Startup Blog

Inbound Marketing Ideas for Public Broadcasting

Posted Mike Volpe on 2/16/09 12:25 PM

I enjoy a lot of the content on public radio and public TV.  But, everywhere I have lived  - Massachusetts, California, Maine - both public TV and public radio spend a lot of time on air with their fund raising drives, basically interrupting all the great programming I love in favor of advertising for themselves until they meet their donation goals.  It's pretty annoying.

I was thinking that maybe we could help them do less interruption based advertising and use more inbound marketing to generate the donation revenue they need.

So, any ideas?  Leave a comment below!

Here are some of mine to start:

  1. Membership. Offer online memberships that include copies of shows in online archives or DVDs, and the ability to connect with the stars of your favorite shows in chats and other means.
  2. Fashion.  Sell some sort of "honor badge" that people would want to display to seem cool for having supported public broadcasting - maybe a bumper sticker, laptop sticker, pin or something.  Run a campaign showing celebrities wearing these pins - maybe it could become like the Lance Armstrong yellow bracelet and millions of people would want to buy it.
  3. Training.  There is a lot of demand for media production skills, since inbound marketing and using the Internet requires a lot of publishing skills.  Maybe they could leverage their expertise and offer classes (online or in person) on how to produce a good TV, radio or print story and charge for that.
  4. Collector's items.  Maybe you could take items used in the shows and auction them on eBay, like autographed shirts or even the chairs people sit in, etc.
  5. Custom news.  Maybe you could figure out a way to record a 10 minute news segment to be posted online each day, but it would feature on person (who paid a bunch of money) in the news cast somehow.

Twitter Charity Challenge - December 2008

Posted Mike Volpe on 12/1/08 10:54 AM

I am a complete Twitterholic.  I am also passionate about a nonprofit organization that I co-founded, the Boston Scholars Program. So, why not put these two things together?

For every new Twitter follower I gain before December 31, I will donate $0.50 to the Boston Scholars Program.

I have 2,955 Twitter followers today, so if I have 4,000 followers on 12/31, I will donate $523... And so on.  My Twitter followers increased by 1,000 in the last 30 days, so we could be in for a big donation if this actually starts to spread the word and accelerates the number of people following me.  I'll track our progress here, and of course in my tweets.

So... Follow Mike Volpe on Twitter today!

Click here to view the spreadsheet with the raw dataHere is the fine print: I am not going to track follows and unfollows, the donation will be based on the difference between the number of followers I have today (2,955) and at 6pm EST on 12/31/08.  Maximum donation of $2,500.

UPDATES: More People Joining the Challenge 

@corbett3000 = $2,500 max. More details here.

@jessieX = $250 max. More details here.

@pmhesse = $2,500 max. More details here.

@SeanDaily = $500 max.

@JordanAyan = $2,500 max.

@dankeldsen = $2,500 max. More details here. 

Reply or DM me on Twitter or leave a comment here if you want to join the fun.

Final Update: I raised over $500 for charity for the 1,015 followers I gained.  I added another $50 to the donation since Twitter cleaned up some accounts and dropped my folowers by about 100 during the month.  So, in total, I made an additional donation of $557.50 to the Boston Scholars Program.  Thanks everyone!

Join Me Friday for a Charity Boston Halloween Party?

Posted Mike Volpe on 10/21/08 10:30 AM

[Apologies to the blog readers not located in Boston.  This is one of those 0.1% of my posts that are personal / local.]

Four years ago I co-founded the Boston Scholars Program which provides educational support to Boston high school students.  Our first class of scholars just graduated from high school, and 100% of the graduates started at a 4 year college this fall.  That makes me happy.

We're holding our 4th annual Halloween party fundraiser this Friday October 24.  Want to join me?  I promise it will be fun!  Learn more about Boston's best halloween party or buy tickets.

Here are some photos from past events:

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