The Alabama Bonsai Society is making a renewed effort to improve our local web site. We would like to ask for suggestions as to what you like or dislike about your own local site. What would you change? What are you doing to promote your site and attract new viewers and perhaps new members. If you have found other interesting local club sites, what impressed you?
Step back for a moment and think about what you want to accomplish with your site. In most cases it will be to improve engagement with your current members, and attract new members in the area. I think sometimes local sites get lost because suddenly they try to be all things to all people... and do them all poorly. You want to be like a local newspaper and NOT try to cover national news. For example you want to make sure that your site:
(1) Provides information about what your club is, where you meet, and what you generally do at your meetings. Make sure you let visitors know what they need to do if they want to come to a meeting (i.e. is it open door? call ahead for an invite?)
(2) Provide a calendar with upcoming dates and meeting agendas. Most strong clubs I know have a specific meeting day every month and are very organized.
(3) Talk about local bonsai news of interest to your members like:
Upcoming events (bonsai related or even general gardening related)
Seasonal care / weather guide
Local nursery info / local retailer specials
(4) Help people get to know each other. Feature a different member once a month who gets to write a column about whatever they want - a tree they like, a special technique, flowers on their Satsuki, or whatever. Take a lot of pictures at meetings, and mention every person in each photo by name so people will remember names and faces ("Bill and Sue discuss her black pine"). This will also attract potential new members when they see people having fun together.
Don't commit to updating the site daily, because you probably won't be able to, or you'll update it with empty boring content. Try to sync your updates with club activities - one update per meeting or per outing.
What I DON'T like is when local club sites try to do things like a bonsai wiki, or a bonsai dictionary, or "the history of bonsai", or other generic content that already exists on the Internet.
I think Facebook is the single greatest threat to personal privacy that has ever been invented. Their entire business model is based on knowing your most intimate personal details and selling them to the highest bidder. Your life. Your family. Your friends. Your interests. Your friends' friends. What you believe. What your friends believe. Your love interests.
