Welcome to AHA Flip Cam Friday! Each Friday we’re going to have a Flip Cam video for you to watch.
A Flip Cam has become an important part of AHA. It’s super easy to use, to do simple edits and upload content. It puts a face to your organization.
Here is a link to the video on Vimeo.
Vancouver, B.C. – Rhino Marketing Inc., one of North America’s leading online marketing agencies, has appointed George Morneau as the company’s Professional Sports Liaison. This position has been established to help support Rhino Marketing’s philanthropic and charitable outreach both locally and globally. In this new role, Mr. Morneau will connect with a range of professional athletes and sports teams to acquire sports memorabilia such as autographed photos, jerseys and other items that will be used for fundraising and awareness campaigns for charities and not-for-profit organizations that Rhino Marketing supports.
Rhino Marketing is focused on creating long-term, mutually beneficial relationships between their organization and professional athletes and sports teams with a focus on charitable fundraising and other philanthropic objectives.
“George was a natural choice for this role because of the relationships in a range of professional sports that he has spent decades establishing and maintaining,” said Doug Morneau, Chief Rhino. “That he is my uncle and the father of Justin Morneau, considered one of the best first basemen in the major leagues, is just an added bonus. This new role supports our community relations department.”
Founded in 1997, Rhino Marketing Inc. is a leading Internet marketing services agency. With offices in Canada and the United States, Rhino Marketing Inc. offers clients a single source for the design, execution and ongoing advancement of Internet marketing initiatives. The Rhino Marketing team operates at the intersection of traditional strategy-based marketing and the rapidly evolving digital world of e-marketing, providing clients with a strategic, integrated approach that creates strong results. An active member of its community, Rhino Marketing is involved in a range of charitable and philanthropic organizations, events and initiatives. As Rhino grows and expands as a company, so does their commitment to making the world a better place, locally and globally. For more information, please visit www.rhino.ca.
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For more information or an interview with Doug Morneau, please contact Paul Holman at paul@ahacreative.com or at 604.303.1052.
There is an interesting blog post on Mediapost.com that highlights how many organizations are using social media without a strategy. The number is high and while it shouldn’t, considering what I see every day, it surprises me.
I have to admit that there are days (like today) when it feels like I am repeating myself over and over again on this blog. Let me say it again – it all comes back to strategy. To be effective using social media, or when using any communications or PR tool, you need to have a strategy.
When it comes to developing a strategy, one of the challenges goes beyond the fact that social media is cool, fun and “new.” I also think that there is some confusion in a lot of organizations about what a strategy is. I have been in quite a few meetings where the meaning of the words “strategic” and “tactical” were confused. Our friends at Beaupre PR have an excellent blog post on the difference between strategy and tactics. It is definitely worth a read, even if you are clear on the difference.
Without defining your strategy, it’s hard to identify your objective. For example, tomorrow (Friday) – we at AHA are launching AHA Flip Cam Fridays on this blog. Our strategy is to further position our Vancouver PR agency as a leader in providing strategic PR in the age of social media. We focused on transforming our small Vancouver PR agency into one of Vancouver’s hottest PR companies. In order to do that, we identified several tactics that would support our objective of building our client base by establishing our knowledge and skill set in the areas of PR and social media. That includes moving AHA up in the Google rankings under the searches of Vancouver PR, Vancouver PR agency, AHA and AHA Creative Strategies.
If we had just decided that we wanted to video blog, that would have been a little like putting the cart before the horse. Why should we video blog and what is the purpose of going to that extra effort? For us, we defined what we wanted to achieve and then we identified the tools that would help us get there.
The social media component of our plan to grow AHA is just that, a component. There are other areas that we are focused on as well. I also speak regularly to groups, associations and organizations about the importance of blending social media and traditional PR.
There isn’t just one prong to our approach and that’s because we defined our strategy first and then developed the overall approach and identified which tools would work in this situation.
That’s my two cents worth for today. I am looking forward to tomorrow and the launch of AHA Flip Cam Friday.
David Clarke has a great blog post on the Facebook haters who “like” your brand. He outlines some types of people that will “like” (or become a Fan) your brand on Facebook – but not all of them are fans. It is definitely worth a read if you are trying to understand the dynamic of who might “like” your Facebook page.
Recently we’ve seen a few organizations have their Facebook pages overrun by critics. There are some challenges when you choose to develop a Facebook page for your organization. One of the risks you face come from the people that will click that “like” button, but who are really critics or, even worse, haters of your brand. Of course, there are also people who are supporters out there too and you don’t want to miss the opportunity to connect with them because of a fear of the negative.
Here at AHA (you know, in this Vancouver PR agency of ours!), we’re big fans of Brian Solis. Recently, we came across a post on his site that we’d like to share with you – the 21 Rules of Engagement in Social Media. (He also has a book – Engage – that he has just published that is worth purchasing. There is a link on his blog.)
Engagement is, in my opinion, one of the biggest challenges for an organization that wants to use social media as a part of their communications outreach. It’s relatively simple to set up a Twitter or Facebook page, but not as easy to populate these areas with good content that engages your community.
The first step that Brian outlines is this: Discover all relevant communities of interest and observe the choices, challenges, impressions, and wants of the people within each network.
That seems simple enough, but there are a lot of organizations that – in their haste and excitement to participate – jump past it. Don’t.
Believe me, it is an important step. I have had several interesting discussions with CEOs and other senior executives that challenge me on why they should invest (one said waste) time and money on this step. Understanding the culture and the different style of communication online is crucial. There have been several big organizations in the news recently that faced a PR crisis because they didn’t appreciate that online is a different environment and each online community may have their own protocol and style. One point that I make when walking a senior team through this point is – you wouldn’t take your organization into a new market without first understanding its culture, political landscape and the way life works on a day-to-day basis in the “real” world. It’s no different online. Not only is it valuable to identify all the relevant communities of interest – it is crucial to spend some time understanding the culture and paying attention to how they want you to join the conversation.
The time you invest in listening and learning will pay off in the long run.
We’ll be touching on a few more of Brian’s points over the next few weeks. We’d love to hear what you think.