How to attract new members: A video experiment

This week I visited the Charm City Collectors Club in Middle River, MD. Their monthly meetings take place Saturday morning in a party room at a bowling alley. I learned a lot about the club’s events, its goals for the future, and its work behind the scenes.

The club’s Vice President told me that they are working on building a more robust online presence. As collectors turn en masse to social media, the club has new opportunities to reach people. So, to test out the effectiveness of their social media accounts, I conducted the following experiment.

If someone who has just found out about the club wanted to attend a meeting, how easy would it be for them to find the meeting details online? I ran trials on the group’s website, as well as its Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, to see how effectively they are using each account to attract and inform new members. I stopped the clock when I either found the date, time, and address of the meeting, or when I realized that this information wasn’t available. See the results below.