WordPress for Toastmasters*See updated instructions, July 2020.
The latest update of the WordPress for Toastmasters software includes a tool for publishing speech videos to the club website, publicly or privately, and emailing out links to the videos to club members.
Using this feature is entirely optional, but it’s based on a program that has been popular with my own home club. For several years, we have made a practice of video recording speeches and sharing them with members in “unlisted” status on YouTube. This is a convenient way of sharing videos so members can see how they performed for purposes of self improvement. It also allows club members to view a speech they may have missed, such as the Icebreaker of a new member.
If they did really well, they can give us permission to share the videos publicly — and we are always happy to showcase the talent in our club. Having speech videos on the website also allows prospects members to get a better feeling for the Toastmasters experience and see our members in action, even before their first visit. See Video Tactics for Toastmasters Clubs for more details about how we record and upload the videos.
You will find the YouTube Toastmasters tool tucked under the Media menu on the WordPress dashboard.
Once you have uploaded your videos into YouTube, you will use this screen to do a sloppy copy-and-paste import of the titles and links from the YouTube website. I usually do this from the the listing of my own videos (https://www.youtube.com/my_videos?o=U), but it seems to work with any listing such as a a screen of YouTube search results.
You copy by holding down the mouse button and dragging it across the relevant titles and video previews as shown below.
Now paste into the editor window under “Paste YouTube content here” (make sure it’s in Visual mode, not Text). The pasted-in content will look jumbled, but all that matters is that you have captured the titles of the videos.
Farther down on the screen, you will see options asking whether you want to create a blog post, an email broadcast, or both. There are also a series of checkboxes next to the names of club members, which you can check to indicate who is featured in the videos. Their names will be added to the title of the blog post (also used as the preliminary subject line for the email broadcast). The resulting blog post will look something like this.
At the bottom of this post, you will see a notice that this post is members-only content. If you decide to make it public, you would edit the post to remove it from the members-only category. But these posts are marked members-only by default.
Anyone who tries to view this post without being logged in will see only the headline and a notice that a login is required.
As explained in Posting Members-Only Content to the Blog, there are a couple of sidebar widgets available to allow you to distinguish between public content (“Club News”) and members-only content. If a website visitor is not logged in, the members-only posts will not appear in the blog’s main feed.
You can use the same content as the basis of an email broadcast. This uses the email list features of RSVPMaker (the calendar plugin that is part of WordPress for Toastmasters). When you preview the email broadcast on the website, it will look something like this. To send the message to all club members (everyone who has a user account on the website), I would click the “Website members” checkbox and then the Send Now button.
If I see something I want to change or fix, or if I want to add a note at the top, I can click edit to revise the message using the WordPress editing tools before sending it out.
Here is that same message as it arrived in my email inbox.
To support the practice of considering these videos to be private information for club members only, I include a policy message or disclaimer at the bottom of each of these messages sharing the videos.
Video policy: speech videos are intended as a tool for speakers to see their own performances and think about how they can improve. Even though these are on YouTube, they are published as “unlisted” by default, meaning they won’t show up in search results. Don’t forward these links or post them on Facebook or in any other forum without the speaker’s permission. From time to time, we may ask a speaker for permission to use a video as part of our marketing of the club. Volunteers are also welcome – if you’re proud of a particular speech, let us know.
I’ve included some of this boilerplate language as a default, but you can modify it however you would like. If you make changes, the software will remember your settings for next time.
Note: until recently I would simply copy and paste the output from the tool into GMail and send it out to our club’s mailing list. That works, too. However, as a lazy person, I am always looking for ways to automate processes, and this saves a few steps.
Let me know if you find this useful.
