Have you noticed a change to your LinkedIn Homepage? During the month of December, LinkedIn is rolling out several updates that will bring people on-platform and make the overall experience more user friendly. This change comes after Facebook’s most recent update to its algorithm decreasing the frequency of brand posts in the user newsfeed. LinkedIn’s move is in line with its 2013 shift from resume depository to professional publishing site. Here’s two of the most noticeable changes on LinkedIn: The dashboard on the top of the homepage helps…
Read MoreIf you’re reading this post during the month of November, it’s likely that you found it through one of Hodges’ (or its employees’) social profiles. If you found it on Facebook or LinkedIn, the content either appeared organically through your newsfeed—because you’re an engaged fan or friend—or via a sponsored post—because we want you to become an engaged fan. If you’re on Twitter, you found the content organically (woohoo!) and you should comment below because we’d love to know when you saw this content in…
Read MoreIn my last post, I discussed the 4 steps businesses should take in order to develop a social lead-generation campaign: develop the offer, build a landing page to explain it, promote it to existing social communities and track their engagement. While this is an important first step in converting social communities into customers—by giving them a compelling reason or incentive to share their email addresses and thus enter your sales funnel—it does not address reaching new audiences. While virality and the concept of social sharing…
Read MoreMaybe it’s just me, but it feels like everyone is talking about lead generation—how to drum up qualified prospects, drive them to a website and convert them into customers. While I initially categorized this activity as like pure sales, with no connection to public relations, further consideration led me to two conclusions: Storytelling (one of our core capabilities at Hodges) is one of the most effective tools for getting a prospect’s attention and drive them to a business’ website. Social networks have a tremendous amount…
Read MoreThis past week, I digitally attended (aka streamed) The Digital Innovation Summit. The event brought together experts from business and the media who each spoke to how they’re driving innovation, both from a technology and social perspective. The streaming, in and of itself, was kinda interesting and something I personally had never done. We took that approach for several reasons: it allowed other Hodgers to pop in and participate, was very cost effective and it placed minimal burden on my family (which includes 2 kids…
Read MoreWhen we sit down with a new client to plan out a social media strategy, the first question that always comes up is “what kind of content should we post?” Over the past few years, we’ve developed a process for helping clients identify content types and sources, and we’ve shared pieces of that process on this blog before. Last week, I had the opportunity to do a presentation at ConnectVA’s Social Media for Non-Profits Conference. The talk was called “Enchanting Your Audience” and was aimed…
Read MoreAs you may recall from my last post, I’ve had a relatively unique agency experience here at Hodges, working on only one or two clients at a time. While it certainly had its benefits – namely keeping track of hours worked on each project – I didn’t get to experience the fast pace and the diversity of topics that most people ascribe to agency life (and love). Now, as I step into a more traditional PR role, jumping from pitching our newest accounts payable client…
Read MoreFor the past eight years, nearly as long as I’ve worked at Hodges, I’ve been a part of the AMF account in some form or fashion. It began when I was the most junior staffer at Hodges, an office of five at the time, and I was asked to manage 5 new center openings for the upscale 300 Bowling brand, which were launching in major markets around the country. Hodges came up with a hyper-local approach, hiring small to mid-sized PR firms in each market…
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