How To Improve Club Visibility

The Northern Kentucky Kendo Club has grown a lot over the past year.  When I first arrived, there was only me and about three other people that regularly attended the practices each week.  Now, through the efforts of the dojo leader, Jim Atkins, the club has blossomed into a decent-sized club that has about 10 to 15 people that come on a regular basis.

This wasn't an easy thing to do on his part.  Through his own life experiences and connections with those in the community, he has been able to do his part in getting the world out there and tapping into the demand that exists in the area for "sword fighting."

Club growth and retention is a well-known issue in martial arts circles.  While the sword arts are gaining popularity through the proliferation of anime, samurai movies and better access to all things Japanese culture, some places still seem to have problems with getting people to step in the door.  What I would like to do with this post is take some time to go over some things that he has done to get the word out and get more inquiries and people walking through the doors to practice.

1)  Have an online presence
The drop in prices and increase in access to the internet has brought more people to the information superhighway (how long has it been since I've heard that term?) to do commerce and find out information on a variety of subjects.  With Facebook and blogging websites, it is now easier than ever to create a webpage to advertise the club with minimal knowledge in all things HTML (hypertext markup language) or CSS (cascading style sheets).

The most interesting thing about this aspect is that the club website doesn't have the fancy pictures and videos that most would feel is required to bring people to the website.  Obviously, those things would ultimately help, but showing a regularly updated page with club times, locations and contact information seemed to, at least, provide the minimum information to those that are interested.

The most important thing though is that the website must be easily searchable to those that might be looking for information on your club.  For example, you type in "Kendo Cincinnati" into a search site like Google and the club shows up as being the one of the links at the top, thus making it easier for anyone to find information on your club.  I don't know much about how to do this other than making sure your website has various keywords that might make it possible, so it's best to do some research on that to bring your website to the top of the search engine results.

2)  Take any opportunity to demonstrate
Public speaking is hard.  I can say that from personal experience.  But it is necessary to take whatever opportunity you put on demonstrations in your area.  The most accessible venues are Asian festivals and "club days" that school campuses have throughout the year, but more locations like libraries, talent shows or even banks (yes, the club will be doing a demo at a PNC bank in the next few weeks) should be in the range of possibilities.

The usual format is the introduction, description of equipment, demonstration of strikes and having some matches to finish it off.  But it isn't enough to just go through the motions.  This is your chance to show off your club, so it's probably a good idea to take this chance to show off the club in the best light.

The way that Jim does his presentations is to cater to the crowd.  He uses words like "ninja", "samurai" and "sword fighting" to identify with the crowd since that's what the typical layman is used to hearing.  It's not totally accurate, but it gets the point across which ends up opening the doors to allow more specific, yet basic, information to get absorbed.  Another thing that he does to engage the crowd is to find out what the audience knows by asking basic questions about what they may or may not know about the sword arts and build the presentation off of that.  This step not only engages the crowd even more, but allows the most adept of presenters to mold the rest of the presentation based on the crowd they are presenting to.

The most important aspect to remember about this is that presentation styles aren't "one size fits all."  How Kendo and Iaido is presented depends on the particular event, people in attendance and ones own presentation style.  I have been gaining some experience in this aspect, but I still need to fool around a bit with how I say stuff to really settle into a style that works for me.  Some research and practice in public speaking might be in order for most people.

3) It's not what you know, but who you know
It's one thing to know the steps you want to take in order to show the existence of your club, but it's another thing to be able to actually take those steps to reach your goal.  Being involved with the community and having friends in special places can really help in making things easier for you to do the things you can to advertise for your club.  In Jim's case, he was able to get his friend to tape a video for the club and put it on the public access channel for anyone to see.  This is a pretty hard step, but it's really necessary and I've seen how well having connections and a good personality can help in getting what you want and need.

4) Advertise, Advertise, Advertise
Okay, so you have the website and done the demos.  For some, that may be enough, but for others, there might be more steps that you need to take in order to get the word out.  It's really important to get creative and advertise the club through the various outlets at your disposal.

Here are some ideas that could be taken:

• Do various community service projects in the name of the club.  Not only is it easy advertising, it also helps out those in need.
• Put on various forms of fundraisers.  This could be through bake or garage sales.  There is the ease of advertising, but it also raises funds for the club in order to do more outreach programs or help out the club with other activities or equipment assistance.
• Make T-shirts for club members to wear and/or give them out at demonstrations.  The possibility of this is dependent on the funds of the club and/or members, unfortunately.  But it can be a powerful form of advertisement.  Some anecdotal evidence of this is the fact that I was stopped in a Kroger a few times when someone wanted to ask me about the shirt I was wearing.  It didn't yield any results, but it shows that people do pay attention to what you're wearing.
• Lots of people participate in various things online.  Do you have a big passion for Kendo?  Why not blog about it?  You can also put links to club websites in online profiles and forum signatures.  This one also requires a bit of creative thinking to at least get the name of the club out there.
• It's possible to convince a your kid to do show-n'-tell segments at school or perform in talent shows.

5) Luck
It's really not the step that most people wouldn't want to hear, but let's face it, the ability to get information out there is also based on luck.  Opportunities sometimes happen by chance, like having members and friends with certain credentials, to having the planets line up correctly is sometimes the only thing you can rely on to get the word out.  In cases like these, it's best to seize whatever moments you have and think with the "glass half full" mentality.

This list is definitely not absolute.  The steps that you can or willing to take is all dependent on where your club is located, thought processes of the public in your area, comfort level, local laws and monetary funds.  However, no matter the situation, it will take a lot of hard, and possibly fruitless, efforts to get the name and purpose of the club out there.  In any case, we know that there is a demand for doing these exotic Japanese arts, it's just the issue of showing people that you can provide that sort of thing.

It's also important to realize that the club won't grow overnight, and there may be some hard times ahead for the club if it hasn't been there already for various socioeconomic reasons.  In this case, it's best to persevere for the sake of the club and press ahead to make sure that your club goals, however big or small they may be, are reached.

The next step is that, if you happen to be lucky to get more members, how can you learn to keep them?  The advice on that is going to be in the next post!

Public Speaking, One Of The World's Worst Fears.

Every year, the Krohn Conservatory in Cincinnati, Ohio has a butterfly show where they release many kinds of butterflies in a building for the visitors to look and interact with.  If you're lucky enough, you might even get one to rest on your head, like the one in the hokey picture on the left.  In addition to that, the Japanese and American Student Society has their own set of demos outside of the main building showcasing several aspects of Japanese culture.  The UC Kendo Club was asked to do several demonstrations, which we were happy to oblige our time to show off the martial art we love so much.

In most demos, someone else in the club does all the talking and I just do my job to help make things go smoothly.  But, this time, I was the one doing the talking.  Overall, everything went well.  With the help of those in the club that were able to attend and a receptive crowd, I was able to hold onto my confidence level that tends to go south when having to present stuff in front of large groups of unknown people.

When it comes to presenting Kendo, my goal is to make explanations short and simple and visual examples action packed to make sure that people aren't falling asleep.  Of course, there are many things that I need to improve on which are mainly transitions and maybe a description of the overall history and descriptions that sound less like rambling and more like an authority figure sharing information.  I hope to really work on this as time goes on because I know that this won't be the last demo I will be giving in my Kendo career.

The demo itself consisted of introductions, brief history, description of equipment, basic attacks, kirikaeshi, ai-kakarigeiko and some jigeiko/mock shiai to explain the point system and what makes a hit.  To be honest, I feel that this format is more than sufficient to get the point across but some edits will most likely be made to fit the situation at hand, type of people in the crowd, time allotted and space available.  After that is kept in mind, then the rest should be pretty simple.  The rest is really up to the ability of the speaker to convey the information in a good way.

I've never really thought of myself as the model public speaker.  I tend to stutter and blank out as my confidence level drops.  One thing that seemed to help with that is being put in leadership positions in the clubs I attend, so I had to get used to talking in front of people whether I wanted to or not.  But hey, everything turned out better in the end since I seem to slowly but surely be getting out of that whole stage fright thing with small crowds.  Things might be different for larger crowds, but that is a bridge I will cross when I get to it.

In any case, as my experience level rises, more and more responsibilities will be laid upon me.  Thus, I need to take any opportunity to do what I can to prepare myself for any future situations that come my way.  Some of my goals is to not just be an instructor, but an effective instructor.  To be honest, I didn't think I would have to present myself so early in the game, but it was bound to happen and I come out of it better each time.