It’s hard to believe it has been more than six months since Aria Marketing became a fully remote agency. Though there have been some bumps in the road, the transition has gone surprisingly well and has actually helped us to grow as an agency. We are now able to hire public relations all-stars from across the country. One such all-star is our newest employee, Account Coordinator Haley Collins. I had the pleasure of virtually catching up with Haley to get to know her a little better and to find out how she likes to spend her time when she is not securing coverage for our healthcare IT clients. Read on to learn more!

One of the benefits of being a fully remote PR agency is that we can hire the best public relations executives from across the country rather than being constrained by one physical location. Aria’s latest addition to the team, account coordinator Jordan Needs, has the distinction of being our first team member residing in Utah! I was lucky enough to chat with Jordan to learn more about him and the journey that led him to Aria Marketing. Read on to find out more! 

The Aria team has been working remotely since March of 2020. Of course, this transition came with initial challenges but we are fortunate to be in a profession where we can secure results for our health IT clients from anywhere with a WiFi connection. Despite the tumultuous nature of past year, it has been one of steady growth for Aria, and we are excited that we were able to welcome many new faces to the team!

Maddi Larsen, account coordinator and trivia superstar, joined Aria at the beginning of 2021. I had the pleasure of catching up with her to discuss quarantine hobbies, her background, and why she moved across the country to Boston:

As a political junkie and a healthcare public relations professional I have followed the healthcare debate with keen interest, and I have been anticipating the day when we would finally have a serious political discussion about how best to fix or replace the ACA.  Sadly, even as we remained hopeful a decision would be made pre-Independence Day break, the Senate decided to delay the vote and now we are barely having that conversation.

So, I thought it might be useful to use the occasion of the new Senate Republican healthcare bill to bring-up a few relevant issues that seem to be getting left out of the conversation:

As the beautiful foliage began falling from the trees outside, the Aria team was hard at work inside securing top-notch results for our clients which we wanted to share in this blog. Read about some of our clients’ latest PR wins for the month of November!

Halloween came and went, and on top of the plentiful amount of candy in the Aria office, we also secured some sweet results for our clients. So before we trade in our candy for stuffing and mashed potatoes, we wanted to share some of our top PR wins for the month of October.  

This week, our team jetted to Vegas for Aria’s second biggest industry trade show of the year, HFMA ANI. As we announced in our latest press release, Aria represented seven leading healthcare finance and technology companies at the show, including Craneware, Docent Health and Capto. Aside from eating some great food and doing a little gambling, our crew spent their time running around the event floor staffing media interviews, attending sessions, and taking part in all the onsite action. Check out some of our client highlights from the show:

As the world starts turning after months of lockdowns and restrictions, the healthcare market – and our clients-- saw major developments in telehealth, vaccine rollouts, patient engagement, and the long-awaited Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology rule updates on interoperability. The Aria team tackled a busy few months, meeting every challenge with grace. This last quarter we generated unique healthcare content, and we can’t wait for what the rest of 2021 will bring. Here is a look at some of the client coverage highlights we secured this past quarter:

While some companies may slow down during the summer months, the Aria team turned up the heat and kept our activities flowing - and the results show. We secured noteworthy coverage for our clients and provided them with opportunities to share their expertise in several prominent publications in Q3.

While we are fully embracing the start of 2022, we did want to take a moment to look back on our fourth quarter of 2021, as we were able to close out a wild year with some top-notch results for our clients.

Read on for some of our favorite highlights from this past quarter:

As we close out the first month of 2018, the Aria team thought it would be fun to look back at some of the most cringe-worthy PR debacles of 2017. Unfortunately, there were many to choose from, but we thought these five really stood out from the pack!

Another day, another traveler removed from a plane for seemingly ridiculous reasons, and a statement from the airline that leaves me scratching my head: ‘Our flight crews are extensively trained to ensure the safety and security of all customers.’

Is that really the best we can do? Especially given the hyper-focus in social and news media right now on how airlines treat their passengers?

While we were unable to join last week’s HITMC chat on virtual events, we were so interested in the topic that we were inspired to sit down with our client, Elizabeth Glaser, AVP of Strategic Marketing at 2bPrecise, a precision medicine software company, to discuss what it takes to run a successful virtual event in the healthcare IT world.

Read on for insights about how she develops webinars for 2bPrecise and attracts attendees, and what she thinks the future of events will look like in a post-COVID world.

The air is crisp, the leaves are changing, and the apples are ripe for picking. It is officially fall in Boston, and with the change of seasons comes a new round of PR wins we secured for our clients in September.

I was asked to write a blog post comparing and contrasting what it’s like for public relations executives to work at a PR/marketing agency vs. working in-house. I think I was chosen for this task because I’ve divided my career pretty evenly between the two and my PR colleagues assumed I had some sage advice on how to select one over the other. Spoiler alert: I don’t. A quick Googling of the topic will result in every pro and con you could imagine, and I don’t think I could add much more to the mix. What I can do, however, is share what I have felt to be the most impactful pros and cons of each, which could help others to decide which is the right path for them.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to global society and economic activity, and we will surely be coping with its aftereffects for many years to come.  However, there have been some silver linings, such as less pollution, normalization of remote work, accelerated use of telemedicine.  In our work, we have also seen a real boost for health care PR and thought leadership.  Healthcare and the ideas and technologies that make it work have become headline news, and while our clients have benefitted from the 24/7 COVID-19 news focus, we are starting to see the total dominance of that issue in the media begin to give way to interest in other stories.  As a result, we are working with our clients to start preparing to adapt their strategies to a next phase, where it’s not “all pandemic all the time,” and other news and ideas can get attention.

As a PR agency that specializes in healthcare, we rely on Twitter as a way to stay up to speed on all of the breaking news and policy changes that occur on an hourly basis in today’s 24/7 media world. More than that, Twitter is also a way for us to show our personality, engage with other industry experts, debate a hot topic, or take ourselves a little less seriously. Whether you are looking for a way to stay up to date on the latest news in healthcare IT or looking for a little entertainment, here are some of the Aria team’s favorite Twitter accounts:

As PR professionals, we are constantly working to get our clients in the conversation – from securing press opportunities and speaking slots to announcing new product launches and strategizing social media programs. The goal of all of this, of course, is to get in front of decision-makers that will be moved enough to take out their wallets – but it’s challenging to directly link PR results to sales, or even to leads. Every once in a while, I get a call or email from someone that read an article about a health IT client and wants to discuss purchasing their technology, but it’s a rare (yet oddly satisfying) occurrence.

Last month, Aria attended the third annual Health IT Marketing and PR Conference in Atlanta. At the show, our longtime client, Rick Weissinger, VP of corporate marketing, at Craneware, gave an interesting presentation on best practices for tackling a company rebrand. We connected with Rick after the show to dig a bit deeper into what a rebrand really is, and why Craneware, a company well-known for championing revenue integrity, chose to give its brand a face-lift. Check out our Q&A with Rick below to learn more about his experience and insights:

Working in the healthcare PR industry, it is our job here at Aria Marketing to keep up with the latest industry news, including regulatory changes, new trends, major company announcements, and much more. E-newsletters are a great way to keep our fingers on the pulse of the news cycle as they summarize the top stories of the day and package them up in an easy-to-consume format. However, with hundreds of healthcare e-newsletters to choose from, it’s difficult to know where to start or which ones have the most value. To save your inbox, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite e-newsletters to keep you informed on the latest industry news.