Reputation

Crisis communications – the prequel

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on January 17th, 2012

This blog post isn’t about what to do should your organization be faced with an issue or a crisis. It is about what you can do today, proactively, even if there isn’t the slightest evidence that there might be a challenge in your future. (A word of warning: A small mistake by someone in your organization could get a lot of interest online and turn into a huge crisis. Don’t think a crisis would never happen to you. It can. And at some point, it likely will.)

Back to today’s post…

We are often asked to develop issues and crisis…

Lifeguarding your reputation

Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on January 06th, 2012

In today’s AHA Fast Take Friday from Barbados, Ruth talks about monitoring what is being said about your organization online.

Who are you pitching to?

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…

Image release form

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)…

How to work with your agency

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 10th, 2011

At AHA, we feel fortunate that we get to work with our clients. We have great clients and many of the people that we work with have been with AHA for a long time. Several have changed organizations and brought AHA to work with them in their new role.

At AHA, we are consistently focused on finding the best ways to work with our clients. What makes a client stand out is that they focus on finding the best way to work with us. Working in partnership means that we build a mutually beneficial, respectful relationship. We have a commitment…

When production matters

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.

Are you a storyteller?

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on October 18th, 2011

At a recent client brainstorming meeting about brand journalism and how we could better tell the story of the organization, there was a senior staff member that was clearly not engaged in the process. For the purpose of this blog post, we’ll call her VP Skeptical. She sat back with her arms folded, checked her BlackBerry every minute or so, and in pure Survivor Tribal Council fashion – rolled her eyes when someone else said something that she didn’t agree with. Yet VP Skeptical didn’t speak up. So I asked her what she felt was the best story they could…

Crisis communications and social media

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on September 06th, 2011

There is a great article on Ragan.com that focuses on the results of a study that says most companies are not prepared for a social media crisis. It’s worth a read.

How and when an organization responds and reaches out using traditional communications vehicles and through social media is crucial. One of the challenges is that social media has turned the world into a 24/7 news cycle. Many organizations aren’t prepared for that. How do you strategically and authentically respond if you aren’t prepared?

There are many steps an organization can take to put processes in place…

How to sell social media to the C-suite

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 29th, 2011

It might seem archaic to those of us living in a social media world, but not everyone sees the benefit or value. We often hear from communications professionals that they want to incorporate social media into their overall communications strategy, but they can’t get buy in from their senior executive team. It’s not as unusual an occurrence as you might think. And if it’s happening to you – you aren’t alone.

When we work with clients that have this challenge, we focus on what the senior team needs to hear. While every team has its own idiosyncrasies, there are some…

What is good public relations?

Posted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on August 24th, 2011

AHA Creative Strategies is a public relations agency. We’re communicators. We’re social media participants. We’re brand journalists. We use video, video news releases, b-roll, podcasts, photography, articles, news releases, media and blogger pitches, news conferences, media tours, speaking tours, speeches, special events, trade shows, community meetings, annual reports, newsletters and so much more to assist our clients in communicating with their stakeholder groups. (Notice I said “with” – not “to” – that’s very important.) We are in the business of informing, educating and creating conversation. As importantly, we’re in the business of listening and responding.

I mentioned in Monday’s blog…