We know where our strengths lie. We also know when and where we can bring in one of our expert partners who can help bring one of our strategies to life. When it comes to on-site video production, we often turn to Dave Park Productions Services to get the job done. He’s helped us with everything from seated interviews with senior executives to rural location shoots, capturing the sparks – literally – of employees working at a Virginia welding shop. Join us as we catch up with Dave away from the lens about his work and the video industry. Who …
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Read MoreIf you’re trying to reach one of us on the last Wednesday of the month, especially at lunch time, you may be out of luck. When it comes to attending the monthly PRSA Richmond luncheon, we’re all in. After all, three Hodgers are on the board of directors and another three are active (and former board) members themselves. What can we say, we love a good professional development opportunity. Kicking off this year’s programming calendar, which is organized by Lindsay O’Bar, first vice president of professional development, was a popular topic: employee engagement, featuring Natalie Smith, APR and Julie McCracken …
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Read MoreIf you’re not including video in your content marketing and social media strategy in 2019, do yourself a favor and stop reading this and start planning. Video content is becoming critically important in today’s social media landscape, and we’re not just saying this as marketers. There is data to prove it: Animoto found that 64 percent of consumers made a purchase after watching a branded video on Facebook. Aberdeen discovered that brands who utilize video see their revenue increase 49 percent faster than companies that don’t. Cisco predicts that video will account for 82 percent of global internet traffic. While …
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Read MoreContent marketing, even if you’re not the one executing the work, is a major investment of your time, energy and resources. A company can’t just hire an agency and say, “Hey, go ahead and launch this thing and report back on it in a month.” It doesn’t work that way. There are so many things to consider when it comes down to planning and executing a content marketing strategy, but here are three considerations to whet your whistle. Money Let’s go ahead and start with the topic no one likes to talk about. Money. The Content Marketing Institute found that …
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Read MoreIf you’re like many marketing and communications departments, there comes a time when you get tasked with a new project or hit a saturation point in your current workload where you can struggle to efficiently manage your workload. Then comes the inevitable conversation, part financial, part philosophical, mostly to answer this question: is it time to bring on more staff or outsource to a freelancer or agency. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind as you mull this over: Budget + Timing – According to a study conducted by SHRM (the Society of Human Resources Management), the average …
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Read MoreIt’s the dirty little secret in PR. It’s the secret that felt so wrong to me when I first started, that I’m only now coming to grips with it. Here’s the reality: CEOs aren’t always the ones uttering profound statements about their companies or apologizing when something goes wrong. Chances are, those well-chosen words originate from communications professionals, crafted so eloquently and precisely that they not only reflect just the right tone but convey all the information and emotion that audiences have come to expect. Over the summer, Hodges (and its ragtag team of interns) read the front page of …
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Read MoreYou know your organization or brand should be pushing out content to your audience and followers, but getting over the hurdle of what to post can be a challenge. We’ve talked about generating content for Twitter, but let’s take a step back and see how you can generate ideas that can be used across all of your platforms. Role Play First, think of the adage about putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. That is typically a healthy exercise as you contemplate what the audience you are trying to reach wants to read or what problems they are trying to solve. …
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Read MoreDo you know what the beauty of owned content is? You have total control, and for a control-freak like me, developing original, owned content puts me in a happy place. Chances are, if you have a content marketing strategy in place, you are already producing some level of owned content. But if you’re looking to beef up your practice, or get started from the ground up, you may need a little bit of guidance. The world is your content oyster, and it can get overwhelming if you let it. Elsewhere in The Gong Blog archives, you’ll find five helpful questions …
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Read MoreReading online isn’t much different than in print. Some of us read every word on every line, but for the rest of us – we’re skimmers. If a headline captures our attention and piques our interest, we’ll make the decision to invest time and read the full article. As it turns out, writing blog headlines is just as much a science as it is an art. Sure, you need to eloquently string a cohesive series of words together to tee up your article, but you also need to appease the search engine gods. Here are four best practices for you …
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Read MoreYou 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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