QUESTION: Are there ways to be more effective in using the media to promote chiropractic and my practice?

ANSWER: Developing a good relationship with the media can dramatically affect how chiropractic and its potential, as well as your own practice, are perceived by the public. Public opinion, and more importantly healthcare decision-making are molded by newspapers, television, radio, magazines, wire services and the Internet. You need the media to help get the chiropractic message out as well as to inform consumers of YOUR practice. Think of the media as a tool to reach your potential patient base, beyond what you can do as face to face communications. Here are some elements to consider:

GROUNDWORK

  1. Start to think of yourself as a media spokesperson and begin to develop a series of presentations that you would make if given any opportunity to speak via the media. Work on your ideal message, tailoring your draft presentations to the limited opportunities most media situations allow. This is the age of the sound bite, so think of how you can most effectively communicate key points in a very narrow time spot.
  2. Get to know the media in your community. Track how and where people get their news and chart who makes the coverage decisions on health news, and when the respective copy deadlines are. Always do your homework before you contact any media outlet. Knowing who's who in the media is essential to getting your message in the right hands, and on time. Know the focus and audience of each newspaper or radio station. Their advertising kits can tell you a lot about where any media outlet goes.
  3. Look for media opportunities where there is a natural fit between the focus of a specific media outlet and chiropractic and health. You are a health care professional and can speak with authority about a range of topics. Define your range of issues, work to develop a series of stories on each element in that range that lends itself to the media, and let the local media decision makers know that you are available to do those stories and to offer a chiropractic perspective on breaking news and events.
  4. Know the editorial pages and the letters to the editor columns, and wherever appropriate, make your perspective known through letters and guest editorials. The chiropractic perspective is important and needs to be heard on almost all public health, health spending, consumer freedom and cost effectiveness issues.

TAKE ACTION

  1. Send news releases to the media on a regular schedule, announcing any events, programs, activities or special services in which you and your practice are involved. The less obviously self-promotional these releases are, the more likely they are to be carried. Service and public health are your best points of focus.
  2. Prepare carefully, get help when you need it from colleagues and your staff, do your research, and recognize your responsibility as a spokesperson for the profession to put positive, factual and well-developed arguments before the public on chiropractic's behalf. Do your research thoroughly and carefully and always check every detail, fact, date, address and phone number you include in your releases. The Internet offers you a powerful means to collect information, references and story ideas.
  3. Never hesitate to contact ICA at 1-800-423-4690 if you need editorial or research help. ICA is there to serve and ICA 's resources in this area are second to none.

MEDIA STRATEGIES

  1. Timing is everything in the media. Deadlines for newspapers vary, depending on whether you are promoting hard or soft news. Late-breaking, hard news will always be hurried to the front page, often displacing non-timely news, commentary and announcements. The deadline for most daily newspapers is the afternoon of the day before, and for afternoon papers, the evening or early morning before. Television broadcasts are very strictly scheduled and planned well in advance. Most TV stations plan their scheduling for so many minutes for breaking news and know that they will make the determination of what will go into those slots at the last minute. Everything else, including special features, is scheduled and prepared well in advance, from days to weeks.
  2. Getting the media to cover your story is a daunting challenge in most instances, and the bigger the market, the bigger the challenge, both because of competition for time and space and because of the advertising pressure most media outlets are under to cover news related to their various sponsors. In order to help get your news covered, consider emphasizing:
    1. The local angle, emphasizing events, people and problems in your community
    2. Newsworthiness, stressing the importance of your copy to the general public.
    3. The uniqueness of your story, of chiropractic's application to a health problem, your services, a special event, etc.
    4. Photo opportunities, offering the media a special opportunity to photograph you, your patients, their children, in some community service or special circumstances, perhaps involving local politicians, civic leaders, sports figures, etc.
  3. Build a media list and regularly send materials to everyone on it. Draw on the resources of your state organization and the ICA, forwarding with your commentary individual topic releases, such as those on safe snow shoveling, leaf raking, and school sports, that the ICA regularly puts out.
  4. Like anything else in chiropractic or in life, to be successful requires work, planning and long-term effort. Media success is always long-term and cumulative. If you are successful in addressing any issue in the media, you become an attractive candidate for future commentary and responses to health related issues. Work to make that initial breakthrough and then, with dignity, integrity and with service to the community uppermost in your efforts, seek to build on that breakthrough across the media map in your community.

Chiropractic is one of the most exciting stories of our era. Tell it with pride and confidence, but always with dignity and a complete commitment to the truth. People will want to hear what you have to say, and they will respond. With the media as an ally, your job becomes just that much easier.

PROVEN STRATEGIES FOR PRACTICE SUCCESS IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE INTERNATIONAL CHIROPRACTORS ASSOCIATION

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