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We’ve got a pretty unique Public Relations department at PlattForm. Not only do we handle PR efforts for career schools and four-year institutions, we also serve as journalists for two publications produced by PlattForm. Juggling the responsibilities of a journalist and a PR professional gives us some interesting insight about how colleges deal with the media.

I was recently writing an article for our magazine, Career College Central, and called several schools to request interviews. Many of the phone operators I talked to weren’t sure where to direct my call. After being bounced back and forth between receptionists, I usually got the voicemail of a school official. None of the messages I left were returned.

As a public relations practitioner, I have to admit I was surprised. A magazine was calling, giving these schools an opportunity for free publicity and they were missing out. In rare instances like this, when the media gives your organization an opportunity to raise awareness of your college, you should jump on it.

Here are a few tips that will help your school be ready when the media presents you with the opportunity for some free publicity.

• Make sure everyone who answers phones knows where to direct media inquiries. It’s also a good idea to tell your other professional staff, like admissions representatives and financial aid officers, who the appropriate contacts are in the event they are approached by the media.
• Promptly return a reporter’s message, even if you have to leave them a voicemail. Reporters will appreciate this and remember that your organization is easy to get in contact with the next time they’re working on a story about education.
• Listen to the reporter’s story idea before refusing to speak. If you feel the story would place your college in an inappropriate light or that you simply don’t have the information the reporter is seeking, politely decline. Tell the reporter you don’t think your college is a good fit for their story or that you’re not really qualified to speak on that topic, but hope you can help them in the future with other stories they write.

Following these few simple guidelines will show the media you’re serious about fielding their inquiries and building a solid relationship with reporters. They might even garner you some free publicity.

As a former newspaper editor, I loved and hated the weeks before and after the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years holidays. Employees at government offices and corporations headed out of town for the holidays and with them went our news stories. Instead of the flood of people wanting coverage for their events, we were left with more of a leaky faucet that barely drip-drip-dripped onto our editorial calendar.

On one hand, it gave me time to dust off those promising story ideas I had to shelve because more important news took precedent over them. It also gave me the opportunity to seek out new story ideas for the coming year and do some advance planning while things were still slow.

On the other hand, these slow news days made us desperate for news. Was there a construction worker with a backhoe digging up a busted pipe? Front page news! First baby of the year? Front page story with a big photo (even though it was pretty much the same news story every year).

The holidays are the perfect opportunity for public relations professionals to pitch stories to bored reporters who are desperately looking for some interesting news. The chances of your story seeing newsprint are much greater because you’re competing with fewer newsworthy events.

Colleges should plan ahead to make the most out of these slow news days. Have a culinary program? Can you get a few volunteers to answer a turkey-emergency hotline on Thanksgiving Day? Or maybe you’ve got an automotive program, and you can repair a needy family’s car just in time for Christmas. Invite the media out when you return the fixed-up car to the family.

Planning events like these will help you get your name out in the community and give reporters something to fill their broadcasts and news pages with during the slow holiday season. It also gives you a chance to build a relationship with the reporter, which might just give you the edge against other stories when the newsroom gets busy again.

Unlike a field of dreams, college students don’t simply come to your school once you’ve built it. With hundreds of schools to choose from, all offering similar programs for relatively the same cost, students have to make a personal connection with your school if they’re going to enroll. To make these connections you’ve got to do something to get them in the door – something to give them a chance to see, experience and react to what you have to offer.

Traditional universities and career colleges alike often rely on open houses to get students onto their campus. Once you’ve got them there, admissions reps, instructors and even other students can make personal contact with the potential students. They put a face to a long list of program offerings.

Open houses are big undertakings. Much time and effort is expended on these events in hopes that students show up on the big day. After such a big investment into the event, colleges can’t afford to take a gamble that students will find about the event through word of mouth. But here’s the big question: How do you get the students to come to the open house?

You can do a multitude of things to inform students about your open house. Press releases, direct mail campaigns and newspaper ads are all great ways to reach potential students. But here’s another good way to reach them. A way that might just put you a step ahead of your competition: contact center solutions.

Target Admissions Support Center, the contact center solutions division of PlattForm, recently did a calling campaign to help a University of the Arts promote their fall open house. After about 230 hours of calls, TASC signed up 591 potential students who said they planned to attend their open house. Additionally, 769 respondents said they would like the college to contact them with additional information.

The calling paid off for University of the Arts. More than 2,100 people showed up to the open house.

“It was the largest group we’ve ever had,” said Eileen Grabosky, Assistant to the Director of Enrollment Management for University of the Arts. “I would say the majority of students that attended came from the call campaign.”

The moral of the story? Contact center solutions are a great way to raise awareness of your next big event and help get students in the door.

For nine weeks, these brave souls gave up sunning themselves by the pool to toil away in the advertising business in hopes of gaining valuable career experience. This valiant group of six came to be affectionately known as PlattForm’s Summer ’06 Interns.

They came from different backgrounds, equipped with different talents. They were assigned to multiple departments within PlattForm, learning unique skills to take with them back to college or onto their fledgling careers.

To the Media department, went Kyla Reed, a student at Pittsburg State University and Jeremy Booth, a student at Southwest Baptist University. PlattForm’s Production department was lucky enough to land Rebecca Breithaupt, a graduate of the University of Kansas. Too skilled to limit to just one department, Jeff Wilson, a University of Kansas student, shared his talents with the Print and Web teams. Paul Saylor, a student at Southwest Baptist University, lent his valuable time to the members of the Client Services department. Interactive felt the love when University of Kansas student Matt McClanahan joined its ranks.

As varied as the departments these interns worked in, so too were their job duties. As media interns, Kyla and Jeremy were treated as full-time analysts, said their go-to person Ana Triandafillias, a Senior Media Analyst.

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Nothing goes together better than good company and good food!

Lunchtime at PlattForm used to be a time of hanging out with your fellow coworkers. However, after a year of explosive growth and a sea of new faces in the halls, we know fewer people and spend less time socializing over a hearty meal.

The Interactive Content Development (ICD) team pulled an “Anna Leonowens” on you and decided we should be “getting to know you, getting to know all about you!”

Since January, the ICD team has had lunch with a different team at PlattForm each month. We gather for a little food, fun and fellowship with teams we work with both frequently and infrequently.

“I thought it was a great opportunity to get to know you all better than we do just exchanging dockets,” said Amy Lafferty, a proofer in Quality Assurance.

Lunchtime fun has included 21 questions with the proofers, Pictionary with the graphic designers and our own version of the Rorschach inkblot test with the web designers and web masters, to name a few. Our plan to get to know our coworkers has worked, at least for interactive web designer Jodi Augustine.

“When you take people out of a normal business setting you learn a lot about their personalities,” she said.

Anything goes as long as it’s good company and good food. We hope to make it through every team at PlattForm when it’s all said and done. After all, the team that eats together works well together. Or, maybe not. But as long as there is food and fun, it’s a date. A lunch date, that is!