Yet another intern-turned-Hodger, Aaron Kurz joins Hodges once again, only this time he’ll be working as a communications specialist for the Virginia Spirits Board Marketing Office. Aaron brings media relations savvy and content marketing smarts to the team, finding stories worth telling and getting them told. From working as communications manager for an ad agency to managing emergency response teams at a disaster restoration company, Aaron has picked up a wide range of skills since his intern days. Aaron is a Richmond native and graduate…
She spent the summer jamming on assignments with our creative services team, but as she neared the end of her initial contract with us, Alex Clark started to flex her public relations muscles working on the account side. Now, officially a full-time Hodger, she’s splitting her duties between creative and accounts as our newest account coordinator. Alex was born and raised in RVA and went to Elon University to study strategy communications and communication design, with a little side of studio art, making her a…
Our Creative Services palette is expanding, and Amber Ekizoglu, who has been with us for six months as a contractor, is officially here full-time. As our newest junior graphic designer, Amber loves bringing ideas to life through visuals to help tell a story. She was raised in the Philippines, but came stateside to become a graduate of VCUarts in its graphic design program. When she’s not knocking out her TBR list or trying the latest TikTok recipe, she’s creating thoughtful designs that connect with people,…
Emails are essentially direct tickets to your audience. You’re landing in their inbox and you’re landing in their phone by way of a notification that begs to be read. Unlike social media content which can get lost in a scroll, email marketing is a direct way to reach your audience that can be hard to ignore. We’ve already talked about why you really should be considering email marketing, but in case you’re not convinced, we wanted to share these four tips as you think about…
Social media news posts are hard to write, especially in today’s climate, because social media news IS the news and things change quickly. It’s hard not to get political about this post when almost every story below is a short step away from a political landmine. There are enough examples of Supreme Court cases, presidential pandering and “eat the rich” storylines below, you’d think we were giving you the plot of a new Netflix drama. But alas, this is real life. Here are the four…
If you’ve been writing or perusing jobs lately, you’ve probably seen that when it comes to content creation and social media positions, most requirements include bullets for writing skills and creative capabilities. To get one single person to do both of those things well, you’re asking for a unicorn. But lucky for you, we’re a collective of people which means by bringing our content marketing and creative services teams together, we can be your unicorn. Creative and content go hand and hand, and you really…
As a content creator, you might be instinctively inclined to produce content that sounds like you, looks like you and reflects your own personal identities. But the most effective storytelling is created through a spectrum of lenses, and broadening your point of view often begins with being aware of your bias. If you want to create content that resonates beyond audiences that look like you, take a step back to better discern the world around you – i.e. your audiences. My wonderful colleague built a…
We’re not a public affairs firm, but we work with enough state agencies and nonprofits to know that our public relations work goes hand-in-hand with public and legislative affairs. This year, our Creative Services and media relations teams stretched their muscles to support our clients across the board with a variety of legislative and advocacy-related work. Here are three big takeaways from the last couple of months. Develop Key Messages and Sing in Harmony When it comes to legislative work, you’re likely not the sole…
It’d be naïve of us to say we can control success, but in truth, results can’t always be guaranteed. The fact is, after gathering research and insights and on the other side of painstaking planning, as soon as you launch a digital marketing campaign and roll out a media relations strategy to support it, the results are largely out of your hands. You may have an idea where it’s going to go, but you never really know. In the last couple of weeks, we’ve seen…
Our annual agency day of learning returned this fall and, wow, it was a good one. HodgesCon was born last year as a result of our teammates sharing their desire to learn, but without the time to focus on expanding their knowledge base. This year, the HodgesCon planning committee reviewed topic areas and feedback from last year’s event to come up with this amazing line-up: We’re left with fuzzy pink monster ball and a handful of post-it notes that we’ll probably never remove from light…
A lot of clients come to us knowing they want to be on social media, but they’re not always sure which platforms are right for them. Well, here’s a quick blog post to help you figure that out. Before you start throwing out social channels, I recommend you answer these three questions: There are a lot of variables at play, but if you can answer these three questions, you should be in a pretty good place to discern which social media platforms are right for…
Have you ever been disappointed by the outcome of a social media advertising campaign? It’s likely that your campaign was launched without properly aligning the social media ad objective with the appropriate KPIs. Before you embark on your next social media advertising campaign, here are three important points to keep in mind to ensure success from the start, before your ads even appear on people’s newsfeeds. Align our social ad objectives with the marketing funnel Social media advertising platforms are designed to align with the…
