Small Talk, Big Results

How to become a media source, not a seller

By Krystal Tingle, senior account executive

It’s been said time and time again: PR is about relationships. At The Abbi Agency, although creative ideas and strategic planning are priorities, establishing authentic relationships with journalists is the key to our media relations success. As opposed to “selling” our clients, being a valuable source to journalists is our business. How do we do that? Enter: strategic small talk.

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Facebook + Bloggers = winning combination

By Constance Aguilar, social media specialist

Facebook promotions. Whether it’s a contest or a campaign, Facebook promotions are seen as the golden gate to a larger fan base, dedicated customers, and increased engagement. The grab and reward idea for brands for racking up fan numbers isn’t a poor one. Often time, it’s just not executed properly.

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Old Dogs Learning New Tricks

By Junior Account Executive Bridget Veltri

The days of sending Fido, the family dog, out to fetch the newspaper in the morning may be numbered but newspapers are not dead…just adapting. Continue reading

Power to the Bloggers! And the Facebook Contests!

Facebook contests; created as the almighty way to drive traffic to your page, increase engagement, reward your fans, and ultimately, skyrocket your page’s fan count. But as many failed attempts will attest to, that goal is much easier said than done.

We’ve seen contests crash and burn. We’ve had contests crash and burn.

When we first started with Oxygenics and began to build their contest, we got one big request: since we were would only use ShortStack to build their tab, they put us up to the challenge of Wildfire’s promise of “hundreds of thousands of fans”. We set the bar at 9,000 and began.

Boy, was it slow to start. We got an average of 10 news fans per day for the first two weeks. It was painful. We sent emails, posted to our personal Facebook’s, and sunk hundreds of dollars into ads. And it still came nothing close to what we needed to please the client.

We launched the contest on March 12, 2012, with a total of 117 likes. Every day we picked one random entry to win a $50 gift card to Bed, Bath & Beyond. All entrants needed to do were provide their name, age, and email.

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Workin’ the Weekends

By Bridget Veltri, Junior Account Executive

The news knows no day off. Fortunately, as public relations professionals we have the luxury of taking weekends (most of the time) but sometimes working the weekend can make the difference in getting your client covered.

When it comes to local media the weekend staff at news stations and papers are the equivalents of nocturnal animals, rarely seen or recognized but magnificent creatures starved for content. Here are a few things to keep in mind when working with weekend reporters. Continue reading