Wichita Falls Pundit
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Get a website for your radio club and use it as
a money-generating, dues replacement, business tool.
TRIGGER WARNING! This subject is controversial and may cause blown fuses, high SWR, and hurt feelings, or even anger. (Get over it!)
Here's an idea for Ham Radio and CB Radio clubs: Stop donating your valuable content to Facebook and post it on your own website. That's right, Facebook is not your website. If you still need to do so, get a stand-alone website for your radio club. It can be a simple static site, like mine, or a database-driven Content Management System, such as WordPress. Websites are cheap these days.
Write something related to Hobby Radio and your club every day. A simple paragraph will do. More is better, but a paragraph is fine if you make it a daily or almost daily event. Each club member should be required to contribute a paragraph or two each month detailing their Hobby Radio activities. Post a link to those updated website pages on your social media accounts.
If you do this, before long, you'll have a website loaded with Hobby Radio information (and valuable "keywords") that your members can benefit from, and your club can cash in on it by adding contextual advertising to the website. I'm talking about Google Adsense, Amazon, or other affiliate programs. Why not? You've been donating valuable content (keywords) to Facebook, where the owners get richer with every word. Keep that cash in your club. You can pay your members dividends instead of charging them dues. Of course, buying radio and other gear for the club is an option. With regular content submissions by members, you'll soon have enough content that makes more money than you would make by charging dues. Too commercial, you say? Everything about Amateur (ham) Radio or CB Radio is commercial, or these services could not exist. Get over it.Resist the temptation to do these two things found on almost every Hobby Radio website: (1) create a links page, and (2) post links on your website to your social media sites. Why? Your job as a webmaster is to attract visitors to your website and keep them engaged. You want visitors to read your content and click on your advertising. A visitor to your website leaving for (whatever sites you link to) is of no value to you or your club. If someone is on your website, your mission is accomplished. Everyone knows how to find those “other sites.” I know this is shocking to many clubs. Get over it.
Now, about those social media accounts. It is the job of social media to get people to your website. It is not the job of your website to get people to your social media account. You should be helping your cause, not Mark Zuckerberg's or Elon Musk's cause. If someone is on your website, keep them there unless you're sending them to a site that pays your club to do so. Many people feel that the purpose of a club website is to serve the membership. Posting dozens of links to other websites (doing the site owners' marketing work for them) doesn't have to be one of your services. Get over it. The members of my club don't miss those links one bit!
Wichita Falls Pundit