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Originally Posted by N7UJJ
It's really not magic. We write a lot of press releases. Keep track of reporter's email addresses and such.
We also do a lot: Scrimmages, FLL championships, several robot competitions. We send press releases before events and then we often send a follow up the day before and another a day after events with results. Your football team (or someone) sends in schedules and results. We do the same.
If someone on the team wins an award, we publicize.
We write articles and submit them to newsletters and magazines. We get a LOT of rejections, but every now and then...
We do a lot of presentations at schools, engineering groups, and service clubs. We let them know we have 1/2 or 1 hour presentations. People talk and the word of mouth advertising is effective. Someone in the audience may be a spouse of an editor.
Have people apply for every award: teacher of the year, city student of the year, etc. Publicity is a way of making the public aware of science, math, and engineering activities. The more everyone hears about FIRST, the better!
Our first two years we received almost 0 publicity. It's like finding sponsors, if no one knows about you, it's really hard. But eventually, we were noticed. Now we have people phoning asking about how we are doing or asking for comments. It's kind of like if a reporter is stuck, they have our contact information and they know we are "verbal".
When you do your Chairman's report, print a lot of extra copies and send them to everyone: school board, CEO's, news people, Oprah, local universities, etc...
You know the goofy morning news shows? Invite the personality or the weather person to come to a scrimmage or a regional practice and tell them you will let them drive it in a practice competition.
We also send press releases to the Spanish Outlets.
Make sure you give a lot of info and pictures to your school newspaper.
If you make videos or CD's, make hundreds of copies and send them to EVERYONE.
Invite your congressman to visit your school to see how you are way above average in science and technology activities and how important such programs are to the U.S.
Many radio shows do "remotes” Invite them.
Anything slightly newsworthy -- press release!
Anytime someone shows up, send a thank you email.
No magic, just persistence -- and a LOT of rejection.
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