One of the most effective free marketing tools that can give you instantaneous response is the radio interview. In any city, there are more radio stations than TV stations and newspapers combined. This fact becomes very important if you are seeking free publicity, are good at doing interviews and are serious about establishing a worthwhile public relations campaign for your paralegal institution.

Once a radio station sees that you are doing a good job interviewing with them, you may become a regular resource and called upon for additional quips and quotes. Other stations will want to follow suit. Perhaps you have not thought about the number of radio stations in your region. Here are the rough numbers of radio stations in the U.S. and Canada:

	2,000		News/Talk/Sports
	2,070		Oldies (1920s to 1980s, all styles)
	1,910		Religious
	1,709		Adult Contemporary
	830		Rock/Alternative
	665		Variety
	465		Top 40
	300		Urban
	730		Non-English
	228		Classical/Jazz

These numbers do not include any non-broadcast (i.e., cable or Internet) stations but be advised that subscription radio is just now catching on across the country.

But what would I talk about?

You may have considered using radio to get the word out about your paralegal program but balked because you believed it was too hard to get on any one show or that you might not have anything to talk about. Not true! Radio shows are under constant pressure to produce new and interesting stories. As a representative of the legal field, your topics are wide open. Any interviews you give do not have to be directly about paralegals but can indirectly lead to how paralegals are involved in the subject area. For example, a few topics a radio show might find of interest for general audiences are:

• Intellectual Property, Fair Use, Copyright, Trademark
• The Right to Free Speech
• Freedom of Information Act and its exemptions
• Libel: what constitutes libel, what are it's limits, and how does it apply to public vs. private figures
• Privacy, Invasion of Privacy, and Rights of Publicity; surreptitious recording; one-party states, two-party states.
• Confidentiality: when, why and how to extend confidentiality and how courts may react to claims of confidentiality
• Court rooms: cameras and microphones at jury trials
• Celebrity trials - do they get a fair trial?
• Career opportunities and the paralegal field.

When pitching your topic, remember that radio stations are not in the interview business, they get paid for how many listeners they have. If you and your topic can bring more listeners to the table, you have a much higher chance of getting an interview. What great free advertising for the school when the radio show host announces, not once but several times, ÿÙñWe're with Jim Smith today, Program Director for the Paralegal Program at Westside University located in Omaha."

Look for legal related topics that are heavily covered on TV such as downloading music from the Internet. What are the legal implications? How would a paralegal interact with lawyers on this subject? What kinds of cases involving this topic can a paralegal be involved in?

When a listener hears your interview, will they have just seen what you are talking about around town? If so, the listener will have a higher top-of-mind awareness and much greater desire to call-in to give his opinion. And call-ins are the lifeblood of any live radio show.

Getting booked...

Most stations have several on-air hosts which make their own decisions about guests. After the first or second contact with an initial person at the station, you may be referred to several different people whose personalities lend themselves more towards you and your topic. Contacting and following up with these individuals, who currently have no clue you exist, requires extensive additional phone calling, e-mailing or letter writing.

With radio, many hosts and program directors only take calls on certain days and for only a few hours. During those hours, every publicist, record promoter and syndicator tries to get to them. The bigger stations or shows have the fewest calling hours (and the most people calling), so it may take several weeks or more just to get them to take a look at you. Hang in there!

There are two separate schools of radio publicity. First, is the ÿÙñshotgun" campaign, whereby you fax/email every station in existence and then wait for replies. Second is the ÿÙñpromotion" campaign, whereby you pre-select stations most amenable to you and start a promotion process of ÿÙñawareness building" towards these stations for several months. An interview comes about when the stations are aware enough, and if they believe you're a fit.

It's natural to want the biggest radio stations and shows in the country and to want it to happen in the next two weeks. Unless you are Dr. Phil or Brittany Spears, it's unlikely this will happen. A better approach is to go after the smaller markets and smaller stations first, at least for the first few months. You're more likely to get ten times the number of interviews. Of course the audiences are much smaller but look at it this way ÿÙ¿ it's that much more exposure for your paralegal program than you would have had had you not gone on radio.

Morning shows (Monday - Friday) are the activity center for interviews, not only because they have more listeners than any other time of the day but because they do more interviews overall. Morning shows among different stations vary greatly ÿÙ¿ you may not tackle a Howard Stern but a small, mainstream station in Boise might have four guests (one per hour) during their morning show.

Go to your college radio station...

Many paralegal programs are associated with colleges that already have radio stations. Here's your free marketing campaign sitting right in your very backyard! If your school does not have a radio station, most likely other colleges will be very receptive to you as a representative of another educational institution - particularly if there is no conflict of interest.

Guest Hosting...

I have a relative who hosts a show every Thursday afternoon. He's a chiropractor. Who would have thought that a chiropractor could have a popular call-in show? Raul's business has tripled since he started his radio show. Can you imagine a paralegal program director with a call-in show on legal issues? I can. You can create a new angle for your listeners to get then to call-in. A topic such as cloning can not be individualized but a topic such as "Ethics of Cloning" can be because each call-in will have an opinion as to how and if cloning should be done.

Many paralegal program directors and instructors are moaning about the lack of dollars for a marketing and PR campaign in order to promote their programs. Don't overlook radio as a free, fun, effective tool. You're an expert in topics you probably haven't even considered. Now is the time to put your expertise together with an exciting avenue in which to publicize your paralegal program.