Effective promotion of your event generally involves flyering, online outreach, and taking advantage of local media. It may also include public service announcements, calls to talk shows, letters to editors, and advertising.

Event Outreach
When planning your event, a major component to success will be recruiting volunteers and getting attendees excited about your activity. To do this, a mix of online and offline outreach is best. To find volunteers, talk to people you know, contact (or join) local vegetarian groups, and post messages on Facebook and/or local message boards. Most events will need only a couple of volunteers, so look for a few dedicated people and delegate tasks accordingly!

Outreach to gain attendees can be more difficult. Often the easiest way to draw an audience is to simply conduct your event at a highly trafficked area or somewhere with a captive audience, such as a festival. Events like protests are best promoted with flyering, online promotion, and by networking with other social justice groups, such as environmentalists.

Good places for outreach for participants are local listservs, animal rights/vegan meetups on Meetup.com, and social networking sites such as Facebook or Myspace as bulletins or events. This also helps with estimated participants.

Another good resource for promoting your event is through local Independent Media Centers for your area. From the IMC-US Website:

“The newswire works on the principle of open publishing, an essential element of the Indymedia project that allows anyone to instantaneously self-publish their work on a globally accessible web site.
The Indymedia newswire encourages people to become the media by posting their articles, analysis, videos, audio clips and artwork directly to the web site."

For more information on publishing on Indy Media, click here.

To see what local IMC websites are available, click here and look on the left for respective county, city, etc.

World Farm Animals Day Promotion

Local outreach for your specific event is essential, but so is general outreach for WFAD. Everyone's individual activities will be enhanced by increased media coverage and awareness for the international event World Farm Animals Day.

Two great ways to promote WFAD are online outreach and literature drop-offs. Placing a World Farm Animals Day banner on your website or online profile is a great form of outreach, as is promoting us on Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.

Additionally, you can request WFAD postcard-sized handouts and drop them off at stores and libraries in your spare time. This can be done separately from your actual activity, since it requires almost no additional time.

Community Outreach

All activities, from the most intense and dramatic to the softest and most family-friendly, need people who can effectively communicate the message of World Farm Animals Day. Leafleters should be friendly and knowledgeable about issues relating to farmed animal liberation. Controversial activities such as civil disobediences may attract upset onlookers, and even slaughterhouse videos and graphic leaflets may cause passerby to react harshly.

While expressing outrage to the worst abusers of animals (for example, at a slaughterhouse protest) is a great form of activism, a different approach must be taken with individuals who are in need of education about their diets. It is natural for people who do not often think about the ethics of their food choices to become defensive and even angry.

The best way to deal with this is to be friendly with people who have questions and concerns. Instead of being negative or confrontational, inform them that World Farm Animals Day is an opportuntity to make a positive difference in the lives of hundreds of animals, just by resolving to change their diet.

If detractors continue to provoke arguments, take the higher ground by simply giving them a leaflet and asking them to check out the website for more information. Angry exchanges of words will not help the animals, but increased public awareness will.

Effective Use of Local Media

Local media provide a wide variety of options to communicate your message to millions. Print media (newspapers and magazines) offer news stories, feature articles, letters to the editor, community bulletin boards, and public service announcements (PSAs). Broadcast media offer news stories, talk shows, and PSAs.

As an activist, you provide the media with an opportunity to attract readers, listeners, and viewers with accounts of interesting events and controversial discussion topics. It's a win-win situation. Your challenge is to grab their interest with the tools described below.

MEDIA ADVISORY

Timing: 2-3 days before your event.

Distribution: Hand deliver, fax, or mail to local papers and radio and TV stations. Call ahead to get names of appropriate editors and reporters and to alert them to the advisory.

Format:

• Single page, typed, 1½ spaced.
• Organization stationery/logo: lends credibility.
• Date and contact information (name & phone): top left and top right, respectively.
• Headline: all caps, active verbs.
• Summary paragraph: colorfully describe the action and the reason for it. Keep it short.
• Text: what, when, where, who in list form, then provide background in paragraphs.
• Attachments: list on bottom of advisory.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

• Timing: Ten days before your event or within two days after a pertinent local development.
• Distribution: Mail, fax, or e-mail. Check your paper for contact info.
• Format: Typed, 1½-spaced. Three paragraphs in response to an article or announcement of your event (200 words maximum). Include name, address, and day and evening phones.

COMMUNITY BULLETIN BOARD

• Timing: Two weeks before your event.
• Distribution: Mail, fax, or e-mail to daily and weekly papers.
• Format: Varies. Call paper.

TALK SHOWS

• Timing: 2-3 weeks before your event.
• Distribution: Mail, fax, or e-mail. Check your radio and TV stations for producer names.
• Format: Typed letter announcing availability of prominent local speakers for interviews. Explain why your speaker is important, interesting, and/or authoritative.

FOLLOW-UP

All media communications should be followed up by telephone and/or a personal visit, if feasible. All pertinent stories and programs should be followed up with thank-you letters or corrections.