watching those numbers grow. That will be a key measure of how successful we are here.

I am glad to be an independent business person, so I could support this effort through my company, Real-Life Projects, Inc. Being able to support different start-up causes is part of what makes it fun to be an entrepreneur.