Articles Written By:

Steve Cummings

Know the Media—Data Journalism

This past week we got online hits on The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The Boston Globe and Deseret News (and also this fun “Today I Learned” subreddit) for research we created two years ago. Guess how many hours of work it took to land these placements? Zero. In fact, the client is no longer actively engaging in media relations (which might explain why they aren’t mentioned in the articles). So what? At Hodges we spend an inordinate amount of time researching what journalists are looking for…

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The cold, hard truth of media pitching

Pitching the media is hard, and getting harder, but we PR people aren’t doing anything to help make it any easier. Below is my approach to crafting a pitch, but first a couple words of caution for would-be pitchers. Stop it! Hey everyone, pay attention! Especially all you start-ups out there. Stop sending useless emails to the media, you are ruining it for those of us who try really hard at sending useful pitches. To find out what constitutes a bad pitch, Google “bad media…

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Pillows in Space: Taking SleepBetter.org to New Heights

This Sunday, I will be rolling out to the middle of the Black Rock desert (of Burning Man Festival fame) in Nevada to help send pillows 100,000 feet up into (near)space, and any of you can watch this unfold live on SleepBetter.org. It is all part of an out of this world promotional campaign we cooked up for Carpenter Co. and SleepBetter.org on behalf of our client SLAY Communications. It all started this summer with a Facebook fan engagement program called Postcards from Pillow, where…

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Reluctant Bloggers – How to Manage the Blog Killers

​It’s no secret around the office than I am a reluctant blogger, and by reluctant I mean I would rather read legal notices in 102° heat with a halo of gnats around my head than write a post. I am not alone and we, the reluctant bloggers (RBs), can kill a blog before it has a chance to get its first linkback. This is not a problem if it’s a personal blog about pencil sharpeners (they matter, seriously1) but if this is a blog that…

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