Editor's Note: As part of the 20th anniversary of The Hodges Partnership, we are taking a more intimate look at the agency’s namesake and why co-founders Jon Newman and Josh Dare chose to honor Gil Hodges with the company’s name. Here is the latest installment. You can catch up on the previous piece here. Among the varied objectives for hiring a public relations agency, reputation management ranks among the foremost. Sure, clients want greater visibility and added exposure, and they...
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It’s hard to believe that Hodges is celebrating its 20th birthday this summer. Harder to believe is that this year marks my 19th anniversary at Hodges. I’ve been fortunate to call Hodges home – first above Siné Irish Pub on Cary Street, then here on Broad Street, then across the parking lot in a one-bedroom apartment cozy enough for four Hodgers while renovations were made here and finally back in this building – for all but the first six months...
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Over the last several years, I’ve found myself in front of rooms of social media marketers and PR professionals vocalizing my disdain for the term “boosting” because it is often a signal to me that people are leveraging the Boost button instead of applying concrete strategy. When it comes to social media advertising, boosting can be a loose cannon – if used strategically, boosting could work wonders, but if you are boosting ad hoc, you might as well be throwing dollars...
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As a young, Black female professional, I’m no stranger to exclusion in the workplace. And after years of working twice as hard to be heard and becoming a codeswitching extraordinaire, I was thrilled to hear that one of the country’s most popular acronyms was getting one letter longer. Now, before your executive team gets too excited, it’s not enough to give quarterly trainings or plaster your DEIB statement all over social. Cultivating belonging in your workplace takes time and a...
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Whether your goal is to increase enrollment, showcase life-changing research or establish your school as the best option to earn a certificate or degree, having a well-rounded communications plan is a must as a higher education institution. We’re big believers in the EOP model (earned, owned, paid), so here are three must-do tactics to add to your strategic communications plan and why they work well for higher education. Earned Media: Media Relations Incorporating media relations into your communications strategy gives...
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From aesthetically pleasing graphics on Instagram to incredibly addictive videos on TikTok to podcast advertisements during a morning commute – it’s nearly impossible to avoid content. And with the volume of captivating content swirling around these days, it can be especially difficult to create content that catches and keeps your audience’s attention. If you, like me, are writing multiple content calendars a month, it can be easy to forget that the goal isn’t just to create content that supports your...
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For the first several years of our agency’s life, we eschewed pursuing awards. Come award season, we’d casually brush aside suggestions that we put our best work up for industry honors. Given the time and effort it takes to nominate yourself, we reasoned our energy would be better spent promoting our clients rather than ourselves. But over time, this sense of modesty gave way to a real-world practicality: awards are a valuable tool for validating the quality of your work....
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As one of the co-managers of The Phil—Hodges’ online publication that focuses on local philanthropy — I often encounter a set of challenges not unlike others who are tasked with managing a team’s creative output. Chief among those hurdles is organizing an engaging and comprehensive editorial calendar. When you have a rotating group of writers, all with their own areas of expertise and ideas, the process can begin to feel a bit overwhelming. Herding cats comes to mind. Yet blogs...
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What is equal parts vigorously exciting and incredibly annoying is the pace at which social media evolves. All it takes is one algorithm change or one business acquisition to throw off your entire strategy. Lucky for us (insert sarcastic face here), we’ve been hit with both in recent weeks. Because of the rapidly changing social media landscape, by the time we hit “publish” on this post, there is a good chance new information will be released, and this will be...
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Content is all around us, you just have to know where to mine it. And when it comes to industry associations, they’re gold mines for PR and marketing folks looking to generate content and pitch the media. At Hodges, we love working with associations because it makes our jobs infinitely easier. Why? Because we’re not just working with one client; we’re considering every member of that association a client contact in some way – and when we and the association...
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It’s graduation season, which means a number of students are stepping out into the world with PR degrees either hunting for a job or looking to make the most of a first opportunity. I remember how much I benefited from the advice of others when I was just getting started, so I asked my colleagues what advice they would share with this year’s graduating class of PR students. On finding a PR job: Don’t be afraid to fail. The hiring...
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The Hodges Partnership marks the 20th year since our founding this year. I need a moment to let that sink in. The time has gone by almost as fast as a Tom Seaver fastball, and the world has changed so much over that time. We share a launch year with LinkedIn, and I recall back then thinking it would be a handy birthday reminder service. Google was just four years old in 2002, before long making Ask Jeeves a distant...
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