The first thing you need to do is take your business cards with you and go to introduce yourselves local places of importance:

• City Hall
• Police Department
• Sheriff's Department
• School District Offices

Political Relationships

Get to know your local city council, and candidates for open seats. Are there key committee members that you should be acquainted with? What about county supervisors and state senators and representatives? And, don't forget the school boards. While you're introducing yourself, get email addresses and phone numbers if you can. You'll be glad you did later.

Governmental Relationships

I'm talking about paid staff here - City/County managers, clerks, attorneys; representatives from the communications department, and the finance department; secretaries, engineers, and so forth.

Police department, fire department, sheriff's office, highway patrol, and any other law enforcement agency.

Selected state agencies: for example, in Arizona, we have an Ombudsman's office which was created for the purpose of ensuring that statewide and local governmental agencies follow Open Meeting Laws. I have had to call on that office on more than one occasion, and they've been terrific.

Colleges and universities: Probably the best bet, unless it's a really small town and you're talking about the community college, is to get to know the public relations department. Over time you'll meet the president of the college.

School personnel: From the district superintendent to the teacher, the more people you know in the schools the better. Start with the superintendent, their secretary and the person in charge of budgets and finances. Get to know each school principal in the district, too. And the coaches for football, basketball, even wrestling - whatever sports are big in your area, especially at the high school level.

National and local forest agencies: Are you near a forest or a place likely to have a forest fire?

If you're ever given a private number, guard it and don't lose it. You never know when you'll need it later.

Business Relationships

Pursue a relationship with a local radio station if you can. We've got a terrific deal worked out with one of our local radio stations - every day, their reporter sends me a round up of the stories he's covering, and a couple of audio soundbites. We have a unique format for the art associated with his stories. After their newscast, they tell people to come to our site for more information. We link to each others' sites. If I get an audio soundbite, I process it and send it to them. Now they're going to start selling advertisements for me. Hooray! This is a win-win for both of us.

Got a local television station? Try pursuing a partnership with them, too. Instead of having competitors, have partners whenever possible. Share information, work together. It will help stretch your budget, and your staff.

Non-profits: Big Brothers Big Sisters, United Way, Band Boosters, Red Cross, Humane Society - these and others like these will provide a lot of free content, they love getting information about their organizations published, and you'll create a great deal of community good will.

The Chamber of Commerce is very helpful, and if you can afford a membership, join. Get to know the staff and officers in the Chamber, too.

What To Do With These Relationships:

1. Cultivate them. Be friendly, nice and polite. Good manners will get you more information down the road. There's no need to emulate the sterotypical badguy reporter. True story: The governor came to town and several reporters, along with mself, were trying to get a quick interview at the end of her appearance. Evrey time I opened my mouth to ask a question, someone else interrupted. Finally, she stopped and turned to me and said, "I'll take the last question from her, because she's been waiting so patiently."

2. Recognize that they have a job to do. Don't ask for meaningless assistance, especially in the area of public information requests. Be appreciative of their help. Once I even brought in flowers to the City Clerk after she had been especially helpful just to say thanks.

3. Get additional contacts from them.

4. Respect their privacy and their requests for confidentiality. Don't give out their contact info to anyone, instead, contact them yourself and ask for permission to release it, or provide the contact info for those who are asking.

5. Don't be afraid of good news. Publish the story about the high school track star, the moms knitting hats for soldiers in Iraq, parades. Use lots of photos - especially when kids are involved. They've all got families that will be thrilled to pieces, and will send links to your site for you. You'll also build up plenty of good will for the times when the question is a bitl touchier.

6. Be sure to ask to be added to any and all press release lists. You might even want to set up a special email box for such announcements.

7. For all of these, try to get as complete contact information as you can:

• Full Name
• Organization they're with
• Title
• Address
• Email Address
• Phone Number
• Cell Phone Number
• Other notes