August Recruiting Checklist: 5 Things to Do Right Now

Your Recruiting Checklist

This Tuesday is August 1st. Great recruiting campaigns are made and broken with what you do in early August. What you do right now will determine whether you’ve got a full room come at your joining night in September, or whether you’re going to be lonely, wondering what went wrong. To help you out, here’s a quick recruiting checklist of things you need to get done in early August to make you successful.

 

Get your Recruiting Date Set

This is the big one. Everything else flows from getting this done. Like yesterday. Getting the date, time and location of your recruiting event set now lets you print your marketing materials, and set up your Facebook event. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve communicated this information to your council, as they will get calls from families in your area looking to join.

So now is the time to finalize your building reservations. Make sure you’ve reviewed all the relevant local calendars (School calendar, PTO, School Athletics, Chamber of Commerce, etc.) Also, make sure to check it against your council and district calendars.

 

 

Secure School Approvals

Now is the time to stop by all the schools you recruit from and have the important conversations. How many flyers are you going to need? How do they want flyers bundled? Who needs to approve them?

Will they let you do a school recruiting talk, and can you schedule it now?

Do you have your plan set for school open houses? Who’s going to be staffing them and what are they going to be handing out?

 

Compose your Marketing Plan

Have you designed your flyer yet? What about your posters? Have they been printed? What about business cards? Now is the time to get those things squared away.

Do you know where in town you’re going to hang those flyers and posters?

What about yard signs? Do you know where you’re going to put those?

Have you got marketing tables set up, and the places to do them? Are there any town fairs, carnivals, or any other big public gatherings where could get you a lot of exposure?

Have you got a list of all the newspapers, radio and TV stations that you’re going to send press releases to? Have you started working on your press releases?

 

And your Social Media Plan

It’s 2017. You need a social media plan. If you’re going to do a paid Facebook ad campaign, you’ll want to start planning it now.

If you’re going to do an organic Facebook campaign, have you made a checklist of all the big Facebook groups in your town? Have you set up your Facebook event, and asked ALL the families in your pack to invite any potential scouting families they know?

It’s also time for councils to get their free Google AdWords campaigns set up.

 

Update Your Be A Scout Pin

Make sure your BeAScout.org pin is updated. You can find instructions here on just how to do that.

 

Photo by AJC1