You know the old saying, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” right? This idiom perfectly applies to a lot of things in our industry, especially when it comes to social media advertising strategies. It’s easy to think your money should be spent on Facebook, one of the largest social media platforms and one of the earliest adopters to advertising, but if your audience is on multiple platforms, you should be, too. Here are four good reasons you should diversify your social media strategy. Social media advertising targeting varies from platform to platform. Some targeting metrics are universal, but …
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Read More“It’s a PR Podcast.” This is the answer Kelsey and I give when asked one of two questions: What are you recording? What are you calling your podcast? We’ve been super excited about this podcast for months now. From Slack side conversations to recording with microphones, the day finally arrived, and we’ve already released a few episodes in our first “season.” For anyone interested in starting a podcast, we’ve boiled down our process and a couple of lessons learned into a few steps to help get you going. Step One: Come up with a concept. We both listen to podcasts. …
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Read MoreSecuring live, on-camera interviews has always been regarded as hitting the media relations jackpot. But for some executives, being in the spotlight on live TV pushes them outside their comfort zone. But no worries. Getting more comfortable in front of the camera just takes practice – and patience – and with a little bit of preparation, anyone can master a live interview. Here are three tips that will set yourself, and your spokesperson, up for success during your organization’s next live interview. Get your message(s) straight. You probably already know why a reporter is conducting the interview, after all, there’s …
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Read MoreYour employees come into work every day, and they work hard for your organization and clients. Getting into that routine can be productive, but those comfortable rhythms also can suppress that all-important curiosity. In other words, it can lose your yearning for learning. Encouraging and supporting your employees’ professional development efforts shouldn’t just be an employee benefit – it should be engrained in your company culture. According to Gallup, 87 percent of Millennials say professional development or career growth opportunities are very important to them. Pit that against data from EdAssist which found that only 26 percent of Millennials felt …
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Read MoreAs I write this, I have to question if you’ll even read anything after this sentence. At best, you may skim the subheads, seeing if there is anything that jumps out at you. But if not, I’ve lost you – maybe for good, most likely because you’ve got to read this and not just watch. Cisco projects that video traffic will account for 82 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2021. Content consumers just aren’t reading anymore and marketers like us will have to keep up with the Joneses. At The Hodges Partnership, we have our finger on the …
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Read MoreEvery 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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Read MoreA few weeks ago, Christmas came early for inbound marketers when Hubspot released its 2017 State of Inbound report. After combing through the wonderfully presented data, here are a few nuggets that grabbed our attention: 70% of respondents said their top marketing priority was converting contacts/leads into customers. However, they’ve got to overcome their biggest challenge before they can get to their top priority; 63% of respondents said their biggest challenge is generating traffic and leads. 46% of folks said that inbound marketing has a higher ROI than outbound methods (only 12% thought outbound marketing had a higher ROI). Back …
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Read MoreThere’s nothing more exciting and exhilarating than hearing your name called when a fancy crystal trophy is involved. This year’s Virginia PR Awards, hosted by PRSA Richmond, were held at the Jefferson Hotel – and around 300 of the Commonwealth’s finest public relations and communications professionals celebrated their successes over libations and the obligatory chicken entrée and with Cheryl Miller (who has emceed the event nine years and counting). The Hodges Partnership was part of eight of the evening’s awards, but the one that we’re the most proud of is the one for our co-founder Josh Dare, who received the …
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Read MoreDominic Toretto may live his life a quarter-mile at a time, but for PR people, we live ours one quarter-hour at a time. One of the most asked questions by prospective interns and students is, “What is a typical day like in an agency?” The short answer: there isn’t a typical day. One day you could be entirely dedicated to one project or client, and the next day you could be working on three or four clients (or five or six clients). Tack on administrative time, internal committees and other commitments that pop up and every day is a surprise. …
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Read MoreMy affinity for live, streaming videos of baby animals began in 2013. It was a big year for babies. Bao Bao the Giant Panda debuted at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Lana, a cheetah at Richmond Metro Zoo, had a litter of five cubs. These live cams helped generate an awareness for the populations of these endangered species (and the zoos that care for them). Fast-forward to 2017 and the latest live-streamed animal phenomenon is April the Giraffe, the 15-year-old leggy lady at Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, NY. Last week we posted a sampling of good and bad …
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