The short answer to that question is no. Small brands and small organizations can be really good brand journalists, but you do have to ask yourself a couple of questions. Number one, do you have the time? Number two, do you have the content? And number three, do you have the manpower? It is a step beyond blogging or driving traffic to a website, or your website. It’s more creating an ongoing relationship with people and your potential customers to talk about brand and what you’re all about, as opposed to a product. So, if you don’t have the time …
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In a recent blog post, we made the case for why businesses should take advantage of Facebook Live. It’s time and cost-effective compared to webinars and other forms of video. Plus, the demand for video in marketing is on the rise, and research tells us it’s a great way to really engage with a target audience. News outlets are now not the only ones able to report on current events in real time. Influencers and celebrities are using Facebook Live to promote product launches or their overall brand, and businesses and organizations are going live on Facebook to promote a …
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The old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” rings true in the digital age. Tweets with images receive 150 percent more retweets, and Facebook posts with images see 2.3 times more engagement than posts without them. And when it comes to blogging, articles with an image once every 75-100 words historically get double the number of social shares than articles with fewer images. With everyone and their mother adding “professional iPhone photographer” to their resumes these days, finding great photography for your external communications is even more crucial. Your readers are digitally savvy, busy and know what an …
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Marketers throw around phrases like brand journalism and content marketing almost interchangeably these days, but there is a definite difference between the two of them. Content marketing was born more in the b2b space, and it’s more about folks and companies giving out information, primarily custom information, like white papers or reports or offers. And those are designed to drive you to a landing page ask you to give them custom information about yourself, like email addresses and your job title. And, in exchange, you get a download of that information. Your email address then goes in the database, where …
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We talk a lot about workplace culture here at Hodges, and creating and contributing to an environment where coming to work every day is truly fun. On any given day, the Hodges culture might shine through in various ways – birthday celebrations, a Thanksgiving potluck, our annual baseball outing – but one piece we’re all particularly proud of is the numerous ways we’re able to volunteer our time in the community, whether it’s through sitting on boards where we can lend our public relations and communications expertise or flexing our event-planning muscles. The Virginia Capital Trail. PRSA Richmond. Classical Revolution …
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So, “off-the-record” and “embargo” are phrases that have been used historically in dealing with the media. Both of them are sort of losing their place in the 24-hour news cycle. Steve Bannon recently got into big trouble because he thought that he was off the record but never mentioned that to a reporter he was talking to, and what he thought was a personal conversation ended up being the headline of a news cycle. So, off the record is when you’re talking to a reporter and you don’t want to be quoted, you go, “I want to be off the …
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Every semester, bright-eyed, eager, ready to take on the world students join the ranks of the Hodges Partnership’s internship program. Over the last decade, we’ve seen dozens of interns come and go, and while we only spend a few short months with them, we still feel like proud parents whenever we get a new notification on Linkedin of one getting a new job. We may be biased, but we think our interns get a lot out of our agency internship and we’re always looking for candidates for our program. To get the feel for what our former interns are doing …
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If you’re not already using Facebook Live in your content marketing strategy, it’s time to jump on the bandwagon. Video consumption will continue to grow, accounting for nearly 80% of all internet traffic by 2019, according to a recent study from Cisco. And despite Instagram’s consistent, rapid growth in users, Facebook remains the most popular social network on the globe. Facebook Live combines these two digital trends and has the added bonus of delivering key messages to a targeted audience immediately. Marketers should be taking advantage of their capability to easily create and share video content on a platform where …
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So this is gonna be a bit self-serving, but I think it will be helpful to people who are considering working with a PR firm. We are just like any other professional services firm. We bill by the hour and we have hourly rates. So, the first way is, we bill you by the hour, with no limit. And, you hope that you’re getting a good value for that. And we know that we can bill as much as we need to over a period of time in order to get the job done. The second is, the same way …
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When it comes to B2B marketing on social platforms, there is something almost Pavlovian about the way many marketers default to LinkedIn. Intuitively, it may make sense. LinkedIn is the platform where you wear your work clothes. It’s where your posts showcase your business acumen, where you interact with like-minded professionals. Think of it as a giant online Rotary Club. Meet the right people, and there are deals to be had, jobs to be won. But LinkedIn may not always be the right choice, even for companies whose marketing is exclusively B2B. There are good reasons not to overlook a …
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