Media Relations
Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on July 29th, 2009
I have spent a lot of time in my professional life pitching story angles either as a journalist with an idea for an article, where I had to get my editor’s buy in, or as a PR person putting forward a pitch to media about a client’s organization. Since many of my colleagues and friends are either journalists or communicators, I also spend a fair bit of time discussing what makes a good story, even when it isn’t about a specific pitch.
One of the things that AHA clients rely on us for is to help them with media and blogger…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on July 17th, 2009
I have been thinking about the new opportunities that will come with Google Wave. This certainly has created some great discussion here at AHA.
The description from Wikipedia is: Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool” announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wiki, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by robust spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 languages, and numerous other extensions. It is expected to be released later in 2009.
Google…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on July 14th, 2009
Chris Brogan has an excellent post on his site this week on how to influence him, and it translates to how to reach out to anyone either online or not.
One of the key points he makes is “don’t let the numbers fool you” and that is so important. I’ve blogged a bit about this before and according to some of the AHA crew, I am a bit obsessed right now with this topic. It’s not how many people you reach, it’s which people. Reaching a blogger with 100 key readers or one with a wide-range of 10,000 creates different results, but…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on April 28th, 2009
There are a great many media on Twitter – for the most comprehensive list we have found check out mediaontwitter.com.
However, before you leap in and start pitching media on Twitter. This blog post at the Bad Pitch Blog is worth a read. Social media provides an excellent opportunity to start or join a conversation that is relevant to your organization. However, you can’t just jump in and start pushing yourself on to them – or anyone engaged online, for that matter. Like media relations, it just doesn’t work that way.
Peter Shankman of Help A Reporter Out (HARO) has a great approach…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on September 09th, 2008
The Washington Post ran an interesting article recently about companies and organizations that are blogging. It’s worth a read.
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 21st, 2008
The airlines are in trouble – we all know that. Well, maybe not Southwest – who have a great blog and seem to keep their passengers if not insanely happy, at least not screaming in the aisles like most other airlines. Now, United Airlines pilots are using social media tools to air their issues and demand the removal of UAL Chairman, President and CEO Glen Tilton.
They got the right url glentilton.com and on this site, there is media coverage, reports and the opinions of the pilots themselves. They want Glen Tilton out and they are telling the public why.
From what I can…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 19th, 2008
The New Rules of Marketing & PR is a book worth reading. It’s by David Meerman Scott…you can check out his blog here.
I was reminded of David’s work in a blog post by my friends at Beaupre. As communicators, we have this great opportunity to speak with people … news releases aren’t read just by the media anymore. On a global level, people are using search engines like Google to find the information they want and need. And – when they are searching online, it’s our job to give them what they need. Visuals – images, video, links to other information…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on July 30th, 2007
I recently chatted with my friend and colleague Ken McQueen. Ken is the Bureau Chief for Vancouver for Maclean’s Magazine. He covers the West Coast of Canada and the U.S. for the magazine and is one of the best journalists around.
I asked Ken to tell me what he wants to receive from someone who wants to have Maclean’s cover their company’s story.
Here is what Ken told said:
“A good pitch is aimed at Maclean’s (link), not a generic pitch to all media. It is a story of national interest, or a story that is nationally interesting. And it arrives, miraculously, on a…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on May 29th, 2007
By now, many people have heard about (or seen) the on-air fight that View hosts Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck had in front of millions of people.
Naturally, like anything embarrassing, controversial or amusing, the video ended up on YouTube.
This is a perfect example of how people can lose it in front of a camera. These women are seasoned professionals – and yes, I am sure their mandate is to discuss and debate, but I would doubt that the producers wanted their conversation to disintegrate into this mess. These two women are on television all the time, they know how to behave…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on March 04th, 2007
Blogs and other social media have created an incredible opportunity to communicate. They have also opened up the curtain and let us see the little man at the controls. (If you didn’t get The Wizard of Oz reference, my apologies.)
One of my favourite blogs is the bad pitch blog by PR gurus Kevin Dugan and Richard Laermer – this blog has a long list of smart, lively and witty contributors. Here, bad news releases and pitches are put under the microscope.
This blog has great information if you want to see what mistakes can be made – before you make them. They…
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