I am Cody Heitschmidt and you have found yourself trapped in Cody's thoughts.

If you haven't you should glance over the About WUH? page!

Here's how my column here will work.

1. I will post some of my thoughts on a regular basis. Regular meaning kinda what ever it ends up meaning. At least once a week is probably the best definition I can give right now.
2. You will either read what I put up here or not.
3. You will either comment on what I write or not.

4. I will delete your comment if it is worse than R rated, unrelated, etc.... No "or not" there.
5. We will turn this into a great place to discuss topics that affect us as people that have some sort of a connection to Hutchinson, Ks. No "or not" here either, we are gonna make this one happen for sure.
There you go... That's it. We are gonna try to keep it Hutch focused but sometimes more worldly stuff affects us as well and in the long run this is my column so I will decide.
Don't hesitate to send comments or email me with ideas or criticisms. If you don't like it and you don't do anything proactive, your just a bum!!!

You can always contact me here!!

OK on with the first column:

First topic is the Underground Salt Museum.

What's your thoughts???
Here's mine (MINE?!?!?! Get it??)

It's freaking awesome...

Anytime you have a something that is the only one in a hemisphere... you have something pretty cool.
The displays down there will get better and evolve and new ones will be brought in. Those there now are pretty cool though.

So that being said... the museum is awesome and unique and getting better and the fact that its a 650 foot deep hole in the ground is cool as hell.
Why does all the press seem horrible about it and every body in town laughs when you bring it up and all we talk about is tax dollars going there to keep it afloat???

Here's why in my opinion. (3 reasons)

1. Poor PR and marketing. (****disclaimer - I work for a company that does some PR and some Marketing, by deciding to go ahead and do this column, I am willing to forever refuse to take money from the Underground Salt Museum. I am not hoping to gain business by posting this, I am hoping to stop using my tax dollars for the museum) OK the marketing, let's go ahead and jump that into the at least the late 20th century. The Internet should be 95% of the focus of the marketing in that place.

2. Refusal initially to give Reno County residents a discount. Talk about crapping in your own backyard. I don't know the current status of this, but if there is still no discount, it is time to beg forgiveness and give one. That's just how this community works. We want rewarded for using our tax dollars on something. It would send more people down the shaft. Southwest Airlines is the only airline to post a profit since the Wright Brothers. The reason is they would rather have $50.00 and an ass in the seat than no $$$ and an empty seat. Give the old folks of Reno County a $2 discount for coming on your least busy day of the week or during least busy hours. That's easy huh?? Just do it and see what happens, let me know if I am wrong, I am wrong. I will admit it.

3. The vocal people in Reno County tend to be whiners in general and really accentuate the negative. Can we ever do anything about that?? Read on...

Here's the marketing plan:

1. Tell the marketing person (no need for names, this isn't his/her fault, it's a mentality in this town.) to sit on the Internet for 3 or 4 days and invite every blogger (both professional and private) they can possibly find to come and go down the hole for free. Obviously some thought has to be placed into how many (it should be 150 plus bloggers as the goal) and scheduling their individual elevator rides, but they are all gonna go back and publish their visit on the Internet. By inviting those people down the hole you will touch hundreds of thousands of people who follow them. The point is blog readers follow bloggers, they are fans, not readers of a magazine or a newspaper they are fans!!! Their opinions are molded by the things bloggers say and/or the discussions on the blogs.

2. Pick 10 gigantic bloggers and send them a plane ticket and take good care of them while they are here. Get Cosmosphere to kick in to help, obviously the Cosmosphere would be part of their trip and get a hotel to help and a couple restaurants. $10,000 total expense split between Museum, Cosmosphere, Convention&Visitors bureau, etc... Bring them in wine and dine them, get them a private Underground Vaults and Storage tour,, etc... Those 10 people will expose you to millions of people.

Those 2 things will get you more freaking exposure around the world than you can deal with .

PR - Let the people of Reno County know everything, be open, ask for their help. Ask them to email your website to 25 friends that might not know about it that live within 100 miles. Ask for the citizens of Reno Counties help in getting the word to everyone who has a car in Wichita. If you keep them informed and ask nicely, most of the people in this town would help. There is nothing wrong with admitting you need help and grass roots is the most powerful marketing in the world.

4 steps right there:

1. Give Reno County residents a discount on slow days or during slow hours (if that's already happening sorry I couldn't find the info, which pretty much makes it worthless that it is happening)
2. Attack the blog world. Technorati (click here ) Google Blog Search (Click here ) Bloglines (click Here ) Those are places to find lists of blogs. Just invite tons of them by email, do a nice individual email to each one with someone at the museums  contacts info, tell them if they visit you will link back to their blog post about the trip and offer them free admission.
3. Use those same 3 websites get bloggers with 20,000 plus page views a day and wine and dine them.
4. Talk to and ask for the help of the people of Reno County.

(If you wanted to take out number 2 for a while, then... this is essentially a free plan, anybody notice that?)

You can do something about the whiners (thinking you can't and being quiet and not destroying their arguments, that's the definition of bad PR!!!) Make the thing a giant success and the whiners end up looking like... Whiners.


Let me also say this, I don't blame anyone at KUSM for anything that I see as being done wrong, it is a mentality in our area that makes most marketing very inefficient and ineffective.

If someone wants any form of my help. Contact me here. ZERo Charge for more ideas and consulting.

Last thing: Everyone that ever reads this, if you took the next 15 minutes and sent an email to everyone you know about the Underground Salt Museum, you would truly make a difference for a Non-profit and to some extent lessen the amount of tax dollars needed to run it. What if the thing started putting money back.

Here's the Underground Museums website. If you want just click the email this page link at the top of this page to as many people as the thing will let you. Let's actually do something about this as opposed to just wondering whats gonna happen.

Let the comments roll .........................!

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