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Dealing With Local Media
My #1 goal is Make Volleyball more Prominent in the
Media – nationally, regionally and locally.
This month’s edition is designed to
provide helpful hints for dealing with local media. This information is
intended to help you generate interest from newspapers, radio stations,
TV stations and regional sports networks in your area. The goal is to
increase the number of times your program is mentioned and to obtain
better placement of these stories and information.
- Ask your SID to alert you whenever local media
is on your campus. Make an effort to get to know them personally. Find a
common bond with them, ask if they have any family members playing volleyball,
extend an invitation to a game. It is common practice that people will work
harder for someone that they know personally.
- Make key players and coaches available for
interviews and issue media guides at all basketball and football media days,
capitalize on the fact that the media is already there! Reporters and
producers have a lot of down time between interviews or sessions.
- Educate local media (radio, TV, newspapers) on
the sport of volleyball. Make sure they understand the rules, changes in the
game, traditional rivalries, conference and national standings and emphasis
your success!
- Create a connection with star players and the
media audience (as well as your fans). Tell their stories on and off the
court. Exposure has to be more than the X’s and O’s of the game, give it a
personal touch.
- Promote your hometown heroes. Capitalize on
local popularity and home town appeal. Local media outlets love the "hometown
hook".
- Promote potential breakout players. Feed
stories to the press about how exciting they are to watch and encourage
coverage of their success.
- Send weekly schedules to sports directors at
TV-regional sports network-radio outlets and sports writers at local papers.
Get fax numbers and e-mail addresses for the newsroom and ask to be included
in their sports tickers or scoreboards. Follow up with score updates
immediately following your games. Make sure you highlight your schedule and
why specific games are important (examples: a defending national or conference
champion is at your campus, x-game winning streak on the line, star from the
visiting team is from your area, traditional rivalry, conference title is on
the line).
- Send information to media outlets on a weekly
basis – both long form and short form. Provide the detailed statistical
information and provide short stories that will grab their attention. Spoon
feed the information to them every week. They may not use the stories every
week but eventually they will – never give up!!!
- If possible, provide video tape highlights of
matches to TV stations and regional sports networks. A high priority should go
to broadcast stations that have one hour newscasts (they have more time for
each segment). Most 30-minute newscasts only allow three (3) minutes for
sports. Contact your regional sports network’s news director for inclusion in
their nightly newscasts (most have 6:30pm and 10pm shows). You might speak
with your Athletic Director to ask for a weekly segment for your university on
the early newscasts. Generally, the early newscasts are promoting games
tonight and have feature stories. Generally, the late newscasts are dedicated
to scores and highlights of evening’s games.
- Don’t forget to include smaller daily, weekly
or monthly community papers and magazines. These magazines are often available
for free at local businesses. Often, they are looking for positive stories
from the community.
Expanding media coverage for your program
requires time and dedication from coaches, players, SID and administration. As
most volleyball programs are in their "off-season" use this time wisely and do
the research needed to find out the who, when, where and how information is
required for local media outlets. Now is the time to establish relationships
and set procedures for the next season.
I promise you if you do the legwork now, you will reap the benefits in future
seasons.
The bottom line is that if you establish
relationships with the decision makers (producers, editors and hosts) they are
more likely to encourage the inclusion of your product in their programs with
their management. The easier you make it for them to tell your story, the more
likely it is that they will! Be pleasant, be persistent and never give up!!!
For additional information, please free to contact me at
shelly@sharpermedia.net
or via phone at 936-582-2256.
 Media
MVP is written by
Shelly Harper of
Sharper Media who was hired in July 2002 as the media consultant for the
AVCA and its members. Harper has more than 20 years of experience in
sports television and her broad background in this field can be read at
www.sharpermedia.net. Harper can be reached at 936-582-2256 or via
e-mail at
shelly@sharpermedia.net if you have a question and wish to utilize
her expertise in this area. |
