Search around a 30 mile radius for every influence, person of title, employee, or node in the community. Start a spreadsheet and try to hit 1000. Ideally these are people, not entities, who I can write to or dm.
This first series of letters would be simply to get a response, and then to gauge the sentiment after I get some.
If I write letters to 1,000 people that comes to $500 of standard postage. Plus $40 of stationary, and 20,000 minutes of time. 330 hours or 150 days of letter writing in my spare time. Not really the best use of time, though perhaps I could profile these contacts once I've scraped them.
I think librarians of any kind would be worth writing to. Particularly university ones. Somewhere on the list would be small business owners. Successful private people should be sought out for questions as well. Whatever reading and scholarship habits they have (or want to foster) would really be valuable to shape my plans around.
Scraping as many relevant posts from instagram would be another good source. Noting the ones that are particularly relevant. Shoot, even relevant newspaper articles would be great for the authors and any other names mentioned. Any politicians involved in library or education reform. Local writers of all kinds would be interesting to hear from.
On a quick search I can't really find any good examples of companies that operate this service.
I can't imagine this being a good use of money for anything other than an email list. Who wants to be forced into a survey?
So letter writing it is.
