Social Media

Webworkerdaily.com has a good post focusing on whether it is possible to be personal and professional in social media. It is a topic that we, at AHA, discuss on a regular basis.

We are a boutique agency by choice. We started that way and it works for us. Now, we happen to believe that you can be small and still deliver the results of a much larger agency. Small doesn’t mean less to us, it means lean, focused and it gives us the opportunity to be a real team. It also allows us to make choices about the clients that we take on. We don’t have to “feed the machine” so we don’t take on everything that comes our way.

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Kami Huse at Communication Overtones has a great blog post on why Twitter Is Making Us Lazy. She hits the nail on the head with this post while she reminds us that social media is just a tool. Great public relations is about creating a strong relationship with your stakeholders. It is about sharing ideas, thoughts, a vision and, in some cases, explaining why the people in an organization took or didn’t take a specific action. Tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other social media networks or tools assist in the dissemination of information and are meant to help create a discussion. The key words there are “assist” and “help”—they don’t replace every other tool. Speaking with people is important. Telephone calls, meetings, conferences, town halls—all of it matters.

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It’s the first Monday back after the holiday season. We’ve opened presents, visited friends and family, ate and drank, and ushered in not just a new year, but also a new decade. Welcome 2010!

We have seen many changes in the areas of public relations and communications over the past decade. For one, social media has changed how we do our jobs. It will be interesting to see what this year brings.

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Who could resist that headline? I just read an interesting blog post on Mashable by Patrick Moran entitled: 5 Tips To Grow Your Business in 2010. Although Moran approaches it from a marketing perspective, this piece has great value for communicators as well.

The popularity of video is growing rapidly. In the past in Canada, video new releases (VNR) haven’t been widely used. That’s changing, I believe. In the United States, VNRs are used extensively. CNN even has a distribution service (CNN Newsource) where an organization pays to have its VNR distributed.

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The Bad Pitch Blog has an excellent post on holiday tie-ins and what does and doesn’t work. In this post, they showcase examples of the good, the bad and the ugly. One that stands out as great is PNC, a financial services group. For the past 26 years they provided the PNC Christmas Price Index. Using the classic song The 12 Days of Christmas, in a fun and lively way, they showcase the how prices have increased or fallen over the past year.

They “own” this area of Christmas and this year’s website is great. It is an educational tool. It was made to explain some things, while being entertaining—and it’s well done.

When we are working to generate media and blogger attention, we often look at the time of year and what traditional holidays or events happen that we can tie into. Events, holidays and other seasonal traditions can provide strong opportunities for PR, if it’s done right.

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