Does having an Internet website help your school?

[bushido_man96]

Well, I could be wrong about the yellow pages but he died in 53. My point was he made more impact on karate than many dojos with great websites.

Yeah, that is true. But like I mentioned, having one can only be a boon to your school, as long as it is professional.

[Kodiak]

That was also probably before phone books existed.

[Patrick]

To say didn't need the internet or the Yellow Pages doesn't mean much of anything to this thread, I don't think, unless you are also suggesting that the internet would have hurt them or would have somehow been a negative. I tend to believe that the main effect it would have had was to spread their message even wider (while they were alive). Unless access to the message was somehow a bad thing.

It's not an all or nothing game. Word of mouth is great, but that doesn't mean that you must rely only on it, either. Word of mouth is aided by access to information. If someone says "hey, Patrick, you should go check out this book," I will generally hit Amazon, take a look at the price and reviews. If it's not on Amazon, I'm slightly less likely to check it out. If I can't find it in the second, third or fourth store I check - again, the likelihood of me actually buying it drops. Access goes hand in hand with recommendation.

My earlier post on this thread was probably a bit long to be easily digested (though anyone who runs a school looking to get the word out should give it a read). To summarize it in one sentence: if you want to be found, you need to be in the place where people look. If you don't want to be found, then it's not something to worry about.

Patrick

[MasterPain]

Point taken.

My brain is stuck in the pre-internet era.

I was thinking more about getting students, which a website could help, and in some areas would be almost essential. But Patrick mentioned spreading a message... If Bruce Lee had a blog, and responded to comments on said blog, it would be much more clear what JKD was meant to be. A series of random thoughts in notebooks probably wasn't a clear as an open dialogue could have been.

Same could be said of many system's founders.

[ramymensa]

I don't judge a school by the site, my club for instance doesn't have its own site, but I made my karate site and promote them there. This doesn't mean we don't have good karate instructors or that we're not a good club. Not all people care about this, especially since it's a local club, so people come there from word of mouth and by seeing us in competitions, not just because they googled the club.