When we re-launched Aria Marketing four years ago, the leadership team had a unique opportunity to rebuild the company and its culture. We looked back at the previous fifteen years and reflected on what was working and where there was opportunity for improvement. We kept some stuff, ditched some other stuff, and tried some new stuff. For this blog post, I wanted to share some of the initiatives we undertook that garnered the most and quickest positive responses from staff.

One of the best parts about working at a virtual healthcare IT PR agency is using creative means to build relationships with our colleagues and get to know them better outside of the day-to-day workflow. Recently, I connected with our newest Account Executive to learn what makes her tick and what is of interest. Read on for more about Janee.

I’m going to let you in on one of our secrets for success. As a smaller PR agency, we know we can’t do it all. So, we’ve partnered with some amazing companies to help expand our capabilities and add value for our clients. One such partner is Altos, a digital marketing agency whom we bring in for client projects such as website design. We think they’re the best in the biz, which is why I reached out to Altos Creative Director, Justin Martin, to see if he could share his top website design tips with our blog readers. Lucky for us, he obliged. So, take it away, Justin:

Happy Thanksgiving! One tradition that has made its way into homes across the country is sitting down at the dinner table and answering the question, “what are you grateful for?”.  It’s common for this question to be met with silence as everyone tries to scramble for an answer. When life is full of busy workdays, nights of cooking, and weekends of errands, it’s easy to get lost in the monotony and forget about the things that truly matter. If the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that life can change in the blink of an eye. That’s why it’s important to slow down this holiday season, savor the moment, and treasure the people closest to you. Since we couldn’t be together in person this year, the Aria Marketing family sat down virtually to reflect on the past year and share what we’re grateful for.

Brittney Darner joined the Aria team as an account executive (this past July. In just a couple of months, we’ve gotten to know her a whole lot better and want to share some of her interests, hobbies and quirky characteristics – some of which may surprise you for a 22-year old PR newbie. Here’s our list of top ten fun facts about Brittney:

April was a busy month for Aria. Not only did Boston experience summer-like temperatures, but the Boston Marathon was a great success and some of our professional sports teams made it to the playoffs. Aria’s clients had some pretty big wins as well, here’s a recap of April highlights!

April was another busy, but successful month here at Aria. While Aria’s executive team attended HITMC18, the rest of the company was back at home working hard on securing some great results for our clients. Here are a few highlights from the past month:

Each year, we look forward to the one and only event that is truly geared toward our niche (PR and marketing for the healthcare industry), the Healthcare IT Marketing and PR Conference (HITMC). This year, not only did Aria again sponsor and exhibit at the show, but I was selected to present alongside longtime client, Kyruus. During our session, we shared insights on how to curate and leverage data to highlight market leadership via an integrated public relations and marketing campaign. For those reading who were unable to attend our session, I included some of the highlights below.

Summer is always a good opportunity to dig into an interesting book, and with the COVID-19 pandemic still keeping people at home, the Aria Marketing team has had more spare time to read than ever before. As a healthcare PR agency, we read about healthcare news and events on a daily basis, but sometimes it’s good to take a break to explore other topics. As such, we’ve compiled a list of our office’s current recommendations for your staycation or socially-distant beach day.

Who said that August is a slow news month? Actually, our team here at Aria has been busy scheduling media interviews, securing coverage wins and getting ready for our clients’ upcoming fall events. Now that we’ve said goodbye to fun “Summer Fridays” spent at the beach, let’s take a look at our top wins for this month:

Meet the newest member of the Aria team, Account Coordinator, Serena Bronda. In getting to know Serena, we’ve learned that she has lived in some amazing places. So, I thought this blog post would be a great excuse to find out a bit more about her experiences around the world.

Nothing like a pandemic to highlight the importance of maintaining cleanliness and good hygiene, huh? I like to think of myself as a trailblazer as I’ve always been a stickler for copious hand-washing (as my children would undoubtedly attest to). And, lucky for me, my wife Melissa is pretty into cleaning as well. In fact, she just happens to be the Chief Cleaning Officer of MaidPro, a residential cleaning franchise with locations across North America. As a nationally recognized authority on cleaning, Melissa has been featured in numerous national media outlets from Martha Stewart and realsimple to the Washington Post. Lately, she’s been hard at work on the frontlines of the cleaning industry’s response to COVID-19. So, who better to recruit to answer some of the Aria staff’s most pressing cleaning questions? Take it away, Melissa!

With Labor Day just around the corner and plenty of Summer Friday stories to share, it’s still hard to believe that the summer is almost over! We’ve been busy coordinating media interviews, securing coverage wins and prepping our clients for upcoming fall speaking opportunities. Before you grab your first pumpkin spice latte of the season, here’s the August edition of Aria Client Catch-Up!

One of the great things about Aria Marketing is that we get to work with so many technology companies doing amazing things for patients, providers, and the healthcare system in general. One such client is eVideon, a Michigan-based company providing hospitals with interactive patient engagement and digital workflow solutions.

Throughout the year, Aria Marketing participates in a variety of charity events to give back to the local community and spread awareness of important causes. Often, we try to find organizations that align in some way with our PR agency’s focus on healthcare. Our most recent charity involvement has been with The Jimmy Fund, a non-profit organization that raises funds to support research and technology for Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Aria made it our mission to raise at least $3,500 as a team and walk the Boston Marathon® Jimmy Fund 10K on September 24th. To date, we have surpassed our goal and kept the momentum going. Getting there wasn’t easy, but there were a few successful tactics we employed which we thought we’d share to help inspire other companies in their fundraising efforts.

There are many opportunities in healthcare journalism for thought leaders to contribute content. Healthcare reporters are continuously soliciting bylined articles from healthcare industry thought leaders and experts to keep up with the content demand of digital media. As a healthcare focused public relations agency our goal is to amplify our client’s thought leadership platform and we see the byline article as one of the greatest ways to do so as they enable experts to directly communicate their insights and expertise in their own words to their desired audience. In general, contributed content – like a bylined article – is an excellent way for the client to control their message and eliminates opportunities for outside biases and perspectives. That said, publications and editors often have very specific criteria and sometimes unspoken expectations that contributed content must adhere to. Below we’ve shared the top three best practices to consider when drafting a byline or any other kind of contributed content.

As we look back at our biggest PR wins of the year, it becomes clear that one of the most successful strategies we deployed for clients centered on leveraging and packaging up data. One client that has seen the positive outcome of this strategy year over year is Kyruus. For the third time, we partnered with them to help promote its annual Patient Access Journey Report (PAJR) via leveraging data and insights to highlight its market leadership. Below is a snapshot of the strategy we deployed and some highlights of the results garnered to date: 

December is the most wonderful time of the year, and not just because of all the holiday cheer. We had some excellent client successes throughout the month, which was a perfect way to close out a great 2017 and welcome more PR wins in 2018. Here are our highlights from December:

At this point in my tenure at Aria, I have interviewed many job seekers for positions ranging from hopeful interns and co-op students to VP-level candidates. This past year especially, my company has seen such high demand for our PR and marketing communications services that we have had to make a number of new hires to support our continued growth.

That all sounds really exciting – and it is—but as they say, you have to kiss a few frogs (or 20) to find your prince/ss (or PR maven). Throughout this hiring process, my Aria interview team has had differing opinions about which candidates should receive an Aria “rose,” but we all agree that there are five core qualities that the next Aria employee should embody:

I recently sat down with Aria’s Executive Vice President, Jessica Cohen, to learn about her successes and challenges to date as a woman in business. At just 34 years old, Jessica has proven that young women can make it to the top in the male-dominated world of healthcare and in the increasingly competitive PR industry. Below are some of the insights she shared to help guide and empower other young women working to make their mark.