Have you ever been in a meeting and had a client, colleague or consultant confuse “strategic” and “tactical.” I think it happens more than we realize (or perhaps like to admit) and it’s not always junior staff that don’t understand the difference.
Our friends at Beaupre & Co Public Relations have a great blog post about how to get the most from your PR firm. If you work with an agency or are considering an agency, it’s worth a read.
We have this discussion often at the AHA offices and with clients. For us, it’s always about how do we deliver the most to our clients. To do that, we have come to realize that our client sometimes needs to focus on how to get the most from AHA. Sometimes, it’s a learning experience for them – especially if they haven’t worked with an agency before or they have had a bad or mediocre experience.
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 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.
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.