Public Relations Office Information for Faculty, Staff and Students

Volunteer State Community College | Office Of The President

---

What we do

• web
• news releases
• story pitches to the media
• ads
• brochures
• community outreach efforts
• Insider Newsletter
• Adult Ed newsletter
• event publicity
• catalog, schedules etc.
• pictures specifically for publicity
• electronic sign

How we can help you

• We serve the entire institution, which means we have to prioritize our time, budget and resources.
• We can help you develop entire plans to publicize your program or class.

Big rollouts need plenty of planning time. A good media campaign can take many weeks or several months to execute properly.

Give us a heads up on what you are considering far in advance.

Think of us when you are planning new things…we can help with naming and publicity ideas. We can also give you a realistic idea of deadlines for publicity. The earlier we are involved in planning, the better job we can do for you.

Please respond in a timely fashion to our questions if we are working on a publicity campaign for you. You are the experts. We need the information from you or someone you assign. We cannot come up with material for news releases or the web out of the blue. We need your active participation.

The advertising budget is always tight. Plenty of publicity can be done without ads.

People stories are the best. Send us ideas about interesting things your students or your class are doing. We can’t cover every idea we get, but many we will be able to do.

Stories can go in the Insider, adult newsletter, and local papers and pitched to everyone from the Tennessean, local TV stations to the New York Times. It just depends on the story and the impact of the story.

Information we need for news releases and calendar items

Who, what, when, where, why, how much, who’s invited

We need an exact time. The activity hour is not sufficient. If its 12:20 p.m. say 12:20 pm. Stick with one time. Once it’s been publicized try not to change the time unless it’s an emergency.

Why sounds like an odd question…really it’s just an explanation about your event and why the public, students etc. would want to attend.

How much is essential. Many newspapers won’t publish anything without this info. If it’s free, that’s great.

Try and avoid advance ticket only events. They’re much harder to publicize. Doing advance tickets and walk ups provides for much better publicity. We won’t put up advance ticket only items on the board the day before an event. You also won’t get a listing in the newspaper calendars in many cases.

Visuals always help. If you have pictures of a production or rehearsal it will get us more space in the paper. We can also send someone out to take pictures with enough advance notice.

When a reporter calls

• Please respond quickly to reporter inquiries. They are on very tight deadlines and will move on to another school or source if you are unavailable.
• You’ll usually hear from me first. If a reporter is calling they most likely need to talk to you that day.
• Fast response to reporters is your best ticket to big publicity. If you can’t respond quickly please find someone who can…and make sure they do.
• If it’s something controversial or unusual, feel free to contact us first. We may know more about the background of why they are calling.
• If it’s something you don’t feel comfortable commenting about, just tell the reporter that. If there is a problem, just give us a call and we can help.
• If it’s something that seems serious, don’t hesitate to contact us after hours. Eric’s home and cell phone numbers are listed on his office voice mail message and on the web site.

Our Website

It’s our most important communication tool. It’s now the first stop for prospective students. They want to see what it’s like to be a student here. What does the campus look like? What’s it like being a science student? What are the facilities like? Eventually, we hope to have a variety of pictures and multi-media on every department web page on campus. That’s a huge undertaking, but it’s where we are going. We now have audio files on the web, video files and pod casting.

If you have questions or just want to bounce an idea off us, please give us a call. We’re here to help.