Club communications - help needed.

ASIMON0V

I need boards help!

Our club, Gowran AC, is trying to figure out the best way to handle communications to members, finding it difficult to find one means to rule them all. Currently have about 160 members, split 75 / 25 juvenile to adult

- currently we have a text service (sendmode) - good but expensive and a challenge to manage database
- WhatsApp - great but a little chatty, so important messages can get lost in the noise. Also, we are starting to create loads of splinter chat groups - for women, marathoners, competition etc...
- Facebook Page - nice and visual but open to public and not for everyone
- Monthly email
- website - almost dead in the water....

Considering setting up a Facebook group - but is this just adding more confusion

How does your club handle communications? Any advice worth sharing? What's the perfect model?

Thanks

Simon

Plastik

There's a broadcast message service on WhatsApp for group messaging. It sends on your phone as a group message but delivers on each recipients phone as a message to them, so if/when they reply it is just to you and doesn't descend into a free for all group chat.

adrian522

We use a mix of a lot of different things but there is a group email every Friday and anything important goes into that(including trainig details for the weekend sessions which changes week to week), but it is up to everyone to sign up to receive the email.

We use whatsapp for smaller groups such as the different XC teams would each have their own whatsapp.

We put stuff up on facebook but it is easy for people to miss it there and not everyone is on FB anyway.

average_runner

ASIMON0V wrote: »

I need boards help!

Our club, Gowran AC, is trying to figure out the best way to handle communications to members, finding it difficult to find one means to rule them all. Currently have about 160 members, split 75 / 25 juvenile to adult

- currently we have a text service (sendmode) - good but expensive and a challenge to manage database
- WhatsApp - great but a little chatty, so important messages can get lost in the noise. Also, we are starting to create loads of splinter chat groups - for women, marathoners, competition etc...
- Facebook Page - nice and visual but open to public and not for everyone
- Monthly email
- website - almost dead in the water....

Considering setting up a Facebook group - but is this just adding more confusion

How does your club handle communications? Any advice worth sharing? What's the perfect model?

Thanks

Simon

We have a few:

1) The weekly training email to all members
2) Weekly newsletter to all members.
3) We have a twitter account
4) We have a facebook account, I don't use facebook.
5) Some of us, use whatsapp for organising sunday/sat long run and general race chat.

RayCun

what we do:

Weekly email to adults - this has details of the training sessions, locations, times etc. It also has a report on recent race results, and upcoming events (group race entry, meetings, socials etc)

Weekly newsletter to juveniles - details of training sessions (not the content of the session, but where each age group is training, times, etc) and announcements (upcoming competition, safety messages etc)

Basically, anything predictable and scheduled goes in the weekly mail.

There is a facebook group with most of the adults on it. This sometimes has information about changes to sessions (eg, if the planned location is unusable), but only in emergencies. There is also general discussion about sessions, people arranging to meet for runs outside the sessions, talking about races, and general chat.
The facebook group is a closed group, btw

There are whatsapp groups for at least three of the juvenile age groups. We sometimes put reminders in there, or use it for last minute cancellations/confirmations of training ("cancelled because of snow"/"it's only a little snow, we're going ahead!"). These are per age group, because they may train in different places, have different reactions to the weather etc

We also have a website, but it isn't used enough (incoming committee are planning to revamp it!). I think the goal is to remove the need for the weekly email to adults. In principle, we should be able to replace it by updating a training page, and reporting race results etc as news stories. The juvenile email might stay.

oh yeah, there's also a club twitter account and club instagram account

Dubgal72

You will probably need to use more than one method as indicated by the responses above.

A weekly newsletter via email is a good idea for training, races and race results.

If you are trying to limit the number of ways to communicate, you will need to find out what methods are accessible to members. Not everybody is on whatsapp or not everybody has a Fb account.

You could have someone in charge of web/fb delivery, someone in charge of email and someone in charge of whatsapp but these three will need to keep in touch so the left hand is talking to the right hand.....

RayCun

Dubgal72 wrote: »

You could have someone in charge of web/fb delivery, someone in charge of email and someone in charge of whatsapp but these three will need to keep in touch so the left hand is talking to the right hand.....

I'd split it as
juvenile communication
adult communication

which is more or less what we do.

Different coaches, different competitions, possibly different training times.
Different conversation groups - parents, and senior athletes

(obviously, you don't have groups which include both juveniles and senior athletes)

ASIMON0V

thanks for all the replies, very much appreciated.

Here is what I am taking from the above

- the website is to be a repository of information - updated weekly (sportsworld seem to do this very well)
- regular (weekly) push emails with core information (results, fixtures, training schedule and AOB) to be sent to all members
- day-to-day comms over whatsapp and facebook to be split between senior and juvenile
- twitter and facebook page to be used for promo and new member recruitment etc.

thanks a million once again,

Simon

ASIMON0V

thanks for all the replies, very much appreciated.

Here is what I am taking from the above

- the website is to be a repository of information - updated weekly (sportsworld seem to do this very well)
- regular (weekly) push emails with core information (results, fixtures, training schedule and AOB) to be sent to all members
- day-to-day comms over whatsapp and facebook to be split between senior and juvenile
- twitter and facebook page to be used for promo and new member recruitment etc.

thanks a million once again,

Simon

Seanie_H

Strava allows clubs to post courses, time etc. Useful tool to complement other club comms. It will email everybody who subscribes to that club or group.

purple cow

My club just uses a simple WordPress website and every post is automatically posted on FB too. Every member knows to *CHECK THE WEBSITE* every week. It works very well.

annapr

Plastik wrote: »

There's a broadcast message service on WhatsApp for group messaging. It sends on your phone as a group message but delivers on each recipients phone as a message to them, so if/when they reply it is just to you and doesn't descend into a free for all group chat.

That's a great idea... so we really don't need to know the whereabouts and health update for every u-8 on the team.... :cool: ...and can actually see the updates from the coaches...

Birdsong

I was PRO for our club for 3 years, and set up the internal communications as we had nothing prior. What I did & is still in place

Club Gmail address - all correspondence then came & went from this.
Men, Women, Fit 4 Life , juvenile parents Group emails - most correspondence goes to everybody, but its good to have them split for when you do need to target one group, eg at the mini marathon only the ladies
Facebook members page, works very well for sharing photos, race posters etc
Club Face book page - external communications, sharing announcements, wins, pictures , events with the public
Twitter - again for the external comms

We email a newsletter to the members on the Monday / Tuesday, and the coach emails the training plan on the Monday / Tuesday also.

Groups of friends then have small whatsapp groups for running outside the club - their own business

Bit of work to get it set up, but once you do it properly it should work. Give more than one person admin rights to everything, and put an out of office message on your gmail with training times so that if any potential member emails with a query , they will get an immediate answer

We are building a website at the moment.

ASIMON0V

Birdsong wrote: »

I was PRO for our club for 3 years, and set up the internal communications as we had nothing prior. What I did & is still in place

Club Gmail address - all correspondence then came & went from this.
Men, Women, Fit 4 Life , juvenile parents Group emails - most correspondence goes to everybody, but its good to have them split for when you do need to target one group, eg at the mini marathon only the ladies
Facebook members page, works very well for sharing photos, race posters etc
Club Face book page - external communications, sharing announcements, wins, pictures , events with the public
Twitter - again for the external comms

We email a newsletter to the members on the Monday / Tuesday, and the coach emails the training plan on the Monday / Tuesday also.

Groups of friends then have small whatsapp groups for running outside the club - their own business

Bit of work to get it set up, but once you do it properly it should work. Give more than one person admin rights to everything, and put an out of office message on your gmail with training times so that if any potential member emails with a query , they will get an immediate answer

We are building a website at the moment.

thanks a million, love the OOO idea.

IvoryTower

We use

Facebook members only page(theres a public page as well where you would get messages from the public)
Weekly email from chairman with news updates etc
Facebook messenger for training updates, so youre joined into a grouo with just those who you train with and your coach
website, but lets be honest, who checks websites these days

mo_bhicycle

My club heavily uses Facebook for organising, it's very convenient ... but personally I really hate it. I think Facebook can has a negative impact on mental health and it's a pity there isn't a better way to communicate.

thesimpsons

facebook public page for general stuff, advertising itself, etc. its set up so the website takes info from this for a rolling uptodate feed, twitter too. a private group on facebook for over 100 members which includes times for training, entry info, deals on gear for sale, etc. All really important stuff goes by email too (eg AGM, club day out, etc). Alot of people in the club weren't on fb prior to joining. thats fine, but they are told its up to them to find alternative ways of making sure they are where/when they are suppose to be. its hard enough to keep track of schedules, dates, who/what/why without trying to facilitate everyone whims on whether they want to be part of modern communications or not. club voted few yrs ago on how to handle communication and this way was agreed on. Its also free, and its accessible to everyone, and not tied to any one person's phone list of contacts,

IvoryTower

we have a few members who have a facebook account solely for their membership, thats all they use it for

thesimpsons

IvoryTower wrote: »

We use

Facebook members only page(theres a public page as well where you would get messages from the public)
Weekly email from chairman with news updates etc
Facebook messenger for training updates, so youre joined into a grouo with just those who you train with and your coach
website, but lets be honest, who checks websites these days

Interestingly we get queries from potential new members every week via our website. Rarely get them thru Facebook.