-- by Terri Steele

THINGS YOU CAN DO NOW TO START PROMOTING YOUR ROLE IN THE NATIONAL SOLAR TOUR

1. Produce eMail Tags with our BE SOLAR INSPIRED MESSAGE, Tour Logo, URL and Your Tour Date. Here is an example of how to construct your eMail signature:
   
    
    
   BE SOLAR INSPIRED!
   Join the American Solar Energy Society's National Solar Tour  
   October 1, 2011 (your tour date here)
   www.nationalsolartour.org
   
   Terri Steele
   Office:  619-303-9310 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            619-303-9310      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
   Mobile:  858-220-3317 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            858-220-3317      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
   eMail:   SolarSavvy@cox.net
   
   Follow us on Twitter:  www.twitter.com/ [your new Twitter handle here]
2. Complete and Distribute your own version of ASES’  'Call for Participants' news release for Promotional/host partners and participants and volunteers (Find it in the news room, ”For the Media” section of the NST Web site).
   • News peg: People’s frustration of Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster. There is something people can do to start effecting meaningful change, make the US a safer place and realize tax credits AND lower energy bills.  Solar serves all Americans, regardless of political affiliation.
   • Communications Objective: To drive site hosts, volunteers and sponsors for tours in your area.
   • Message on deck:   Canada Joins National Solar Tour
   • Message on deck: ASES Announces first 50-state National Solar Tour in its 16-year history (We need YOUR help in making this happen!)
3. Create flyers using sample of news hits from our June 3 news release  and a few images of cool solar host sites included in your tour (for organizers to print and share as a marketing vehicle with *their* respective contacts information);
4. Distribute an eMail blast to past tour participants (hosts and tourists) encouraging them to enlist in this year's tour (and suggesting they  encourage friends and neighbors who may have joined the renewable revolution for an encore performance to build from the successes of last year's tour.
5. Post comments to solar, real estate or your favorite community news sites about how the tour provides a terrific opportunity for those interested in finding an antidote to America’s addition to oil with a live link to the National Solar Tour (or your) Web site.   Tagging comments onto  stories about energy, the Gulf Oil spill, rising energy prices on key news Websites and TV news sites in your respective towns are effective bridges to talk about the tour, e.g."People frustrated with the economic, environmental and social tolls our addiction to oil has imposed on Americans *can* do something to help.  They can assert their energy independence by learning more about the benefits of solar energy. Take a tour of a solar-powered neighbor’s home or business and learn how you, too, can earn tax credits, slash energy bills, create green jobs for installers in your community, improve your property value, make America safer *and/or* create cleaner communities by going solar.  The technology is proven. Become a volunteer, showcase your own solar home or business and join the momentum of the world’s largest grassroots solar event, the (your org here's) solar tour, part of the non-profit American Solar Energy Society's National Solar Tour, slated for (date here).  Details at (Web site here).  Learn about the national event at www.nationalsolartour.org.
6. Send a ‘Save the Date’ message to contacts at energy, environmental and community non-profits, local Sierra Club, WeCanSolveIt.org, Green Building Councils and related building industry associations, RE organizations, utilities etc. with a request to post that Save the Date message to their Web sites or in their newsletters.  And don’t forget to send a ‘Save the Date’ message and/or Invitation to elected officials at all levels  (get it on their calendars early...ask their help in promoting their jurisdictions' green activities as well as ITC, state cash rebates and other benefits of solar, like slashed energy costs, hedge against rising rates and improved property values);   Ask them to share tour info on their respective Web sites/newsletters.  Send them our sample proclamation and arrange for them to declare your tour date as Solar Energy Day in your respective area.
7. Be a SME (Subject Matter Expert).  Contact local media with your availability to serve as a Subject Matter Expert on new stories involving alternative energy solutions like the ones featured on your respective tour.  Or write an Op-ed on why solar energy is a viable alternative to carbon belching fossil-fuel-fed power plants that warm our water and cool our homes and businesses.
8. Open a Twitter Account and prepare to start developing a local following that links into our national presence and echoes the tweets/messages of tour organizers’ Twitter Feeds across the U.S . ASES will be rolling its strategy out to tour organizers in a special training featuring SEO (Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Secret Weapon Matt Walker of BestRank.com.  Matt and Terri Steele will explain how his company’s SEO techniques and interconnecting all tour organizers’ Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter and related social media activities will help you optimize exposure for your tour.  This training is free to all tour organizers compliments of ASES.
9. Engage a popular local realtor to help promote the tour.  Studies indicate that homes with solar move twice as fast as those with equal amenities that don't include solar!  And solar-powered commercial buildings help attract tenants. Atlanta’s Inman Solar has a SANYO-inspired solar canopy project is a great example of this.
10. Extend Invitations to local high schools, community colleges and universities with environmentally-oriented, sustainable curricula to get classrooms or students involved, perhaps as interns....what a great 'this is what I did on my Summer vacation' project!   Don't forget that today, even educational institutions who don't have the aforementioned curricula have energy-oriented clubs and sustainability groups...Identify them and invite them to get involved.
11. It may also make sense to solicit marketing and design students to come on board as interns and help with Web and Facebook copy and collateral development for your respective tours – or to follow-up with media and post to news sites and related blog sites. This is a great portfolio and contact builder for students in what we all know to be a burgeoning industry.
12. Engage the skills of youth (or social media-savvy adults) you know to set up a Facebook page for your tour.   Assign a committee to manage it.  Maybe you have a calendar widget with the number of tour participants that gets updated each week....Or get plugged into student groups...to help update it for you.
13. Start gathering photos, videos and short, 2 or 3-line testimonials for your Web sites, ASES’ national media activities and social networking pages.  To ‘sweeten’ the task for all of you, SANYO is offering a palatable incentive: all who send a tour host site image with the 5Ws -- the Who (system owners), What (type of system, kilowattage, brands), Where (location of site and which tour it’s on), When (date of your tour)  and Why (what prompted the site host to install a solar energy solution) of the project – get their names included in a drawing to win a top-of-the-line SANYO dual mode camcorder.
14. Check with tier-one radio and TV stations in your area about whether they might use PSAs (Public Service Announcements) on topical, community-oriented events that can truly help people in this economy.  (Note that even though stations are no longer required to air PSAs as part of their FCC license assessments, many still accept and run them as a community service.   Be sure and ask for the Public Affairs team when asking the question....they usually have programs like "8 Cares" (CBS Channel 8)  or "10Friends."   With TV PSAs, it's always a good idea to include a run date and include video or a compelling slide/image for the screen.  See Tips, Tools & Timelines for more details.  I would recommend not distributing these until 8 weeks before the event, but it's good to know who's interested.
15. While checking with local broadcast about PSAs, I would also recommend you offer your insights on solar and the tour for any public affairs programming they might tape and replay in various day parts on multiple stations.  Many radio conglomerates, like Clear Channel and Lincoln Financial Media, own many stations in one market and look for public affairs programming guests whose topics (like solar) have a broad demographic appeal. More information can be found on the Tips, Tools and Timelines portion of the NST Web page.
16. Harness and leverage the power of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and related social networking sites by attending a lively, interactive training provided by our Social Media and SEO Secret Weapon, the CEO of First Rank.com , Matt Walker. Matt and Terri Steele will explain how his company’s SEO techniques (and efforts to interconnect all tour organizers’ Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter and related social media activity) will help optimize exposure for your tour.  This training, slated for this Summer, is free to all tour organizers compliments of the American Solar Energy Society.

There’s a cornucopia of good news to share!  Let’s get busy.

© 2008 - 2011 Terri Steele for The American Solar Energy Society (ASES).  All rights reserved.  Replicable with appropriate attribution:  SolarSavvy@cox.net.