Articles Written By:

Casey Prentice

The year of “re” and how we’re applying that to our work

As we unwrap our new planners and flip the calendar to a fresh year, our agency is embracing a theme that is customizable and flexible as we make our way through the year: The Year of “Re,” (as in RE-start, RE-energize, RE-juvenate). When you think about it, by adding that simple prefix to a root word, the possibilities are almost endless. Our team is prepared to come to our start-of-the-year meeting with a “re” word to help ground our work for the year ahead, and…

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Leverage owned data for nonprofit end-of-year giving

For nonprofits, those precious, tax-deductible, unrestricted, end-of-year gifts represent one of your largest appeal campaigns of the year. Development appeals can take many shapes and forms, but if you have a donor that sends donations to several places, you’re competing with other nonprofit organizations for those funds. That’s why leveraging owned data is the key to success in your outreach – and we’re giving you three ways to use that data to your advantage. Targeted, tailored social media campaigns You can upload a single email…

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Investing in ourselves: Protecting time for professional development

Every year during performance reviews, you can ask almost anyone in our office, and they will likely tell you one of their goals is to complete a certification or training. But the reality is, it can be extremely hard to get that done. When you have client work and life demands, it’s difficult to work the professional development that so many of us want – and need— into the week. Enter: HodgesCon. HodgesCon came about as a way to protect a single day on the…

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Six tips for developing a higher education crisis communication plan 

Creating a communications crisis plan is like writing your will. You know you should, but the thought of willingly putting yourself in a nightmarish situation that hasn’t even happened yet isn’t exactly the best motivator. And as much as I hate to break it to you, that’s the exact reason why you need to have a plan in place, because when that crisis strikes – and it is a when not an if – you aren’t going to have the time to strategize and think because…

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Pros and cons of boosting organic content vs. launching dark ads on social media 

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 out the window.  A quick…

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Check on your social media strategists, because it’s a whirlwind out there

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 outdated. But just the same,…

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Public relations for industry associations – a gold mine of material

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 succeeds, so do the members….

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Sean & Josh on Media Relations

Teaming Up, Episode 10: Josh & Sean on Media Relations Myths

Media relations is one of the most essential functions of public relations, but there are many misconceptions about how it all works and what strategies will be the most effective in getting media coverage for your client. In this episode, Josh, co-founder of The Hodges Partnership, and Sean, vice president of media relations, take a look into some of the most commonly believed myths about national media relations and teach us some best practices to start using in our own work. Here are the five…

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Hodges is hiring a digital strategist; are you looking for a new career?

If you looked for “digital strategist” jobs on LinkedIn this morning, you probably saw listings more than 16,000 positions across the country. Well, we’ve added one new job listing to that total as we look to expand our social media marketing and content marketing within our agency. Here is the link to the job description with details on how to apply. That tells you everything you really need to know, but as the account director who is helping shape the digital direction at Hodges, here’s…

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Our content marketing lessons learned from The Gong Blog in 2021

Let’s start with a promise that this isn’t some braggadocious blog post showing off our top performing blog posts of the year. We wouldn’t do that to you. We do, however, want to share a few content marketing lessons learned from looking at our top blog posts in 2021. You may (or may not, if you’re familiar with SEO) be surprised that some of our greatest hits were written years ago but remain among the top traffic drivers to our blog. Playing the SEO Long…

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Teaming Up, Episode 6: Jon & Tony on Podcasts

“Whenever there’s a new tactic, it’s like there’s a new toy, and everybody’s gotta have one.” Podcasts have become super popular, especially due to Spotify and easy accessibility on smart devices. But many businesses who are interested in podcasts don’t consider what actually goes into making one and maintaining it. For Episode 6 of Teaming Up, Jon Newman and Tony Scida offer their perspective as to what companies should consider when they’re thinking about podcasting. Here are some quick takeaways from their conversation: Consider your…

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Advice for creating content from our in-house content creators

If you’re creating content for an editorial calendar in 15 minutes or less, you’re not doing it right. Full stop. The fact is, when you’re curating third-party stories, crafting posts to support your key messages and value propositions and finding ways to transform long-form content into smaller, digestible chunks – that takes time. We’re incredibly lucky to have a melting pot of talent at Hodges when it comes to content creation – whether it’s crafting craft quippy social media content or delving deeper on more…

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