{"id":1086,"date":"2007-09-01T12:45:36","date_gmt":"2007-09-01T12:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicityhound.com\/blog\/index.php\/free-meeting-rooms-a-great-pr-tactic\/"},"modified":"2025-06-09T13:08:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-09T13:08:40","slug":"free-meeting-rooms-a-great-pr-tactic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/marketing\/public-relations\/free-meeting-rooms-a-great-pr-tactic\/","title":{"rendered":"Free meeting rooms: A great PR tactic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\" align=\"left\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/austrianfamilyhistory.org\/images\/Speaker.gif\" alt=\"Publicity speaker\" width=\"230\" height=\"220\" align=\"left\" \/>When I wanted to present a halfday workshop in Norfolk, Virginia two years ago, I asked my friend, <a href=\"http:\/\/sandydumont.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Sandy Dumont, The Image Architect<\/a>,\u00a0if she knew about any inexpensive meeting rooms in Norfolk, where she lives.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left\" align=\"left\">She immediately told me about\u00a0how the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ywca.org\/site\/c.cuIRJ7NTKrLaG\/b.7515807\/k.2737\/YWCA__Eliminating_Racism_Empowering_Women.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">YWCA of South Hampton Roads<\/a>\u00a0markets\u00a0its facility\u00a0by offering its meeting room, free,\u00a0for speakers.<\/p>\n<p>I couldn&#8217;t believe it, so I called executive director Cheryl Marks.\u00a0Cheryl\u00a0said matter-of-factly that they&#8217;d offer me the room that could accommodate up to 60\u00a0people, and also\u00a0provide coffee, soft drinks, fruit and muffins, at cost.\u00a0I&#8217;d need to bring\u00a0my own AV equipment.\u00a0In return, I let her send\u00a0staff members for free.<\/p>\n<p>It worked out beautifully. I used the room again this year when I presented two half-day workshops on August 14. When I was at the Y&#8217;s website recently, I noticed they mention the free\u00a0facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Banks\u00a0and libraries often let community groups use their meeting rooms.\u00a0Why don&#8217;t more businesses and nonprofits do that? It&#8217;s a great chance to get your marketing materials into the hands of\u00a0audience members who might not know about you. On my first visit,\u00a0I even asked Cheryl to\u00a0welcome my Publicity Hounds and tell them a little about the Y.<\/p>\n<p>If you have free meeting space, consider <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publicityhound.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">writing a press release<\/a> about it, then distributing it to local media and through one of the press release distribution services so out-of-town speakers who want to present a program in your community know about it.\u00a0 My two favorite distribution services are\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.prweb.com:80\/recentnews\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PRWeb<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.expertclick.com\/Expert\/JoinAsAnExpert.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Expertclick: The Online Yearbook of Experts.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.speakernetnews.com\/post\/freemeetingrooms.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">more ideas<\/a>\u00a0on how to find free or cheap meeting rooms, courtesy of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.speakernetnews.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SpeakerNetNews.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I wanted to present a halfday workshop in Norfolk, Virginia two years ago, I asked my friend, Sandy Dumont, The Image Architect,\u00a0if she knew about any inexpensive meeting rooms in Norfolk, where she lives. She immediately told me about\u00a0how the YWCA of South Hampton Roads\u00a0markets\u00a0its facility\u00a0by offering its meeting room, free,\u00a0for speakers. I couldn&#8217;t\u2026&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/marketing\/public-relations\/free-meeting-rooms-a-great-pr-tactic\/\" class=\"rmlink\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":4,"wds_primary_category":606,"footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[623,621],"class_list":{"0":"post-1086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-public-relations","7":"tag-brick-mortar","8":"tag-retail-marketing","9":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40889,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions\/40889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}