RichardHowells posted on May 05, 2008 17:30
Secretary's Report 2007-8
Membership
At
the end of this season we have 23 members (27 last year). I know that
some of them are 'dormant' and we are unlikely to see them again. I put
the active membership of the club at 22 (one more than last year). We
also know that we will lose a few this year; their intentions are
already announced. We wish them well. On this measure the club has expanded this season.
Recruitment and Publicity
The
Wednesday evening sessions at Lydiard and the Monday's at Coate Water
are popular. Personally I have only been to three but I have seen new
faces there.
Our recent involvement
in the Challenge Swindon initiative at Coate Water has brought the club
useful publicity; and might bring us some new members.
The club web site now ranks number one and two in Google for a search
on Volleyball Swindon (three last year). The number three hit is a
site that links to us. We are the third and fourth hits hits in
Microsoft Live Search, the top two are a site that links to us. Anyone
in the Swindon area, who wants to play, can find us via the Internet.
I get a steady trickle
of emails, via the web site, from people expressing interest in
playing. Last year I I estimated about half of those turn into real
faces. This year it seems to be fewer than half.
The site gets about 1100 visits per month(400 last year).
They see about 9000 pages (no figure for last year). The forums are
the most read pages by nearly 2:1. I expect most of that will be from
the members and our huge fan base.
We get about 30 visits per month from other sites that link to us (20 last year),
and about 150 from the search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN)(100 last
year). I consider these visits to be of highest value in terms of
recruiting new members. They are more likely to be people who have not
heard of us already.
Wiltshire Leagues
We
registered six players for the Premier Division- the minimum we can get
away with. We registered 28 (24 last year) players for Division 1.
Again we were able to run the 'B' team (substantially) without sharing
players with the 'A' team. However we did have some surprising instances
when we struggled to get a team we did not have to concede any matches.
Communication
Most
club members have login accounts on the site and the Forums, now 14
months old) have 230 posts/546 posts. This is comparable to the 633 the
old email list carried in it's final year.
We get three copies of
the Volleyball England official magazine '3-touch' I pass these round
the members with a circulation list on the front. Please make every
effort to read it quickly and pass it on to another member as quickly as
you can.
Richard Howells - Secretary June 2008