Facebook Admins may have noticed a new button on their timeline page, the “Create Call-to-Action.” The Create CTA button started appearing on some of our client Pages last week, but at the time of this post, not everyone has the feature, so be on the lookout. Here’s what we know so far. What is it? The CTA button allows admins to insert a CTA directly onto their timeline page (previously it was only available for status updates)at no cost. Choose from the following actions: Book…
Read MoreTwo big announcements this week have “media” people (journalists, PR folks, social media peeps) wondering is this truly the beginning of the end. And the interesting thing is the announcements come from organizations on the opposite ends of the media world. First, Condé Nast, home to such high-regarded media brands like The New Yorker, GQ, Vanity Fair, etc., announced the birth of 23 Stories. This new “studio” gives brands and marketers direct access to editors at Condé Nast magazines to create “branded” content designed to fit in…
Read MoreWe had a client a couple years back that was launching a new product. It was a boot-strapped enterprise, funded mostly by family money and propelled by the kind of energy that fuels early-stage companies and that we PR folks love to feed on. We also did a lot of feeding on the product itself. I won’t reveal what it actually was, but suffice to say it was yummy. REALLY yummy. Because the founder didn’t have much of a marketing budget, he threw what he…
Read MoreSo if you’re like me you’ve consumed all of the “year-ender/year-beginninger” marketing guru roundups. You know the ones where marketing leaders are asked about the big trends of the year and they each proclaim it as “The Year of The (insert the cool marketing word here).” I admit I’ve been guilty of doing that in the past inserting words like “social” or “content” or “personal” into the void as a way of simply describing what the coming year will be known for in public relations…
Read MoreContent marketing is bubbling up here at The Hodges Partnership. Jon heralded its arrival the other week. It’s been the running theme in most of my blog posts the past year. And other people feel the same way. According to one article, 93 percent of marketers employed content marketing to some degree in 2014. But if you aren’t careful, you will sabotage your content marketing campaign by making this one common, but critical mistake—you aren’t willing to invest in visuals to enhance your written content….
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 MoreContinuing on my recent content marketing rant… When the marketing trend du jour emerges, the sirens usually sound proclaiming that “(insert marketing trend du jour here) is the end or death of public relations.” Having been around for a long time, we saw that during the dot-com bubble when online communications became the rage. We also saw similar headlines five years ago at the beginning of the social media era. Now, content marketing is about to kill PR. I don’t know about you, but I…
Read MoreLet me apologize up front to everyone I “talked business” with at the annualish Newman Pig Pickin this past weekend. You know who you are. Thanks for telling me to relax. That being said, every conversation I had over pork and brisket, every phone call I’m having with folks, every new business meeting I’ve taken recently includes the new buzz topic du jour: Content Marketing. Aside from this thrilling me because THP has been focusing our efforts on this for the past year or so,…
Read More(You won’t believe how Facebook’s recent change will affect you…) ^See what we did there? That sigh you heard on Monday was the sound of PR professionals everywhere rejoicing at Facebook’s new “click bait” changes. Finally, content will reach more people due to quality writing, and not because of teasing, deceptive headlines often ending in an ellipsis. Sure, this is another change to Facebook’s frequent algorithm changes, but this is one content creators can get behind because it will impact how brand content is distributed….
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 MoreFirst of all I’d like to thank the folks that got up early this morning to “pack the room” for our first Hodges Starters event. If you joined us for our inaugural session (background here) event, you saw how we manage content on social channels and how it should and can be measurable, strategic and occasionally, magical. (Remember that Ellen selfie at the Oscars?) We haven’t forgotten the folks that couldn’t come (or the folks that made it and asked for a copy of the…
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…
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