![\"beverly](\"https:\/\/www.publicityhound.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/beverly-belury.jpg\" "\\"beverly")
“Motivational speaker\u00a0Earl Nightingale’s wife lives in our little town and having met her last week reminded John\u00a0of a dream he had.\u00a0He loves Earl’s inspiration thoughts that were frequently on radio stations.\u00a0 They were quick spots that the station used as filler.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“John would like to do something along the same lines.\u00a0 John has developed oodles of thoughtful quotes and inspirational thoughts on self leadership over the last 12 or so years and we are thinking about giving them to radio stations to use as they want.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We would send out a dozen or so professionally done audio spots a month.\u00a0First, is there a challenge in what we want to do. Would you recommend 30-, 45- or\u00a060-second spots or even longer? Do you think this is a worthwhile project?”<\/p>\n
Her question jogged my memory. I\u00a0remembered a teleseminar I had conducted several years ago with Dan Collins, media relalations director at Mercy Medical Center\u00a0in Baltimore. It was called How to Make Hospital PR an Easy Pill to Swallow<\/a>.<\/p>\n During the call, Dan explained how he\u00a0ad gotten thousands of dollars in free publicity for his hospital by doing something similar to what Beverly had asked me about. His strategy was successful, and there’s no reason why it can’t work for you, too, depending\u00a0on the product, service, cause or issue you’re trying to promote, and the type of station you’re targeting.<\/p>\n Here’s an excerpt from the transcript that explains what Dan did an\u00a0how he did it:<\/p>\n Dan Collins:<\/strong>\u00a0I contacted WLIF, which is\u00a0a leading light station here in Baltimore and I contacted the news director and I said, “Hey, where you aware about this being National Nutrition Week?”\u00a0I called this particular news director because I happen to know that fitness was\u00a0a pet thing for her.\u00a0 In fact, she was seeing a personal trainer that I had recommended and that\u00a0I’ve worked with here at Mercy and have done some media for.\u00a0I knew that it was something near and dear to her heart and I said, “I’ll tell you what we’ll do.\u00a0If you think this is interesting, we can provide you with a dietitian who could come in and give you a series of tips, throughout the whole course of the month, about how to stay fit and what to eat and what not to eat.\u00a0What would you think about that?”\u00a0<\/p>\n She said, “Well, that would be great,” because that way she could run a spot every day.\u00a0 The person could come in and tape them all at once, do it in one shot.\u00a0 “If it would be easier, do you want us to write it or do you want to write it?”\u00a0she asked.\u00a0“Oh no, we’ll write it,” I said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Obviously, we’ll write the piece, that way we can control the script.\u00a0 And so we did, and the dietitian recorded\u00a0the various tips and made sure to plug Mercy in each spot and “if you’d like to find out more, call Mercy Medical Center at 1-800-MD-MERCY.\u00a0<\/p>\n They ran these every day for the whole month and it didn’t cost us anything.\u00a0 If we had booked\u00a0this as\u00a0commercial time, it would have cost thousands of dollars, but because it was something that was near and dear to the news director’s heart, I was able to convince them that this would be a fun thing to do. It\u00a0would be one less thing each day that they would have to worry about filling.\u00a0So we looked at it from the station’s\u00a0viewpoint and really got some nice\u00a0publicity.<\/p>\n Joan:<\/strong>\u00a0You had\u00a0one spot aired each day?<\/p>\n Dan:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n Joan:<\/strong>\u00a0For a month?<\/p>\n Dan:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\n Joan:<\/strong>\u00a0 Hospitals probably don’t even have to do that just during National Nutrition Week.\u00a0 You can probably find all different kinds of days, weeks and months of the year to tie into.<\/p>\n Dan:<\/strong>\u00a0 Oh, absolutely.\u00a0I’ve got the\u00a0schedule hanging up on my wall. I’m looking at it now.\u00a0 We’re in August, which is Cataract Awareness Month. It’s also Medical Alert Awareness Month and Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month.\u00a0 You’ve always got to look ahead and see what’s coming up.\u00a0 Radio is an underutilized\u00a0medium.\u00a0<\/p>\n The whole world of radio may change, but with this new sort of cable—you hear about cable radio, satellite radio—I don’t know how that’s going to ultimately change everything, but in the land of free radio, many stations have news directors and public service programming that they have to fill.\u00a0<\/p>\n Health is always a story, and as we’ve noted, doctors are hard to get a hold of.\u00a0\u00a0You can call up a station and say: “Hey, it’s Healthy Lung Month and I have a pulmonary specialist who can talk to you about it. Did\u00a0you know, for example, there’s enough nicotine in a single cigar to kill you three times over? And talk about things like that.” Then they’re going to say, “Well, you know, it’s great.”<\/p>\n There’s another book that was written by John Kremer called\u00a0Celebrate Today<\/a>.\u00a0 I think\u00a0you can even search by the month and come up with all kinds of interesting days, weeks and months of the year to tie your press releases and story ideas into.<\/p>\n Dan:<\/strong>\u00a0 Absolutely.<\/p>\n As for John Hersey, he needs to remember that business topics generally aren’t a big draw for local radio stations. But because he’s a motivational speaker, he might offer inspirational messages for mass audiences, instead.\u00a0Good luck, John! Be sure to let me know if you’re successful.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you’re trying to get onto local radio stations, but you don’t have money to spend on advertising, offer the station free recorded 30-second\u00a0 spots filled with valuable how-to information their listeners will enjoy. Tie it into a\u00a0month of the year that’s related to your topic, and you just might generate some valuable free exposure\u2026 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":3,"wds_primary_category":609,"footnotes":""},"categories":[609],"tags":[629,605,607],"class_list":{"0":"post-5216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tv-radio","7":"tag-advertising","8":"tag-news-events","9":"tag-promotions","10":"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\/5216","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=5216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42001,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5216\/revisions\/42001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"chasescalendarofevents\"](\"https:\/\/www.publicityhound.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/chasescalendarofevents.jpg\" "\\"chasescalendarofevents\\"")
Joan:<\/strong>\u00a0 There are two really good resources out there for finding these special days, weeks and months of the year that you can tie your hospital experts into or your hospital into.\u00a0 The first and probably the most popular is called the Chase’s Calendar of Events, and it’s about as big as a small phone book.\u00a0You can find it at Chases.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n