Public Relations
Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on January 10th, 2012
January is an interesting month. People are setting goals in both their personal and professional lives. It’s a time of new beginnings, of focusing (or refocusing), of excitement and hope. We’re no different here at AHA. We took some time over the holiday season to set our goals and to outline what we want to achieve, experience and create in 2012.
One of my professional goals is to work with more clients who realize that great PR is about building relationships, about educating and informing, and about engaging with your target market or stakeholder group. Social media has made a…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 29th, 2011
We take media pitching seriously. We do our homework and our research. We review the work of the journalist or blogger in context to what we want to pitch. We spend the time to get it right and that shows in our results. At AHA, we have generated some exceptional media and blog coverage for clients.
It was refreshing to read this article on pitching on Ragan.com. New York Times Tech Journalist David Pogue talks about the pitches that grabbed his attention. (Just for the record, we are big fans of Pogue!) It’s worth a read. And if…
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Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on December 07th, 2011
Ruth has a special video blog post from her hotel in Atlanta regarding Alec Baldwin getting removed from an airplane.
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on December 01st, 2011
Blogging has become a regular communications tool for organizations. One of the things that I have noticed is that when we work with the marketing department or agency of a client, there is a little bit of discussion over which area (communications or marketing) will develop and manage the campaign on Twitter and/or Facebook. There is never any discussion about the organization’s blog – it belongs firmly with the communications team.
Like any communications tool, blogging isn’t for everyone. It depends on the objectives, goals, overall strategy and, of course, the resources. It takes time and effort to produce a…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 21st, 2011
Technology makes it easy to share content. Your website, blog, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites provide the ability to publish your content. Where you publish depends on where your stakeholder group spends time and it is important to identify how they want to interact with your organization. But how do you create engaging, relevant, timely content?
Create an Editorial Schedule
Do you have a schedule of the content you will upload? A little forethought goes a long way when you are busy and need content or an idea in a hurry.
Here are some things to think about…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 16th, 2011
Our AHA blog is listed in Cision, a media database. It’s pretty clear, even if you only read a couple of our posts, that we write about communications: brand journalism, public relations, media relations, social media, positioning and messaging. It’s all related to strategic communication.
It seems pretty straightforward to me what to pitch to us. Which makes us shake our heads in wonder when we get pitches from random PR agencies and independent PR practitioners that have nothing to do with what we write about here. It looks to me like some people just grab any email they can…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 14th, 2011
I am on location at a video shoot for a client today and as I took the early ferry into Vancouver (a short 40-minute commute from my home on the Sunshine Coast), I heard a report on News 1130, a local radio station, that grabbed my attention.
It seems that a local politician used the images of two children in campaign brochures without getting permission from their parents. As a communicator, when I see issues like this, I wonder how it happened. In this day and age, taking photos of children without the written consent of their parent(s) or legal…
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 08th, 2011
Developing good content is crucial to your organization. Your stakeholders are interested in your organization (if they aren’t, there is a problem) and it is important to build on that interest. Your website, blog and social media networking sites are opportunities to provide information and news, to authentically tell your story and, done well, to have people who think it is interesting share it with their friends and colleagues.
Good content helps with search engine optimization (SEO), it helps to build community and it allows you to reach out and share stories with your stakeholder group.
One of the first…
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Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on November 04th, 2011
In today’s AHA Fast Take Friday video, Ruth talks about when to use a Flip style camera and when to upgrade to using professionals for your video needs.
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Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 03rd, 2011
At AHA, we spend a great deal of time working with clients to create interesting, informative and engaging content. It isn’t about what the client organization wants to say as much as it is about what their community or stakeholder group is interested in hearing, discussing, and learning.
For some organizations, this is a big paradigm shift. It can, in fact, be culture shifting. There is a perception with the fast-paced, 24/7 cycle of user-generated content online, that organizations have lost control of their “message.” When in fact, the social media era (in my humble opinion) should be seen as…
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