Three things to brag about…

The most difficult thing about creating a “personal” brand is deciding when to cash in on the equity you have built with it for business purposes.  For that reason I have been careful over the life of this blog not to be overly promotional about the work we do at The Hodges Partnership.

It’s not because I’m not incredibly proud of the work we do, but because I didn’t want this blog to just be a promotional tool for the agency.

The same goes for my personal account on Twitter.  That’s been a big mix of PR, social media and personal conversations with a lot of Mets, Jets and Springsteen mixed it.

It’s because of that and also the desire of the other folks at THP for share their thoughts that we have launched the official THP Twitter account @hodgestweets.  Many Hodgers including myself will be the collective voice behind the avatar and we hope to develop our own company personality in the coming days and months.

In order to get the ball rolling, we’re giving away and iPad 3G to those who follow us and retweet the contest promo that can be easily found on Twitter.

We also plan to launch a Hodges blog that will give everyone a “peek behind the gong” and introduce other talented people and voices and the work they do to make me and Josh look good every day.

In that spirit there are two other things I want to crow about. There’s a great story in today’s Times-Dispatch on Commonwealth ChalleNGe, a tremendous “last chance” program for Virginia’s troubled teens.  ChalleNGe is a long-time THP client and this series of columns by Bill Lohmann and Alexa Edlund is due primarily to Sean Ryan’s hand work on the account.  Congrats to Sean.

Also, in the last two years as we have learned and worked on various social media projects perhaps nothing has made me more proud than the creation of #steakchatrva, the social media events we work on for Morton’s. (Shout out to Jason and Ann Marie)

The premise is simple, get a half a dozen people together talking about an important topic they know about over a steak dinner and let the whole world eavesdrop online.  Past “steakchats” have included talks about sports, the arts, economic development.  But perhaps none of these conversations is as important as the one coming up on June 22, when the topic is “The Future of Richmond’s Past.”

The group at the table is some of the key thought leaders and drivers of the conversation of Richmond’s past, present and future as we mark the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation.  We expect the conversation to be enlightening.  You have the ability to listen and partake through the live blogs and live chats provided by folks like John Sarvay and our partners at Richmond.com.

We hope to expand such events for clients in the future through the use of online and mobile technology.

We’re going to have some exciting announcements in the near future about THP’s expansion into this area, but that’s for another blog post….isn’t it??? 🙂

Thanks to everyone.