Ruth Atherley's Posts

Developing good content is crucial to your organization. Your stakeholders are interested in your organization (if they aren’t, there is a problem) and it is important to build on that interest. Your website, blog and social media networking sites are opportunities to provide information and news, to authentically tell your story and, done well, to have people who think it is interesting share it with their friends and colleagues.



Good content helps with search engine optimization (SEO), it helps to build community and it allows you to reach out and share stories with your stakeholder group.



Please visit our blog to read the rest of the post.

Read more

At AHA, we spend a great deal of time working with clients to create interesting, informative and engaging content. It isn’t about what the client organization wants to say as much as it is about what their community or stakeholder group is interested in hearing, discussing, and learning.



For some organizations, this is a big paradigm shift. It can, in fact, be culture shifting. There is a perception with the fast-paced, 24/7 cycle, and user-generated content online, that organizations have lost control of their “message.” When in fact, the social media era (in my humble opinion) should be seen as providing the most opportunity to let your target market (and others you haven’t even considered) in on the conversation about your brand, organization, and product or services.



Please visit our blog to read the rest of the post.

Read more





I recently received an email from an organization in the communications field asking for my input. The email offered me the chance to win an iPod Shuffle. I found it surprising that an organization in this field would reach out to communicators and offer that as the prize. The communicators I know either have iPhones or smart phones that hold music or they already have a music player. And a Shuffle is pretty far down the food chain. An iPad would have been a better prize; only about half of the communicators I know have a tablet of some type.



It was clear to me that this organization either didn’t think about the audience for this request or didn’t care. Trying to better understand the “what’s in it for me,” I went through their request. (There always has to be something in it for the person you are asking to take action.) They wanted to know about social media and how it has impacted what I do, but nowhere did it say that it would share the results. An oversight perhaps… But then I realized I have received emails from this organization before – emails trying to sell me reports. I didn’t take the survey and I asked to be removed from their mailing list.



Please visit our blog to read the rest of the post.

Read more