So you've got something to say and you figure other people should hear about it.Well, how do you go about getting your message across? This article will cover a bunch of surefire, low budget ways to get heard...
1. POSTERS - Probably the most obvious and cost effective way of getting heard is thru posters. It's just a matter of scrawling down your message, slapping on a cool graphic and TADA, you've got a poster. If you're gonna do the poster on a computer then I'd probably reccomend something like Microsoft Publisher or Corel Print House simply because they're easy to use and are, at the same time, fairly powerful. But if yer gonna do the old fashion route and just cut and paste your poster, I'd recommend you use black or white as your background. Although other colours might seem catchier, black and white are more likely to be noticed by Joe Passerby (the clashing combo of black and yellow also work well). When putting up the poster, position it in a place where people walking by will notice, but not in a place where vandals will easily get at it. Finally, to ensure that the poster stays up on the wall, get some photo adhesive (they sell it in hardware stores it comes in aerosol cans - make sure not to get the temporary kind). Spray the photo adhesive to the back of the poster and and quickly slap the poster on to a brick wall, stone or some glass (I find those surfaces work best). Once it sits there for about 30 seconds - it's basically permanent. Photo adhesive is so sticky that I've seen janitors scraping just one poster off school walls (not that I would know anything about those posters) for over an hour.
2. SPRAYPAINT - I really don't like spraypainting simply becuz it's dangerous. You're fucking with someone else's property and it won't be read by a lot of people (unless you get an amazing spot). The more 'respectable' members of society don't even look at spray paint, so your message will be missed by them. Plus, you could get busted.
3. WEB PAGE - Probably the best way of getting a message across is through a web page. The only disadvantages are the cost of putting one up, and the time needed to create one. If you can be bothered to learn HTML (the programming language for web pages) then you can write yourself a web page in any text editor. But if you're not so computer inclined then you can get web design software for free over the Internet. Once you put the website up - register with search engines like Yahoo, Altavista, Webcrawler, Excite, Hotbot... Also, post on some internet newsgroups that correlate with your web page's topic and let them know about your new site. This is the best way to be heard - cuz where a poster might reach 100 people, a web page could reach a couple thousand, maybe even a million.
4. PRESS RELEASE - Writing up a decent press release for your cause and faxing it off to various newspapers / tv stations / magazines is a method that is often overlooked. A press release is basically a one page info-sheet which explains what your cause is all about. You fax it off to the various media places and if they think it's worth talking about, they'll report it. So, when writing the press release make it sound interesting and exciting while still getting the message across.You should read over some other press releases first though, so you can get the idea of the general format.
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