September 2009 - Page 2 of 2 - AHA Creative Strategies

Strategy needs to drive your social media outreach

We often get calls from communications directors and managers asking us to come in speak with them (and often their senior executive) about what they “should” be doing when it comes to social media.

When we meet, our discussion always begins with a few questions:

What do you want to achieve?
What are you doing currently to meet your objectives?
Who is your target audience or community?
How do they want to connect with you?
As you can see – there’s not a question or directive about any of the social media tools until we understand more.

There is no such thing as off the record!

There has been much talk (online and off) about how Kayne West created a scene at the Video Music Awards recently. Apparently, Kayne stormed the stage when Taylor Swift was accepting her award for video of the year, grabbed the microphone and announced that he thought Beyonce should have won the award. You can read more about the incident on Rolling Stone.

Then, ABC news reporter Terry Moran tweeted that, during an interview with his network, President Obama called Kayne a “jackass” for his outburst. Turns out, the part where (allegedly) Obama called Kayne a “jackass” was off the record. ABC quickly pulled the tweet down, but not before it had been picked up by Politico.com. You can read a piece on it here and see the tweet here.

Some interesting reading

Interesting

While Ruth is in Toronto for meetings and events with our client Tourism New Zealand, I thought I would direct you to some great blogs for some interesting reading.

Are you really my friend?

We have had some very interesting discussions here at AHA about the blurring of lines between friend, colleague and boss on social media network sites. It’s a hot topic right now and everyone has their perspective on it. I believe that my business partner Paul and I have a pretty good working relationship with everyone on our crew. Each of the communications professionals who work here are just that – professionals. They come in to each project and each client interaction with their “A game.” It’s not just something that we as the owners expect, it’s something that comes from within each person. This commitment to excellence shows and is rewarded.