Being aware that marketing is causing consumers to feel glazed-over and disconnected, many organizations are seeking new, more personalized ways to connect with people. Fortunately, such paid advertising isn’t the only means of marketing your charter school. In fact, earned media—positive news coverage that you actively work to get by creating and pitching newsworthy stories, events, or announcements to news outlets in your area—is not only free, it’s generally considered to be more objective by the consumers. All effective campaigns, media or otherwise, work from a central principle: Plan the work and then work the plan. That’s primarily why when stakeholders and decision makers gather, they want to know what the existing plan is and how well it is working at achieving their goal. Effective earned-media campaigns follow their own rules. To get stories published as news and have them effect a desired outcome, public-relations people within an organization must follow two rules: (1) Ensure that a story is newsworthy and (2) make the story easy for reporters to cover, usually through some press-friendly event. The first takes imagination; the second takes work. Both require advance time to craft the particular message and plan whatever press-friendly event is envisioned. Read this 8-page monograph to find out more.