If you've got kids of school age, you are probably well aware what time of the year it is right now...time for school to start. In fact, many students are already back in school. Don't you just miss those days of over-priced textbooks, papers due tomorrow, group projects that you end up doing yourself, and tests written to be mastered only by someone with an IQ of 300?
The start of school is a great time to gain publicity for your company. Here's a few ideas...
- Is your CEO a product of the local schools? Pitch a story on a local public-school-boy who made it big.
- Write a letter to the editor about how your company supports the local schools, pointing out the percentage of your employees who were local school grads.
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- Invite the schools to send kids through your facilities on a field-trip. This can be even more valuable if you get targeted kids to visit (marketing classes, tech-ed classes) and pitch the story as real-life learning opportunities.
- Is one of your employees on the school board, serving as a crossing guard or mentor? Pitch a story on the work/service-to-education balance these employees experience (hopefully it reflects positively on you!) and how your company supports education.
- Lend an employee part time to your local commission on improving the quality of education (many communities have one, if not, write a letter to the editor or an op/ed piece suggesting that you have one and offering to provide an employee part-time at your expense to the group and challenge the other key employers in town to do the same.)
- Sponsor a product-development contest in the schools -for example, if you sell food products, have a recipie contest for the school's home economics programs. You donate a prize to the winning team, and a prize to the school. Get press as you start the program, when you teach the students how production-level recipies are created, and as you award the prizes. Who knows, you may even generate a great new product (make sure your legal department writes the entry form so that you own all the results of the contest!)
- Start a scholarship for local students paid out by your organization/business. This is sure to get you some great publicity, and you're helping a student pay for an education.
- Host a booth at a career fair. Many students are unaware of many companies in existence. This gives you an opportunity to get yourself in front of people, and you get the chance to see the fresh minds that will be in the workforce soon.
- Hold an essay contest and work with the media to have the winning essay(s) printed in the newspaper.
- Make a donation to the school if they achieve a great milestone.
- Make a matching grant offer (you match whatever they can collect) on top of their fund-raiser.
- Provide a list of your experts to the staff at a university so they know who they can use for guest speakers. Many professors enjoy this because it provides real-world insight for the students (not to mention saving them some work!)
- Offer your services to the school at a discount price.
- Sponsor a back-to-school day for the students.
As you can see, there are many options available to you. This list is by no means comprehensive. Be creative, but remember that you need to coordinate everything very carefully through the school, including the publicity, and both of you will be more likely to get press for your efforts.
This is just one example of how to piggyback your story on to an event or holiday. Would you like more ideas like these? Take a look at our special report How to Piggyback Your Story Ideas onto Holidays and Anniversaries
Also, our special report How to Identify Story Ideas Within Your Company or Organization gives tons of ideas upon which you can use to build story pitches.
If you're a school or are involved with a school, we've prepared a special report just to help you generate free publicity: Publicity Tips for Schools, Colleges and Universities.
Posted June 29, 2004
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