Posted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on January 03rd, 2012
I am not going to spoil the fun of today’s AHA Special Fast Take. All I will say is watch Ruth take the “plunge” into 2012. (And my apologies for the sound – it was very windy!)
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…
Read morePosted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on November 24th, 2011
Today is American Thanksgiving and in honour of our U.S. family, friends and clients, I thought I would use football to make my points today. We have TV sets in our AHA office and usually they are tuned in to news channels; today they will be on football.
What we do as communicators can be compared to football. In the sport, there is an offence and defence; we have proactive and reactive. Each person on the football team plays a key role in their success. Some show their abilities on the field (the players), others in the background (the coaches,…
Read morePosted 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…
Read morePosted 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…
Read morePosted 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…
Read morePosted 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.
Read morePosted 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…
Read morePosted by Ruth Atherley of AHA Creative Strategies on October 31st, 2011
I recently received an email from an organization in the communications field asking for my input. The email offered me the chance to win an iPod Shuffle. I found it surprising that an organization in this field would reach out to communicators and offer that as the prize. The communicators I know either have iPhones or smart phones that hold music or they already have a music player. And a Shuffle is pretty far down the food chain. An iPad would have been a better prize; only about half of the communicators I know have a tablet of some type.…
Read morePosted by Paul Holman of AHA Creative Strategies on October 28th, 2011
In today’s AHA Fast Take Friday, Ruth looks at the importance and value of a communications audit.
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