You may not realize it, but having your booster club partner with local media is one of the most effective ways to get the word out about your organization and to get free promotion to your community. Not only would local media partnerships do well for your booster club but it can also help to benefit your school as well.
Having your booster club partner with local media is different than promoting your booster club on social media. Local media companies such as the news channel or a radio station have their own following of people and broadcast to them through television, the internet, radio, and social media. Getting booster club promotions with any of your local media outlets can instantly get your message across to thousands of people at once.
Example media sources:
- Newspapers
- Websites
- Television
- Radio
- Magazines
What you can promote when you partner with local media
Don’t underestimate the power of good booster club pr and press releases. Promoting anything positive will have a positive reaction. Here are a few examples of things that your booster club can promote when they partner with local media.
Your booster clubs past achievements
Talk about how your booster club has already made a difference in the community, giving specific examples when possible. Talk about your booster club’s mission and about what you want to achieve in the future. This will help to get people excited about helping your booster club, so make sure to also include contact information in case someone wants to volunteer help, services, products, or donate money.
Upcoming or current fundraisers
To have your next booster club fundraiser shown to that large of an audience at once is a great way to bring in more people and higher donations without costing your club anything in return.
Make sure that your booster club’s website is up to date with information and purchase links if applicable, then you can direct media viewers to your site for more information.
Competitions
Does your booster club have any competitions that they support? Whether it’s a football game or battle of the bands, your booster club can promote this competition with a goal in mind (do you want people, help or money?) and from that, you can successfully derive a plan to promote your booster club’s competition.
How being a partner with local media can help your booster club
Local media outlets already have an established fan base and fans that listen or watch daily. While your booster clubs’ online presence (or in-person) presence within your local community may be well known among students, faculty and their families, the local media has a larger reach.
By being a part of a local media story, your booster club can receive brand recognition, a boost in volunteerism and donations to help with the cause. This can help your group to reach large goals faster, and because it’s often free to partner with local media, you can have more profits and fewer promotional expenses.
How to interest the local media
While being shown on the local media outlets is exciting and beneficial, some work must be done in order to get to that point. For example, local media channels are built around up-to-date information, consumer interests, and trending topics. Think of your local news broadcasts, they give up to the minute traffic, weather and current events. They also have popular topics such as politics, human interest pieces, and usually, show something uplifting towards the end of the episode to help close out on a good note.
To be seen as any of these topics can be tricky, but with careful planning, you can request a spot on a media outlet and actually get it. As you can imagine, the desire to get your story heard isn’t felt by your booster club alone. Many people and organizations have the same goal in mind, so planning a good request letter is ideal.
How to become a partner with local media
To stand out above the rest you should look into ways to make your booster club appear more interesting and worthwhile. As a nonprofit, your booster club promotions in these areas speak for themselves. You already work hard to help kids, now you just have to do a little booster club marketing and sell yourself on promoting what you have accomplished and what you plan to accomplish. If you can do these things then you should have no trouble getting to partner with the local media.
Following the steps below you should have a better understanding of how to become successful with your requests.
First, decide which media outlet you want to reach out to and then do your research.
Look at their past pieces and find similar trends to help you craft your booster club’s story. Are they looking for more charitable stories, stories of redemption, or just an overall puff piece that makes everyone feel good? Use this information to help create your request and broadcast so that it has a better chance of getting put on the air.
Second, create a booster club media kit that you can bring in to a meeting with the media channel.
You want to get to know the reporters personally, similar to a job interview but you also want to leave them something to remember you by when you leave. A media kit is a small resume’ built for your company or organization that explains your mission, what you want to accomplish, what you have done, and overall just helps to give them a physical thing to reference and remind them of your amazing booster club.
Lastly, after being promoted on the local media, thank them.
Make sure to send a thank-you note and remind them how much your club appreciates their efforts. This goes a long way and can help with future partnerships as well!
Don’t forget, there is power in numbers and if you team up with another booster club to promote an event or story, you could be more likely to be promoted. The teamwork between your booster clubs will help to give reporters another angle to include in the story and will help to benefit both clubs, which in turn, helps the school twice as much as a result of the local media partnership.
