If your company or nonprofit serves a national or international audience, here’s a great idea publicity idea you can steal. Ditto if you’re an author, speaker or consultant.
One of the ideas in my ebook “How to be a Kick-butt Publicity Hound” is to create a list of the top 10 cities or states that are the best or worst at (fill in the blank).
Example: The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America has compiled a list of the Top 25 Allergy Capitals in the United States. The website also includes the entire list of 100 cities, including the methodology used to compile the rankings.
You’ve probably seen similar lists like this dealing with things such as the 10 most romantic cities, the 20 worst cities for traffic jams, the most obese states, etc.
But the “top 10” ideas don’t stop there.
Here in Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin holds the title of “The Number One Party School in America,” based on students’ consumption of beer, liquor and marijuana. The honor was bestowed by The Princeton Review, which names the “Best 361 Colleges.” Its 70-question survey asks students to characterize 62 aspects of college life from the quality of their institution’s food to the quality of the professors. (It ranks only the top 20 schools in each category.)
Your methodology doesn’t have to be as sophisticated. In fact, I’ve seen the media gobble up “Top 10” stories about fun topics, even with little data to back up the claims.
What “Top 10” list can your organization create?