Vancouver PR Agency Archives - Page 4 of 18

Blogging for business – part 2

On Wednesday, I wrote about the CEO/President’s blog. Today we’ll have a look at the organization blog, the employee blog and the blend.

The Organization Blog

This blog is a little less about the person writing it than it is about the organization as a whole. Often there will be several writers who cover a range of topics and areas regarding the organization. It might be that different departments or division heads each write one blog post a week about news, events and interesting points relevant to their area.

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

Our communications audits findings

Recently, at the AHA office, we have been working on communications audits for several clients. One of the areas that we review is their use of social media. (We also research and analyze how other organizations in the same field use social media and provide them with best and worst practices during this process.) In our research, we discovered an interesting trend: many organizations have reverted to a more traditional approach of pushing information out through social media channels rather than engaging and starting or participating in conversations.

Of the five communications audits we have done in the past few months, four of the organizations are dealing with challenges in that their social media networking communities are not growing and there is little or no engagement or interaction.

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

HSBC uses brand journalism to tell their story

HSBC has developed an online editorial style website that uses brand journalism. There are differing opinions on the value and benefit of the site. I have to say we lean towards the side that says this is a great site. I think it can be easy to criticize without taking into context that it is brand journalism – not journalism. While the stories should be credible, balanced, multi-faceted and provide value, it is still a brand that is responsible for creating this content.

Step by step, we are moving into a more credible approach to sharing the stories of our organizations.

This article is worth a read and the site is worth a visit.

What will be of value to your organization in the future?

In today’s AHA Fast Take Friday, Ruth is outside the Palace of Versailles talking about understanding what will be of value in your organization in years to come.

Social media – first steps

We have had several new business meetings over the past week or so and the discussion always turns to what the organization can be doing in regard to social media.

Not everyone is ready to leap into social media full throttle, but it is important to start the process of listening. See what people in your industry/area of expertise are doing online. Pay attention to the conversations that are happening. It’s a good first step into connecting with your specific community.

Have a critical look at your website. We often get clients calling and asking for a social media strategy and when we start the discussion of why they want to engage in social media, we ask about their website. Quite often, their site is stagnant and hasn’t been touched in a very long time. Your website is an important component of your online brand. How up-to-date is it? How relevant is it? Is there a way to make the content more current on a regular basis?

When clients want to begin to use social media tools as a part of their overall communications outreach, we often recommend starting out small, one step at a time – with a focus on doing it right. Below we have outlined four small actions you can take over the next two weeks to begin to include social media in your day-to-day work.

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