2010

Life has been busy at our Vancouver PR agency.  When Paul and I founded AHA over 7.5 years ago, we had a vision for what our agency would become. We knew that we wanted to deliver world-class service to our clients, but we didn’t want to grow to become a huge agency. It’s just not how we saw things. We have grown and evolved since those first days and today, we are thrilled to announce the addition of two new crew members to AHA Creative Strategies.

Barb Wickens, who is based in Toronto, joins us as a Senior Account Executive and Senior Writer/Editor. I worked with Barb for years at Maclean’s and am so excited to be back working with her again. Barb brings a range of skill sets to AHA, including incredible writing and editing talent and the ability to untangle complex information and present it in a clear, concise and engaging manner.  The fact that she also has a crazy mutt of a dog that’s a member of her family just gives us more to talk to about!

Valerie Lapp, who is also in Ontario (in Peterborough, just north east of the Greater Toronto Region) joins us as Marketing/Promotions Strategist and Writer. I also worked with Val for many years while at Maclean’s. Val held the role of national publicist for CBS Records and our worlds were connected as she often (and successfully) put forward many story ideas for artists under the CBS label to be covered in Maclean’s.  Val’s experience and expertise bring a great deal to AHA; her ability to balance marketing and promotions within the context of communications is exceptional. She is also a talented writer and brings a different perspective to the communications process. That she is flat out one of the funniest people I have ever met just makes our conference call meetings so much livelier!

Having Barb and Val join AHA gives us the opportunity to provide an even greater level of service. We’re looking forward to working with them and to introducing them to our clients.

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Marketingprofs.com regularly provides relevant, timely and useful advice and the article entitled Five Lessons From The Social Media Frontlines is no exception. It provides great information on the basics of approaching social media for your organization.

AHA Take

I know that I begin to sound a little like a broken record when I say this, but one of the most crucial social media lessons we put forward to clients is that social media is one component of communications and should be integrated into an overall communications strategy.

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In the past few months, in our Vancouver PR agency, we’ve had the opportunity to develop several social media plans for clients. And Sarah’s first point on picking your marketing objectives is where we always start – although we focus on identifying your communications objectives.

A few months back, we had a meeting with a client in Vancouver about their PR needs and social media was a big topic for them. When we asked what the communications objectives were, they weren’t quite sure at that point. And, in fact, were a little thrown off by the question in relation to social media. They were used to identifying objectives when it came to traditional communications initiatives, but they were approaching social media a little differently. It was more about jumping on the bandwagon, rather than about what they wanted to achieve.

We took them back a few steps, asked them to leave social media out of the picture for the moment and focused on what their overall communications objectives were. Once we had defined the objectives, we then began to delve into understanding who their target market is. Once we identified their target market, we broke that down into the components of how their target market would like to receive information and whether they were engaged in social media. After all, there isn’t any point in reaching out on social media to people who aren’t participating.

It turns out that the organization needed a range of communications vehicles to reach their target market. And, at this point, social media wasn’t at the top of the list of where the target market was engaging. This was changing, but not to the extent where social media would be one of the key elements of the initial communications outreach.

Social media is a valuable tool for communicators, but it has to be used strategically, in support of achieving your overall communications objectives. It is important to go back to the foundation of communications strategy and planning. Define the objectives, identify the stakeholders and understand within their environment, how they want to engage. Then as an organization, you can meet their needs and expectations for information and dialogue.

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