Selling your services in the news
News coverage is free, highly effective
Joan Stewart is a media relations speaker, trainer, consultant, and publisher of a newsletter, The Publicity Hound, that features tips, tricks, and tools for free or inexpensive publicity. She also presents workshops on how to use publicity to attract and keep qualified employees.
She suggests these nine ways to use publicity to attract and keep great private duty home care workers:
1. Pitch story ideas about your company to your local newspapers and business magazines. Let reporters know about trends you are seeing in your industry. Let them know about how you are coping with the labor shortage, and be sure to tell them the type of person you need to work for you. This can be more effective than a classified ad.
2. Keep abreast of heartwarming stories about current employees and the strong relationships they form with people they care for. If there’s a holiday angle, such as the home health care worker’s entire family spending Christmas Day with an elderly person who the worker cares for, let the media know.
3. Send out press releases to business editors describing any innovative employee training programs.
4. Publicize all the ways the job helps meet the needs of someone who wants a flexible schedule.
5. Consider offbeat recruiting strategies, like advertising on the back of grocery store cash register receipts.
6. Let local real estate companies and moving companies know about your vacancies. These companies deal regularly with people who are moving to your community and need jobs.
7. Let your employees choose their own perks, depending on their needs, then publicize it. For example, Gen-Xers might want tuition reimbursement. Older workers might prefer paid days off to spend with their grandchildren.
8. Keep women’s crisis centers and resume-writing services informed about your current job openings.
9. Use stall tactics by placing information about job openings on fliers and posting them inside restroom stalls at public places in your community. Make sure you get permission first.
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