by Morgan Lewis | Mar 5, 2025 | Blog
Now that we’re well into 2025, I thought it would be interesting to look back at the most-read blog posts of 2024. My theory about these popular posts is that they reflect the concerns, curiosities and goals of the larger population of that time … or it could just be our team’s savvy SEO strategies and engaging writing skills that kept readers reading.
Regardless, last year’s most-read posts indicate that visitors were looking for levity, given the many popular articles’ lighthearted nature. This is also understandable, considering that many of us were looking for some relief in 2024 from the nonstop barrage of news about the U.S. Presidential campaign.
Another theme that emerged is that several of you – despite the growth of ChatGPT and other generative AI writing tools – seemed to be looking for writing tips and commentary to improve your content. Hooray for real-life human writers!
Without further ado, the following are the top 5 most-read Amendola blog posts from 2024 (in chronological order).
Top 5 Most-Read Blogs of 2024
- “The Taco Bell Times And The Depends Undergarments Press: Is This The Future Of Local News?” by Brandon Glenn.
This amusing post kicked off the year by first discussing an unfunny trend: the widespread closures of daily newspapers and layoffs of journalists. This topic is close to our hearts at Amendola, given that many of us came from consumer and business journalism before jumping to PR. The post, however, does steer toward levity as Brandon explores what could happen if mega-corporations step in to “save” local newspapers by purchasing naming rights or other such business ventures (which occurred at his hometown’s newspaper). What could go wrong?
- “The Best Rule in AP Style is About Animals with Names” by Brandon Glenn.
Brandon returns to the most-read blogs list with his hilarious take on an obscure Associated Press-style rule about pronouns for animals with and without given names. As a follower of AP style (the most common writing manual in consumer and business journalism) for over 25 years, I cannot remember ever looking up if I should refer to a dog named Rex as “who” or “that” in a sentence. Thankfully, the style guide editors resolved this dilemma, which Brandon whimsically explains. So, which is it? You’ll have to read the post to find out.
- “Reflecting Back, Looking Forward: Amendola Marks 20th Anniversary,” by Jodi Amendola.
Our founder and CEO, Jodi Amendola, has seen it all in health tech: digital transformation, the rise of virtual care, COVID-19, and now, generative AI. Jodi’s vast experience and success are likely why so many blog visitors read her post on the 20th anniversary of the agency she launched out of her parents’ condo in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her secret? Jodi humbly admits that she doesn’t have a crystal ball to foretell the industry’s tumultuous changes. Instead, preparing for the unexpected, staying nimble and building the right team have made all the difference over the last two decades.
- “When Slow is the Way To Go in PR and Marketing,” by Chris Nerney.
Post-author and Senior Content Director Chris has decades of experience in journalism, PR, and marketing content, as well as five years as a standup comic in Boston. His wit shows through in this post about the occasions where speed is more of a risk than a benefit. Although filled with valuable and actionable information, Chris injects plenty of humor in describing situations professionals in our industry will recognize. For example: “…you may be writing about concepts that may be ever-so-slightly outside your wheelhouse. That’s OK – you probably didn’t go to medical school, and your yearslong devotion to Grey’s Anatomy will only get you so far.”
- “The ABCs and the 3 Ps of Media Interviews,” by Grace Vinton.
Our media relations dynamo and health-tech celebrity, Grace Vinton, offers advice on a perennial challenge facing health-tech PR and marketing professionals: media interviews. Grace, who has a hugely popular podcast of her own, presents helpful mnemonic devices in the post for health tech executives to prepare for interviews and tips for crafting memorable and easy-to-understand messages. Her guidance is also relevant for any chat with a potential customer, investor or partner where you may not have the time for a detailed discussion about your company and solutions.
New Year, Fresh Insight
Whether it’s writing tips, messaging advice, or insight into the health tech PR and marketing strategies, you can continue to rely on this blog in 2025 to supply you with relevant guidance. I can’t promise that all the posts will be humorous, but they will surely be engaging and informative. Thanks for reading!
by Administrator | Jan 28, 2025 | News
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Jan. 28, 2025 – Amendola Communications (Amendola), part of Supreme Group, announced today that it has been selected by Life365 Health, a leading developer of virtual care technology solutions that enable healthcare delivery at home, to implement a national PR/marketing program.
“Life365 Health chose Amendola to help drive awareness and interest in our AI-driven platform, because of its deep understanding of healthcare, strong media relationships, senior level team and expert writers,” said Kent Dicks, CEO and founder. “Our technology goes beyond remote patient monitoring (RPM) to help healthcare organizations manage large patient populations in a proactive, pre-emptive, prioritized, and personalized manner. We look forward to collaborating with Amendola to more broadly share the story of how we help healthcare organizations monitor populations, improve patient engagement, and control costs.”
Amendola is implementing a comprehensive program of messaging, marketing, public relations, and social media to demonstrate Life365 Health’s industry-leading technology and services, accomplishments, customer wins, and industry partnerships, including those with Veterans Affairs and Microsoft.
Life365 Health has continually set the standard for innovation in RPM and virtual care solutions. The company’s mission is to enable new models of care where technologies, like AI and machine learning, play a crucial role in connecting with a large population of patients to receive insights from home to prioritize those who may be headed to more costly locations.
“Far too often, the RPM process engages with patients far too late, after patients have been discharged from the hospital in a reactive and expensive manner,” said Jodi Amendola, agency CEO. “Life365 is changing this outdated and ineffective model by advancing healthcare delivery with leading-edge technology that enhances patient engagement, personalized care, and facilitates proactive interventions to improve outcomes. We are delighted to help this leader in at-home virtual care expand its customer base and market presence.”
About Life365
Life365 Health is a leading developer of virtual care technology solutions that enable healthcare delivery at home. The Life365 platform addresses key care delivery challenges by providing scalable solution integration and logistics to enterprise healthcare organizations, to enable patient connectivity, engagement, and improved outcomes for their patient populations at home. The platform provides a single integration point that enables providers, payers, and others to utilize a proactive, virtual first care approach to remotely engage and monitor patients with a variety of conditions and needs. These include chronic disease management, post-discharge care, and population health management.
Life365 is led by an experienced, industry recognized team and is a major patent holder of wearables, sensors and patches driven by machine learning / AI, to drive the next generation of remote patient monitoring to scale. Life365 is a strategic partner of Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare and the Veterans Association, serving the largest population of Veterans in the world.
For more information regarding Life365, please visit www.life365.health.
About Amendola
Amendola, part of Supreme Group, is an award-winning, insights-driven public relations and marketing firm that integrates media relations, social media, content, and lead gen programs to move healthcare, life sciences/pharma and healthcare IT decision-makers to action. The agency represents some of the industry’s best-known brands as well as groundbreaking startups disrupting the status quo. Nearly 90% of its client base represents multi-year clients and/or repeat client executives. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros understand the ongoing complexities of the healthcare ecosystem and provide strategic guidance and creative direction to drive positive ROI, boost reputation and increase market share. Making an impact since 2003, Amendola combines traditional and digital media to fuel meaningful and measurable growth. For more information about the industry’s “A-Team,” visit our website and follow us on LinkedIn.
Media Contact
Philip Anast
Amendola for Life365 Health
panast@acmarketingpr.com
by Jodi Amendola | Jan 22, 2025 | Blog
One of the great pleasures of my job is watching members of the Amendola team – the A-Team – demonstrate their knowledge and expertise about public relations and marketing. I see this during staff meetings, on calls with clients and prospective clients, and in the work the A-Team produces for the many companies we represent. I go to sleep every night knowing I hired a team of senior level experts that truly shine.
Over the past year, A-Team members have offered their collective marketing and public relations wisdom through the Amendola blog. As I look back on 2024, I wanted to share with readers some of the blog posts that resonated most with me. Honestly, I could have made this list three times as long! I urge you to click on the links and check out some of the other Amendola posts. They are filled with actionable advice for healthcare technology companies seeking a competitive edge.
Spotting PR opportunities hiding in plain sight
Healthcare technology clients hire Amendola to help them raise their profiles in an exceedingly competitive business environment. And while many clients envision lavish write-ups in the Wall Street Journal or prominent healthcare media – something we’re all for, by the way! – coverage by smaller news outlets can be useful in building brand awareness among potential customers and investors.
“Though often overlooked, local news outlets can be valuable resources for public relations professionals and their clients,” our Senior Content Director Brandon Glenn notes in this blog post from January. “Whether they are general interest dailies, weeklies, or business publications, these media outlets are often interested in milestone topics that don’t necessarily appeal to trade or national media, such as hiring plans, headquarters’ expansions, acquisitions, and other factors that may affect the local economy.” See the opportunity, seize the opportunity.
Take the trade show by storm
Trade shows can cost healthcare technology companies a lot of money, especially if they have a booth on the show floor. It’s important, then, to get the most out of a trade show – otherwise you’re wasting time and funds that could be used elsewhere.
In addition to providing a forum for education and professional networking, trade shows can enable healthcare technology companies to build relationships with the media. In a February blog post, Account Director Kim Mohr offers some best practices for executives seeking to establish relationships with journalists from a variety of publications and mediums. These include preparing for scheduled interviews, being prompt (the journalist’s schedule will be crammed) and having a clear message (more on that later).
Fortune favors the bold – and creative
Amendola clients want to be noticed by investors and prospective customers. Yet they don’t want to stand out for the wrong things. As a result, many of them fear that expressing a strong opinion or point of view will distract from their message and cost them business.
But as Account Director and Media Specialist Grace Vinton warns in this May blog post, “Healthcare technology companies that hide in the herd and play it safe get ignored.” A far more effective strategy, Grace writes, is to “inject your marketing and PR initiatives with a strong storyline framework that employs passion, humanity, humor, and a distinctive voice.” This can be done through social media, bylines, podcasts, and (as discussed above) speaking at conferences. Humanity sells because we’re all human.
Simple sentences, clear messaging
To build brand awareness and grow revenue, healthcare technology companies need clear, concise messaging. That can be difficult when you’re in the business of applying advanced technologies to complex healthcare challenges.
Still, language that is “direct, straightforward and, above all, clear and free of unnecessary jargon” will pay off in the long run. In an August blog post, Amendola Senior Account and Content Director Jim Sweeney explains, “Keeping it simple means your message will be better understood and your busy readers will be grateful for not having to decipher your writing.” Couldn’t have said it better (or simpler) myself.
Compelling lead magnets
Strong customer leads are the refined fuel of the sales pipeline. Healthcare technology companies can use lead magnets to capture and nurture promising leads by offering value in exchange for their contact details.
The best lead magnets are tailored to your target audience’s needs, deliver the value promised, are easy to consume, and can be readily shared, according to Senior Account Director Janet Mordecai. But that’s just a partial list; read about more characteristics of winning lead magnets in Janet’s October blog post.
Conclusion
2024 was an amazing year. In fact, we are bigger and better now as we are part of the Supreme Group. My crystal ball tells me that 2025 will be even better. The A-Team and I can’t wait to continue working with clients whose technologies will help transform healthcare to save and improve lives. We’re in this together.
by Chris Nerney | Jan 8, 2025 | Blog
The start of any year is an ideal time for healthcare companies to review and, if necessary, revise their brand messaging. The industry moves fast, and the message that resonated in January may be gathering mold a few quarters later. Or a healthcare company may want to reach a new target audience as its product evolves and market dynamics change.
Here are three possible marketing and public relations resolutions for 2025 that, if embraced, will help healthcare companies raise their profiles and distinguish themselves from the growing crowd.
Lose the meaningless jargon
Stop telling people your company is “transforming healthcare.” It’s a meaningless phrase used by virtually every healthcare startup. I know because I’ve typed variations of the word “transformational” at the behest of countless clients. I haven’t crunched the numbers, but I’d say there are almost as many companies claiming they’re transforming healthcare as there are “visionaries,” “innovators,” and “trailblazers” on LinkedIn.
Likewise, try to eliminate words and phrases such as “value proposition” and “leveraging,” which are best left for business-school debates. As Amendola founder Jodi Amendola wrote in Forbes last summer, such words “are so tired that they have come to mean virtually anything to anyone, and in turn, they have lost all effectiveness in conveying a unique, memorable marketing and communications message.”
If you’re not unique, you don’t stand out. And if you don’t stand out, you’re essentially invisible. Not exactly the “value proposition” you want from your marketing and PR initiatives, is it? Don’t give potential customers a reason to tune you out.
I also think we’re at the point where healthcare companies need to evolve their messaging beyond terms such as “patient journey” and “social determinants of health,” both of which feel dry and disconnected from real people. Unfortunately, I have no better suggestions. Perhaps an innovative, trailblazing visionary can step forward.
Establish a multimedia presence
When social media took off, some healthcare companies became aggressive early adopters while others held back, not sure whether LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other social platforms were worth their time. If they had to do it all over again, I suspect the laggards would have moved faster to expand their messaging through these channels.
Don’t make the same mistake with multimedia. Audio and video are powerful mediums not only for communicating information, but for connecting with people. For as powerful as the printed word can be, nothing compares to listening to a person talking or watching them speak.
Printed words can’t communicate vocal inflections, eye contact, or a sincere smile the way multimedia can. While these things may not have anything to do with your product’s capabilities or a customer’s specific problems, they can convey a level of trustworthiness and credibility that the printed word can’t match.
A lot of healthcare companies are taking advantage of audio and video podcasts to deliver their message. It would be smart to use those acquired skills to produce short videos for LinkedIn and other social media platforms that make sense for your company. Including videos in press releases is another way to attract media coverage. None of this requires the construction of a video studio; a smartphone and uncluttered background is enough.
Get customers to tell your story
One of the most common challenges facing healthcare companies is persuading customers to help spread the word about their products and services.
Easier said than done, I know. There often are valid reasons why a customer doesn’t want to be co-opted into your PR strategy: They’re busy, they don’t want to be perceived as endorsing a product, and besides, it’s not their job to promote your “transformational” solution.
Nobody, however, is going to tell your story as effectively as a satisfied, real-world customer whose problems you helped to solve. This type of testimonial will resonate with a prospective customer far more deeply than your company pitch deck. Further, having a customer willing to speak publicly will exponentially increase your company’s chances of getting onto conference stages (and thus in front of your target audience). That alone will separate your company from the pack.
Your best chance of getting a customer to talk about your product is to emphasize the genuine benefits to them and remove obstacles (such as investments of time) that are disincentives to participation. If they are truly impressed with your product and you make the process easy for them, customers will be far more likely to talk about how your company’s product helped them. If companies with similar challenges are listening, this messaging will catch their attention.
by Jim Sweeney | Dec 18, 2024 | Blog
In the days following the Nov. 5 election, former X users flocked to the new social media platform Bluesky. Their descriptions upon arrival made them sound like refugees who’d fled a war-torn country and found sanctuary.
Bluesky, they said, is everything Twitter used to be before Elon Musk changed it to X and turned it into a platform for right-wing disinformation. Bluesky, they rhapsodized, is safe, informative, educational and, well, nice.
The internet could certainly use more niceness, but is Bluesky a place for brands? It depends.
Certainly not if their intent is to advertise because Bluesky does not accept ads and its owners say they intend to keep it that way. Of course, that was Reddit’s policy once, too. According to the company, it plans to charge fees for users who create custom domains on the site and will eventually sell subscriptions for higher-quality video uploads or profile customizations like colors and avatar frames.
But it’s hard to just ignore Bluesky. Its growth has been phenomenal. Since opening to the public in February, it has grown to over 25 million users. Post-election, it has been attracting nearly 1 million new users a day. It has been the most downloaded free app. Naturally, those numbers have drawn the attention of brands.
Its vigorous policing of content and blocking of racist, hateful and offensive material also makes it attractive to brands. Of course, that degree of control will become harder to achieve as the number of users rises.
Some brands (Duolingo, Hulu, Netflix) are posting organically while others like Red Bull and Xbox seem to have secured handles, but haven’t begun posting. Bluesky does not yet have a verification process, so trolls also are snatching up some brand handles, which is an argument for consumer-facing brands to, at minimum, control their names. For now, though, the platform is mostly user-generated content.
Besides the advertising ban, brands face another challenge on Bluesky. The platform lets users design and control their own feeds, which means they can filter out anything they don’t want to see. For users, it means a cleaner experience; for brands, it means fewer eyeballs. They will have to work to earn engagement with users who might not welcome their presence on the platform.
Politics aside, Bluesky differs from rivals X, Threads and Mastodon in another significant way. It’s an open platform with an API that is accessible to developers, which means any decent programmer can use the same architecture to build new interconnected sites, across which they can share content.
There is also a possibility that Bluesky becomes a de facto platform for liberals and progressives while X continues its conservative MAGA trend under Trump buddy Musk. If that happens, brands and thought leaders would have to decide whether it’s the audience they want to reach and whether joining Bluesky would tag them as progressive, which could cause a backlash (see Bud Light).
Brands and thought leaders that left X over unhappiness with its new direction and objectionable content shouldn’t feel compelled to join Bluesky right away. They can rely on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and, of course, LinkedIn for messaging (see some best practice tips here.) Exceptions might be those who want specifically to reach a progressive audience or to signal their displeasure with the direction of X.
Marketers should, however, keep an eye on Bluesky to see if it continues its growth and makes any changes to be more accommodating to brands.
Below is a quick rundown of some Bluesky features. Keep in mind that the platform is still evolving, and these can change:
- Text posts have a 300-character limit.
- Users can self-label their posts, especially those containing sensitive content.
- “Starter Packs” are curated collections of accounts designed to help users find others with similar interests. One click allows users to follow or block all accounts within the pack.
- Users can customize their feed and viewing preferences.
- It includes an in-app music and video player.
- Bluesky offers custom domains, allowing users to personalize their handles with their domain names.
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