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PR Through Sponsorship

Sponsoring a local charity, school or sports group can really raise your profile. You can donate products, services, money or just time. The benefits of sponsorship, no matter how small, are very real.

Of course you have the benefit of increased exposure to all the people within that community, and then you have their extended communities too. For example, if you sponsored a local school, their community would be the children, teachers, parents, governors, etc. Their extended community includes relatives of each of these, other suppliers, and if they have a newsletter that goes out to the local area, then potentially all of those people too.

But the biggest personal benefit you get is a feel good factor, knowing that you and your company have acted with social responsibility - that what you have given has benefited others who really needed your help.

This is an area that most traditional PR companies advocate. Look at the big names on our television screens. They all support a charity of some description because it increases their visibility and makes them appear to be caring and considerate. Whether it is a personality or a large company, they all support a charity of choice. The charitable sponsorship is a small part of the PR campaign. The word of your good deed is then promoted through various mediums to gain a good reputation for you and your business.

Online, you can do a similar thing. Once you have the correct approvals from our chosen charity, you can issue an online press release. Once written, this press release can be posted on many press release websites. More about online press releases can be found further on in this series of articles.

In addition to this, you can announce your good deed on your choice of social networking websites, and also to your blog. You can see that we are starting to build up a checklist of things we can do in addition to traditional techniques.