Is your walking club looking for new members? If so, we are here to help more walkers find you. Our walking clubs section tops all related online searches and is now the place where more and more walkers go to find a local club to join.
We are keen to help promote walking clubs on The Ireland Walking Guide website. If you represent a walking club who is hoping to recruit new members, please get in touch via our Club Profile Form to complete your club's profile page and set up a 2-way link exchange with us. If your club has already done this but would like to update its profile page, please submit a new Club Profile Form.
We are keen to help promote walking clubs on The Ireland Walking Guide website. If you represent a walking club who is hoping to recruit new members, please get in touch via our Club Profile Form to complete your club's profile page and set up a 2-way link exchange with us. If your club has already done this but would like to update its profile page, please submit a new Club Profile Form.
Reasons to complete your club profile
Having a detailed club profile page on a walking information website like ours is a great way to recruit new members. Keep reading to find out why you should complete your club's profile page and set up a 2-way link exchange with The Ireland Walking Guide website:
- We host walking club profile pages on our website for free!
- Completing our online Club Profile Form only takes about 10 minutes! We have taken our time to design and set up this form to make it as quick and easy as possible for you to fill out and submit. A member of your club's website team will also be required to spend a couple of minutes setting up your end of the required 2-way link exchange. The link(s) on your website should be set up to direct club members and other visitors to the "Walking in County..." page(s) on The Ireland Walking Guide which match your club's membership catchment area. Alternatively, a link to our website's home page will suffice. We recommend setting up the link(s) on your website before completing and submitting the Club Profile Form to avoid unnecessary back-and-forth communications which could slow down the overall process.
- When we receive your completed Club Profile Form, we will set up a comprehensive profile page for your club at our earliest opportunity. Updating your profile page will require considerably more time from us than it takes your club to complete and submit its Club Profile Form This will include maps illustrating your club's membership catchment area and the walking areas which feature most regularly in your walking calendar. This is a much more useful club listing service than the standard county-based format provided elsewhere. We recognise that a club's membership catchment and walks programme are rarely confined to a single county, which is why we allow each club to specify up to three neighbouring counties, five upland areas and two coastal areas.
- A prominent link to your club's website will be added to the completed profile page after you have initiated a 2-way link exchange with us and submitted a Club Profile Form. You will have an opportunity when completing the form to identify the page on your club's website where you have placed outgoing links to The Ireland Walking Guide.
- Your club will also appear on the popular walking clubs page on The Ireland Walking Guide with links directing our website visitors to your club's profile page. As we add more walk-related content to the website in the future, additional opportunities for placement of links to your club's profile page will arise. This will require no further action from you.
- Once set up, your club's profile page will be permanent without having to renew, resubscribe or pay annual fees. To update any of the details and information on your club's profile page in the future, a new Club Profile Form would have to be submitted.
- PLEASE NOTE: We will be checking outgoing links on club profile pages a couple of times each year to ensure that they are still working and up-to-date. During these checks, we will also test incoming links from walking clubs' websites to ensure that 2-way link exchange arrangements are still in place. If the required incoming link(s) on a club's website are not working or have been removed, we will contact that club to alert them by email. If the club does not repair or restore the required incoming link(s) within one month of an alert being issued by us, we will interpret this as the club's withdrawal from the link exchange arrangement. We will honour that club's decision by removing the reciprocal outgoing link from their profile page on our website. To restore a 2-way link exchange, a new Club Profile Form would have to be submitted.
- Our walking clubs page receives hundreds of visits every month, making it one of the most popular pages on our website. It constantly tops the search engine results for all related queries. Having a completed profile page on our website will allow potential new members to find your club very quickly. Completing our Club Profile Form is the most effective 10-minute recruitment and marketing exercise your club will ever do.
- We are more likely to interact with walking clubs on social media if they have a fully completed profile page on our website and include @irelandwalking in their Irish walk-related posts. We receive a notification each time we get mentioned on social media. We read every post we're mentioned in and will like / share / comment accordingly. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
- Walking clubs who have a completed profile page on The Ireland Walking Guide website are permitted to add their recurring open-invitation walking events to our search-engine-friendly Irish Walking Events listings. Our walking events pages are among the top results in all related search engine queries.
- All walking clubs who have a profile page on our website can be represented by its members in the annual All-Ireland Hillwalking Clubs Championship which runs from 1st May until 31st August each year. To formally qualify as a team, your club must have a completed profile page on this website AND have a current 2-way link exchange with us in place AND be represented by at least 2 of its current members. We realise that a competitive element doesn't appeal to all hillwalkers, but it is there for whoever wants to get involved. And it is completely free! If your club has at least two competitive hillwalkers among its membership, then it has a potential team. The flexible nature of the wheres and the whens allows your club to earn points from its normal walks without having to stray from its scheduled programme. Individual members can also earn points for the club by undertaking their own personal non-club walks. Participation in the All-Ireland Hillwalking Clubs Championship is encouraged but not compulsory. It's fun, free and flexible. Each year, the top-3 highest scoring clubs will be announced at the end of the Sport Hillwalking competition season. While every club listed on our website can be represented, only those with a completed profile page and a current 2-way link exchange with us in place can be awarded a top-3 place. If your club achieves any top-3 placings, this will be listed on its profile page. No other placings will be announced, so there is no need to worry about finishing in last place. We will not identify individual members of any club teams in competition results. Each of the top-5 highest scoring individuals in each of the top-3 placed teams will receive a certificate for their performance.
- We do not require any form of exclusivity in our community relationships. It is YOUR club and we encourage you to market it wherever else and however else you wish. We are here to help YOU, not the other way around. We want your club to be as successful as possible and will not get in the way of any other marketing relationships you choose to explore, paid or otherwise. However, if another platform were to offer your club some form of exclusive listing service, paid or otherwise, thereby attempting to block other marketing opportunities for your club, this should set off alarm bells warning you to steer well clear of that platform. No single walking club listing service is worthy of exclusivity, and could seriously limit your club's reach. Any benefits your club would stand to gain from an exclusive relationship are likely to be very small compared to the benefits that other platform would stand to gain. In reality, no platform has exclusive rights over your club or has any say in where and how you market it.
Reasons to not complete your club's profile
We can think of only five possible "reasons" why your club has not completed its profile page on our website:
- Your club has only just discovered The Ireland Walking Guide (the No.1 independent Irish walking information website).
- Your club is fully subscribed and does not want to recruit any more new members.
- Your club is happy to miss out on all the valuable internet traffic we can send to your website.
- Your club prefers to pay for less effective marketing services rather than the free and wide-reaching marketing service we provide.
- An inward-facing organisation or self-promoting individual who pretends to care about walking clubs has advised the decision makers in your club against using our free but effective marketing platform.
