One extremely high-leverage way to promote CodeDay to a wide audience is through press coverage.
Press is usually ineffective at generating signups or leads on its own, but provides strong name recognition, so that when a student, teacher, or sponsor hears about CodeDay several days later, they’ll be more likely to engage.
Reporters can sometimes move very quickly, and sometimes very slowly, so you should start contacting press at the same time you contact other groups. (In many cases, reporters may be more interested in attending the event and writing about what happened, which won’t help as much for this event, but may help more later.)
Like with sponsorships and other promotion, you should start by putting together a list of targets. Make sure you include all press, such as:
Make sure you’re not just looking for big publications. For example, CodeDay Seattle should certainly reach out to the Seattle Times, but should also reach out to small, suburban newspapers (like the Redmond Reporter), and industry publications (like 425 Business Magazine). Likewise, your major cable news network should be contacted, but so should your local Univision station.
Once you’ve got a list of potential press targets, your next step is identifying who you can contact at each organization. Most companies have an online tips form, or a tips@ email, but these are more likely to be full of spam and should be your last resort. Instead, try to find a journalist who’s written about something similar at the organization (technology, education, or business are good places to look), and contact them directly. Because finding news is literally their job, most media outlets and journalists publish their emails online!
Press releases aren’t a magical incantation. The goal of a press release is simply to convey the gist of what’s going on, and the easiest way to do that is by, essentially writing your own article about the news. (In fact, some outlets will literally copy-and-paste sections of the press release into their article!)
It’s important that a press tells a story. In some cases, the arrival of CodeDay is news on its own, but if your city has already hosted five CodeDays, and they’ve already been covered extensively in the press, that’s not usually a story on its own. Start by writing a headline which will shape the rest of your story. Here are a few examples: