If you’re planning a special event, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with owls or animals, take a tip from the Houston Nature Center in Houston, Minnesota.
When Publicity Hound Karla Kinstler of the center read one of my tips about creating a Hall of Fame, she knew the idea was a perfect fit with the annual “Festival of Owls.”
“We now recognize one owl and one human each year who have done extraordinary things to make the world a better place for owls,” says Karla, who submitted a Help This Hound question several months ago.
The first year, the Oregon Associated Press picked up the story when Fat Broad, an owl in Oregon, was inducted into the hall of fame.
Last year, the nature center widened its search and made it the “World Owl Hall of Fame.”
“Coverage of our hall of fame wound up in the Canberra Times in Australia, and was linked to from the New Zealand Journal of Birds website,” she adds.
This year, the nature center has nominations from seven countries on four continents. It has added a “Special Achievement” award category since there were so many nominations.
“Now we call our festival the International Festival of Owls and have folks attending from the U.S., Canada, Jamaica and The Netherlands this year. I just wanted to let you know that starting a Hall of Fame is, in itself, an award-winning idea.”
The next step, Karla says, is to grow the Houston Nature Center into a North American Owl Center with its own room for the World Owl Hall of Fame.
Why not follow Karla’s lead and create your own hall of fame that ties into your own product, service, cause or issue? Promote it by writing and posting online press releases, pitching bloggers who write about your topic, pitching journalists on your media hit list, using social media sites, and creating videos about inductees.
This is a fabulous idea. I am going to be hosting a terrific professional women’s networking event in the Spring, for a very target group of successful professional women. We thought of something similar:
in additiona to sponsors and supporters, we are going to have 2 Honored Guests. We’ve selected them because we want them to attend, they wouldn’t ordinarily fit in the category of attendee or sponsor, but they will have lend great credibility to the event and they will get to broaden their exposure with a select group of desirable folks.
Should be a great experience.
Would love to have you share your thoughts on how I can turn my parent success stories section in my blog to Parents Hall of Fame? Have you seen anyone honor once of month or is it more once a year? Any good model websites I could click on to see how other do it?
Thanks
Shelly, there are no hard and fast rules on this.
I like the idea of a “Parent Success Story of the Month” and an annual award, bestowed on one of those 12.
Simply pick a parent, bestow the award, blog about it, post a press release online, suggest he parent promote it on his or her Facebook profile, tweet it, etc.
At the end of the year, you can write a blog post asking your readers to pick the best one of the 12. That person gets the annual award. Also share this on Facebook and Twitter. You might pitch some of the parenting bloggers to help promote this.