Marketing and Public Relations

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Marketing and Public Relations is a task for the District as well as for every club. In fact, each club should have a Lion assigned as its Marketing & Public Relations Manager to make sure that your community knows what you are doing to support the community as well as your upcoming events and fundraisers so that they can be a part of building a better community. The info below is not a final answer for our marketing needs, just some highlites of what we could all be doing. Our Elk Grove Lions Club has a marketing and public relations person as well as a social media person. You could do that as well.

Exciting News: As of August 2025 our district has appointed a new person to manage and improve our marketing and publich relations efforts on a district wide bases. We are looking forward to working with Deanna Dyson and updating and replacing this page with more current information. 

What can each club do?

  • Have a website.  As of September 2025 our District has 47 clubs. Five clubs have an actual website, 11 clubs don’t have a website and 32 clubs have an e-clubhouse webpage. Of the 32 clubs using e-clubhouse as their website, 15 either don’t have a Contact-Us page and or have out-of-date info. Yes, I know it does not add up because Maharlika has a website and an e-clubhouse site.
  • Have an Instagram Feed. As of August 2025, 4 clubs have an Instagram Page. This probably the most important tool that we should be using to attract younger members to take our clubs forward into the future.
  • Based upon the artwork that I can see, there are less than a half dozen who have started using ChatGPT.
  • If you have a Facebook Page. See below.
  • Make sure that your City has a link to your online presence.
  • Make sure that your Chamber of Commerce has a link to your online presence.
  • If your town has a community website, make sure that they have a link to your online presence.
  • Learn how to use the free version of Canva.com to create simple marketing graphics for their website, Facebook Page and Instagram Page.
  • Create a QR code, free to do in Canva, that points to your upcoming events and fundraisers, their website, Facebook Page and Instagram Page. Even if you use ChatGPT to create your graphics, you will want to take that file to Canva and add their version of the QR Code.
  • Advertise your events and sell tickets online
  • Collect email addresses of your online buyers so that you can reach out to them for future events.
  • Send email to past participants for upcoming events
  • Place advertisements in your local newspaper
  • Place advertisements in other local publications and online pages
  • Place stories about your clubs in the local newspaper
  • Collect a list of every news outlet in your area so that you are ready to reach out

Facebook Thoughts:

  • Have a Facebook Page. But plan for it before you get it.
  • Before you get a domain name for your club, check to make sure that you can get the same name for your Facebook Page and Instagram Page. For example, ElkGroveLions.com and Facebook.com/ElkGroveLions and Instagram.com/ElkGroveLions or almost right is RosevilleHostLions.com & Facebook.com/RosevileHostLionsClub.(Maybe they should change their Facebook page name so that it matches or get a new domain name that matches their Facebook name.) I checked and as of today, https://www.instagram.com/RosevilleHostLions/ is available.
  • As of August 2025, 20 clubs have a Facebook Page. Of those, 7 have not had a post to their page in the past 3 months to 5 years, which means that they really don’t have a Facebook presence.
  • If you do have a Facebook page, please make sure to update the name so that people can find it. People will search for your club name, they won’t search for https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61577259457745. Here is the link to find out how to do it. 
  • Add an event on your Facebook page for every upcoming event.
  • Plan a Facebook campaign for each event or fundraiser. Feel free to use the one below as a starting point and modify it to fit your club.
  • I know that many of us who have a Facebook page have a copy of the Lions International logo on it. I have heard of cases where Facebook decided that it was a copywrite violation and closed down their website. You may want to consider using your graphics program to create your own club logo with the important info other than the word International.

    This is an example from the Pride of Laguna Creek Lions Club

Instagram Thoughts:

  • Have an Instagram Page. But plan for it before you get it.
  • Before you get a domain name for your club, check to make sure that you can get the same name for your Facebook Page and Instagram Page. For example, ElkGroveLions.com and Facebook.com/ElkGroveLions and Instagram.com/ElkGroveLions.
  • Learn how to use the free version of Canva or ChatGPT to create simple marketing graphics for your Instagram Page.
  • Create a QR code, free to do in Canva, that points to your upcoming events and fundraisers on your Instagram Page.
  • Make sure to add hashtags at the end of every Facebook and Instagram post to better advertise your event as well as to thank your sponsors. In the example below we are marketing our Lions Club, the Community Website that supports our club, the Parks District where we are having our event and of course, the 5 breweries who are sponsoring our event.

Saving Time With Your Marketing:

  • Use the Meta Planner with Facebook an Instagram to build your online marketing with one stop shopping.
  • If you have a third party that/who markets within your community, also add them to the Meta Planner so that your marketing gets a wider spread. (Yes, I should have done a hashtag for that third party supporter and added to the hashtag list above. My mistake.)

Downloadable Documents to use for your Marketing and Public Relations

Great Resources