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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on March 18th, 2010
iMedia has a great article with the headline: Does Facebook Work? It goes on to showcase some of the purchasing stats of retail customers, stats that don’t quite live up to the hype of Facebook.
I think one of the challenges that we face in using social media is that we are looking for this magic thing to come along and replace all the stuff from the past that didn’t work. Currently, social media is being hailed as the best tool ever for sales people, for marketing people and for PR—as well as for consumers, non-profits, businesses and other organizations. The fact…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on March 17th, 2010
I came across an interesting site that may help those starting out in social media to develop a social media policy for your organization. You can check it out here.
The site is free and asks a series of questions in order to provide a reasonably customized social media policy that fits your organization’s culture and needs. I went through the process to see how it worked and below you can see the results for AHA Creative Strategies.
This site is worth checking out for any organization that does not have a social media policy in place. There are many grey areas…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on March 15th, 2010
Last week, I spoke to an audience that consisted of members from several different groups, boards and associations. They are all a part of a large—and important—industry. It was a very interesting presentation. (In the interest of client confidentiality, I am not going to identify the group I spoke with.)
When I present, one of the first questions that I ask is if anyone is tweeting. Not one person in this group raised their hand. It was the first time in more than 18 months that I was in a room that did not have at least 25% of the audience…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on March 09th, 2010
In a random act of humour, Conan O’Brien decided to follow one of the 600,000 people that follow him on Twitter. The Chicago Tribune outlines the story very well.
Turns out, the person Conan chose to follow is Sarah Killen (@LovelyButton). She is in her late teens and is from Michigan. And about 15,000 of Conan’s followers began to follow Sarah. Sarah turned this opportunity into something very positive.
She tweeted about an upcoming breast cancer awareness walk, the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for the Cure, sending her new followers to a site where they could donate money to sponsor her upcoming walk. According…
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Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on March 08th, 2010
Our friend and colleague Della Smith of Q Workshops has been telling us about Drive by Daniel H. Pink. We asked her (as we wait for our copy of the book to arrive from Amazon) to write a book review for us for the AHA blog. Here it is:
DRIVE – THE SURPRISING TRUTH ABOUT WHAT MOTIVATES US
BY: Daniel H. Pink
This book resonated as strongly with my brain as it did with my heart. Dan Pink presents a strong case for a new way at looking at motivation. Say goodbye (well, maybe not totally) to carrots and sticks and say hello to autonomy,…
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Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on March 04th, 2010
I came across a blog post today from Twitip on 11 reasons why you should be on Twitter.
When Twitter originally came out, we, at AHA, didn’t see much of a business application for it. It seemed to us that there was mostly a lot of noise going on, chatter of no value. As time went on, more and more business-minded people signed up and for our purposes, that added value. It then made sense for us to join in the conversation.
Find us at @AHApr. And don’t worry, you won’t see us talking about what we had for lunch. We’re sharing information…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on March 02nd, 2010
There is a very interesting piece by Grant Cardone on the Huffington Post. It has a compelling title: Do PR Firms Make Sense Anymore?
According to the article, Mr. Cardone has had some disappointing results using PR agencies over the years. Not knowing the background of what the objectives and goals were, what the strategy was or how the agencies approached the work, I don’t have the information to comment on that component of his article. But it is never a pleasant experience for anyone when you don’t achieve success.
As to whether PR firms make sense anymore, I believe they do…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on March 01st, 2010
Measurement in PR has always been a challenge and that hasn’t changed with social media. Understanding and showing the value of what we do isn’t always easy for communicators.
There is a good article on Socialtimes.com that addresses measurement in social media. It’s more from a marketing viewpoint, but it applies to the use of social media in PR or communications efforts.
One of the points in this article talks about bounce rates. It asks: Are people coming to your website from social media sites or networks, but leaving quickly? This is a good question and one that is worth talking about.
Participating in…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on February 25th, 2010
There is an excellent post on Mashable on The Science of Building Trust With Social Media. The content in this post provides an interesting perspective on what can be achieved through social media and what some of the challenges might be. It is also worth reading the comments below this post to see what others are thinking.
One of the great things about the widespread acceptance of social media is that good organizations, the ones that want to develop and provide good products and services for their customers, have a real opportunity to build trust. This isn’t as straightforward as it…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on February 24th, 2010
I had a discussion with a client yesterday about the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. She is based in L.A. and the only coverage they get of the games is from NBC. NBC, for some reason, has chosen not to provide live coverage of the games. My client is in the same time zone as the games, she has a television in her office, she would have the competitions on if she could—but they aren’t live.
This is a conversation that we have had quite often recently in the AHA Creative Strategies office. AHA partner Paul Holman is a sports fan and…
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