New hire press releases: Is anyone listening?

Anyone who's been in the media, marketing or communications industries has likely seen hundreds. If you're an ex-reporter-turned-PR-guy like me, then you've no doubt seen thousands. Unfortunately, I'm not talking about performance bonuses or letters of adoration from...

Trade Shows and Events: Four Ways to Improve Your ROI

Whether you personally believe trade shows are the land of opportunity or merely a relic of a bygone era where primitive being skulked through the aisles without the benefit of a smartphone, there is no question that they are still a fact of life for many of us. In...

The Science of Marketing and Public Relations

You got approval for a $3 million marketing budget from the C-suite. While that may sound small to some and exorbitant to others the one guarantee is the marketing team will be required to "prove their value" after the money is spent. Unlike some other departments who...

Reverse Engineer Your Story-Telling

A couple of years ago, a client of mine who launched a health IT startup, marveled at the number of healthcare entrepreneurs who came up with a cool idea and then went in search of a market for it. In most cases, he told me, this approach found them struggling to find...

Why Are You Reading This?

News Flash: There is a lot of written content on the web. That means it is challenging to grab a reader's attention and even more difficult to hold it. One study, from way back in 2014, found online readers generally click away after 15 seconds. Five years and...

Time to Spring Clean Your PR Strategy

The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the flowers and trees are blooming. It's that time of the year when I think about Spring cleaning, especially living in Atlanta where everything inside and out is covered in pollen. As I was dusting my entire house last...

Get Your Marketing and PR Programs Ready for Summer

Healthcare IT public relations agency Amendola Communications offers three ideas to help keep marketing and PR programs filled with energy and enthusiasm SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., April 24, 2019 As we near the end of spring, we're reminded that vacation season is just around...

Please, No More “No Comments”

By now it should be settled: when confronted by an inquiring reporter, never ever respond with "No comment." Just don't, no matter how uncomfortable a question makes you. As others before me have emphatically noted there is no faster way to make a reporter instantly...

Maximizing the Value of PR Placements

The big day has finally arrived. After rearranging schedules, sweating out interviews or writing deadlines, and walking the line between "persistent" and "pest" your PR placement has seen the light of day. Huzzah! (I am bound and determined to bring back "huzzah" as...

Programmatic Advertising The New Drip Campaigns

Earlier this month, eMarketer covered research from Dun & Bradstreet about the growth of programmatic marketing and how it will influence account-based marketing. Interestingly, 63% of B2B marketers in the research were using programmatic buy in their efforts and...

Your Agency Partner Team Extension or Another Vendor?

You went through the rigorous process to find a new agency partner. Whether it was for lobbying, communications, marketing or website development, this process took you and your team time. Now you have them onboard what next? How do you optimize your relationship to...

So You Want to Be in the Wall Street Journal

Most PR professionals have had this happen to them at one point or another. You're in a meeting with top client/company executives, and to gain some insights into their thinking you ask them, "What would be a home run for the PR program?" The answer comes back, "A...

Media Interview Preparation 101

Some executives dedicate ample time and effort to media interview preparation studying the journalist's previous coverage, developing carefully considered talking points while others, not so much. Guess which ones are typically more pleased with the outcomes of their...

Getting To Your Happy Place at HIMSS19

HIMSS19 is fast approaching and for a successful conference, you are likely already planning and preparing. The Amendola team is in full swing preparing clients for the big show in Orlando, from product announcements, media kit development and booth collateral to...

Guidelines for a Darn Good Press Release Headline

Editors and journalists get a ridiculous number of press releases in their inbox every day. It isn't just this week's news that a press release completes with it's releases from prior weeks, being re-sent and re-packaged to find new coverage. It's a tough, competitive...

Amendola Communications Top 10 Blog Posts of 2018

Amendola Communications' blog is designed to share our knowledge of public relations and marketing communications, but also to help other marketing professionals gain an understanding of how PR can and should be integrated into their campaigns. Based on our blog's...

Making HIMSS19 Count

This year's HIMSS Annual Conference & Exhibition (aka HIMSS19) in Orlando will be my eleventh seven as a HIMSS staffer and four as a public relations liaison for vendor clients. The HIMSS Annual Conference has become the NFL of health IT there is no real offseason...