Ruth Atherley's Posts

Last year was an interesting, challenging and rewarding year for the AHA team. Our small PR agency worked on some incredibly challenging, rewarding and important projects. We discovered things about ourselves as professionals and as people that have changed how we engage with the world. We learned new things. We bonded as a crew. We improved and evolved as an agency, as communications professionals and as human beings. And that means that 2013 is going to be even better.

In 2012, AHA was a very active PR agency. We had several very large, high-profile projects that kept us busy working 18-hour days, seven days a week, for months on end. If we weren’t working, we were sleeping. It was that busy. We are a small agency on purpose – and that means that something had to give (besides social activities and sleep – we were already giving those up!). Our blog and Fast Take Friday videos became causalities of how busy we were as an agency and how busy I was, since I write most of the blog posts and am the “face” of the Fast Take Friday videos.

I have to say that while I do regret that there wasn’t time to write the blog posts and produce the Fast Take Friday videos, I did learn a valuable lesson. I give some of our clients grief about not keeping up with their blog posts and, in the past, I haven’t given enough respect to the fact that we live in a busy world and sometimes there really isn’t enough time to do it all. That doesn’t mean it’s right to put a hold on your external communication outreach. It isn’t. It does mean that you need to find more realistic approaches and ways of creating the content and making sure you are consistent in your communication outreach. Ways to do this include having more than one blogger on your team, developing some blog posts ahead of time that can be used when you are busy, and making sure you don’t just “go away” and not explain that you are busy and will be back shortly.

I am thrilled to be back blogging and am looking forward to producing our first Fast Take Friday of 2013 this week – check back Friday morning for that. And – for those of you who took the time to email and call asking when the blog posts and Fast Take Fridays would be back – thank you. It’s always nice to know that we have a core community who count on us to connect with you.

From the entire AHA crew, we wish you a very happy, challenging, inspirational and successful 2013.

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There are days when I have so many solid ideas for blog posts that I do a happy dance. Other times, I struggle with finding a topic that you will find relevant and that I feel that I can, and should, weigh in on. And some days, my writing brain just doesn’t show up. Those are not easy days, given how much I write in a day. However, on some magical days, as I go through the morning’s news, blog posts and social media updates, a piece shows up that is so good I just have to share it. Today is one of those days.

This article on Inc.com is excellent. If you do any media relations, it is worth a read.

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Writing is a challenge, even when it goes well. Good writing is a gift from the universe, but it’s never guaranteed. Even people that write incredibly well have times when it just doesn’t click; the piece never comes together as they had hoped.

For those of us who write often and who are always chasing that “click,” this article provides some good tips and hints on how you can improve your writing – sometimes without changing a word.

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At AHA, we’ve been busy drafting strategic communications plans for several clients. One of the questions we ask in preparing to write these plans focuses on the area of social media – on social media policy, specifically. We ask if their organization has one. More often than not, the answer is no. And that’s okay; we’re here to help with that. The answer that we sometimes get, however, is a question: “Do we really need one?” The answer is always a resounding yes.

A while back, we worked with a client who was concerned about putting a social media policy out to employees. This company is multinational and was struggling with its identity, partially because it didn’t have a strong brand promise or a way to authentically deliver one if they had it, but also because of additional challenges. In each area (not just each country), the offices were given a great deal of freedom to do what they thought was best. This worked well in some regions, not so well in others. And none of the efforts came together in any cohesive fashion. Work was duplicated or not done at all. It was chaotic. We identified not one, but four different Facebook pages and five Twitter accounts. What’s worse, they did not have consistent positioning or messaging and sometimes even the information they shared contradicted itself.

It was a mess. There were small pockets of people who had – with good intentions – taken on social media as a part of their role. Unfortunately, many of these people did not have a communications background; they were more junior than senior and they didn’t see past the tactic or the tool. There was no strategy applied to what they were doing. In one instance, someone was sharing confidential information about the organization via Twitter and Facebook thinking that they were showcasing an organizational success. What they shared had not yet been announced and it created huge issues for the people working on the project.

Whether you are a big or small organization – you need a social media policy. You need to identify and communicate to everyone who works with you (staff, contractors and even vendors) what is and is not acceptable to share via social media. If you don’t do this, you will have no one to blame but yourself when something goes sideways in this area.

I found an article about developing a social media policy on Ragan.com that is worth a read. It will give you some idea of what you need to include in yours.

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I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend that, when I recounted it in the AHA PR office, sparked a pretty animated discussion. It was about advice that my friend received from some marketing professionals that she happened to meet at a workshop.

The people she met spoke with her for a short amount of time about her work (which is in the not-for-profit arena) and gave her some advice that she got quite excited about. Now, this friend isn’t a marketing person or a professional communicator. So the advice that these good meaning folks gave her sounded really good. Until you put it into context of the budget, resources and current situation of her organization. Then it made no sense at all. It wasn’t strategic; it didn’t have clear objectives. It was advice given with good intentions, but with no basis in the reality my friend lives in.

I have said it before and I will say it again – context matters. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. A while ago, we had the opportunity to develop an app for AHA. We thought about it quite seriously, but then we put ourselves through the same exercise we ask clients to do when it comes to this kind of thing. We asked ourselves what our stakeholder group would get out of this, what we, as a company, would get out of this (besides the fun of having our own app), and what the return-on-investment was for this project – was it financial, raising awareness of AHA and our services, was it providing additional value for our clients? In the end, we realized it wasn’t right for us at the time.

I have been a professional communicator for many years and I have put a great deal of energy into helping to shift the perception of what we do from tactical to strategic. Having random people toss out (in my opinion) unrealistic tactics regarding an organization that they really don’t understand – and not having a clear view of their objectives – pushes us backwards. Don’t be that person. Before you put forward an idea for your organization or your client, think about why you should do it. If you want to do it just because you can – that’s just not good enough.

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