How do you promote your club?

[cgh]

A question for probably the UK contingent.   I've just taken over the Facebook page for our club and am keen to reach out to as many people as possible.

https://m.facebook.com/pages/South-East-Scotland-Wargames-Club-SESWC/158670127504302?sk=wall

I'm curious as to how those who are in clubs promote them and attract new members,  after all we need to constantly encourage new blood to ensure the clubs survival.  Being in Edinburgh there are several other clubs but I'm not interested in seeing them as rivals but as complementary to us.   Each club offers a slight different focus so everyone can find themselves a niche.  I'm more interested in new members to wargames entirely.

We go to shows with demo games, attend the annual Ww2 event at a local air field which is always busy and when the museum has a display we've demonstrated there in the past and we run the local show "Claymore".  I'd like to move the club profile into the 21st century and increase our online presence.

In order to do that I'm going to start posting stuff on Facebook and revive our twitter account.  This is a project for the long term so I don't expect instant results but I'd appreciate any suggestions or ideas how you've promoted your club.

[WillieB]

I'm not UK based but attracting 'new' members as opposed to those already 'converted to the faith' requires a somewhat different approach.
Facebook and other social media are indeed very useful in doing so.

Bottom line is we got two pages. One is  specifically a  'club' page the other one an event page for our annual show Crisis.
Aside from the at least weekly updates  we also run a paying promotion each year ( about 400 €) on the latter reaching some 250.000 people interested in gaming, miniatures, terrain building etc ( ie a broader audience than just wargaming) Usually with quite good results.

For attracting new members try to get Facebook accounts of old school reunion groups, chess clubs, modelling clubs and the like.
What really helped us a lot was getting involved with the local culture council ( wargaming is seen as a cultural activity!) as this gave us access to the City Council  communication channels. They have dedicated websites and Facebook pages for the general audience, print activity flyers and even better, distribute them for free to their members and and the local Cultural Centres (which BTW often are the place for all kinds of activities.
Get a local TV station involved in your activities if possible.

Only three weeks ago we attended a sort of medieval fair which was built around the 450th 'birthday' of a local castle. We ran a simple game disguised as a medieval 'snijdersbank' and netted 2 new members.

Slightly more 20th C, but rather effective is attending local cultural events and public library things with a participation game and some demo painting.
Keep the wording simple. Instead of elaborating on how fascinating wargaming is just talk about thousands of miniature soldiers and the creativity element. Depending on your target audience you can either emphasise the gaming, creative or historical elements.

I'm sure the UK ( and Scotland!) is not all that different from mainland Europe in this respect, so perhaps this might help somewhat.




 

[Streetline]

We've attacted a suprising ammount (for East Devon!) of new members just by getting the local shop to push us.  There's been a preception that as we play non-GW games we don't play GW games, whereas we'll play anything especially after a few beers.  A poster in your local shops may well help.

Also, use the fb page to show what you're playing, weekly - as you've done for last week, and encourage the existing members to share, like and comment on those posts - it will ripple through to their friends and creep up higher on fb's strange criteria for who sees what.

JDE

[LawnRanger]

Hi Brother
  By having a good  forum for the club is the best move we have done.
Your members /non members can org. games there and players can see what the club is like and what they play and do.
 
  Try and welcome new gamers, be open minded,
It's very hard for some people to walk in off the street and see 24+ people playing wargames on 8+ tables shouting and laughing at each other

.As soon as i see new blood turn up i try and pop over to him and have a quick chat with  him ".mate "what do you like /game oh you like gaming that ! then i try and drag him over to like minded people so he can have a chat and join in on a game IF he wants to that is . 

IF YOU PUT  good games on with friendly faces. THEY WILL COME..

We have a computer chap that is great with all that black magic stuff  and he keeps are forum up and running which is a god send! thanks Phil.

So i would say get a forum  and let it do the hard work for you.

Happy gaming LR
 

[Vermis]

  By having a good  forum for the club is the best move we have done.
Your members /non members can org. games there and players can see what the club is like and what they play and do.
 
  Try and welcome new gamers, be open minded,
It's very hard for some people to walk in off the street and see 24+ people playing wargames on 8+ tables shouting and laughing at each other

IF YOU PUT  good games on with friendly faces. THEY WILL COME..

We have a computer chap that is great with all that black magic stuff  and he keeps are forum up and running which is a god send! thanks Phil.

I think this is close to the polar opposite of the club I used to go to.

Already dwindled to a handful of members, each with their own delightful, misanthropic, antisocial quirks.
Always veering off into political topics.
Contemptuous of any non-historical games (and heck, a lot of 'non-simulation' historical games too), except the two guys who would only play 40K.
Some getting resentful because other members weren't racing to match their vast, decades-old period collections.
Always desperate to attract new members, talking about and 'knowing' what would work, but doing nothing about it.
Always moaning and complaining about any form of online or social media presence, down to "I just don't like it", whenever formats were switched; and barely using it anyway, let alone to spread the club around.

It's like a blueprint of what not to do.

The only thing I can think of to suggest is have more of a presence and introduction to the club outside facebook, even if everyone can see the wall there anyway. Although I'm probably in the minority as a non-FBer, it always feels like the door's slammed shut before it's even opened, when some interesting hobby announcement turns up and the announcer says "just join our facebook page".
Twitter's fine. I see SESWC also has a wordpress blog, and 'seswc.co.uk' immediately seems more accessible to me, personally, than a facebook address, though the content seems a bit sparse and terse at the mo. Would it be an idea to cross-post FB content to that? Or at least beef up the club intro and info there?

How does that netvibes page do, too? What's the 'url error' that shows up in one part of it?

[6milPhil]

I think this is close to the polar opposite of the club I used to go to.

Already dwindled to a handful of members, each with their own delightful, misanthropic, antisocial quirks.
Always veering off into political topics.
Contemptuous of any non-historical games (and heck, a lot of 'non-simulation' historical games too), except the two guys who would only play 40K.
Some getting resentful because other members weren't racing to match their vast, decades-old period collections.
Always desperate to attract new members, talking about and 'knowing' what would work, but doing nothing about it.
Always moaning and complaining about any form of online or social media presence, down to "I just don't like it", whenever formats were switched; and barely using it anyway, let alone to spread the club around.

It's like a blueprint of what not to do.

I didn't know you lived near me. 

I know that experience well, the too far away to make it tenable Maidstone and Medway clubs have proper human beings, my local one doesn't more like the special care group, with a vague smell of sugar puffs you describe.

I've always encouraged my son to go along too but the last time we went there was a proper game on offer but the bloke doing it, with all the figures and terrain, didn't bother turning up. The club president went off with someone to bring something from his house  leaving us with three folk who looked like they didn't want to be there, couldn't be dragged into conversation bar one who started going off all evangelical about his several thousand piece Nap collection, the only worthy game, couldn't see the point of anything else, blah, blah.

We went to the bar to top up our drinks but with a mutual raised eyebrow made a dash for the door with all the joy of getting out of prison.