In our latest episode of Teaming Up, Erin Bagnell teams up with freelance travel journalist Lydia Mansel to discuss tourism communications. The duo talks through Lydia’s journey from full time work to freelance writing and how the industry has changed within that time. They also discuss the ins and outs of navigating the industry from all sides.

• Transitioning from full time to freelance
• Trends in destination and travel marketing
• Building relationships with professionals throughout the industry
• Impact of media landscape and AI

• Lydia Mansel
• Just Packed Newsletter

In this bonus episode, we’ve talked to the new leadership team at Hodges about our recent transition announcement. You’ll hear from Jon Newman, Paulyn Ocampo, Lindsay O’Bar, Greg Surber, Sean Ryan and Josh Dare about what this means to them, what their goals are for the future of the agency and you’ll learn exactly what Josh has planned for his upcoming retirement.

• A different Hodges…the ownership.
• Hodges’ Instagram with Announcement Content

In this bonus episode, we’re giving you the Q&A portion from our Teaming Up Live event from earlier this summer. Senior Vice President Sean Ryan fields audience questions for Jason Fuller, a producer with NPR’s All Things Considered, and Adisa Hargett-Robinson, a former associate booking producer with ABC News.

• Who and how to pitch
• The impact of disinformation in the newsroom
• The use of AI in the newsroom

In our inaugural LIVE recording of Teaming Up, we welcomed a panel of national media experts to share insights from the newsroom. Our Sean Ryan, senior vice president of media relations, served as a moderator and was joined by Jason Fuller (producer) and Adisa Hargett-Robinson (reporter and media producer). Sharing their insights to a packed house, the trio unpacked a day in the life of a national newsroom producer and explored a variety of areas that impacts both sides of the pitch — from challenges in media today, to navigating things like AI and misinformation.

• Daily routines of national newsroom
• Challenges facing reporters and producers in today’s media landscape
• Pitching advice
• Navigating a world of mis- and disinformation
• The impact of digital advertising and AI on journalism

• Jason Fuller on LinkedIn
• Adisa Hargett-Robinson on LinkedIn

In our latest episode of Teaming Up, Lindsay O’Bar is joined by Onie Girton, senior vice president of sales and client services at Hilldrup. Hilldrup, and Onie in particular, represents our longest standing client relationship. We’ve been working with her since we onboarded Hilldrup in 2011. Building and nurturing relationships is a critical part to our business, and to the work Onie does at Hilldrup, which involves client retention and sales. A relationship-building role isn’t right for everyone because it’s just as much learned skill and intuition, but these ladies are sharing their smarts with concrete takeaways for anyone to use.

• Building trust is a key ingredient to relationship building.
• It’s not just about big stuff, but lots of small stuff can have a big impact within relationships.
• They’ll give tangible tips and best practices to build lasting relationships.

• Hilldrup
• How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie

In our latest episode of Teaming Up, Paulyn Ocampo is joined by Ashley Brooks, of council at Roth Jackson. The duo focus on the legalities and guardrails we should consider as we navigate the integration of tools like ChatGPT, Jasper and Claude in our industry. These large-language models are being trained on billions of pieces of data, but is what about the ethics? Was copyrighted material part of the training set? Is the content actually original? What are the red flags we need to know about? This episode unpacks it all.

• Ownership of content
• Training AI tools with copyrighted data
• Navigating bias and misinformation

• Roth Jackson
• ChatGPT
• Copyright Office Publishes Part 2 of it AI and Copyright Report

In our latest episode of Teaming Up, Adrienne Maxwell teams up with Addison Clark’s Anne-Stuart Teter to explore all things search engine optimization. Addison Clark has been behind Hodges’ SEO for several years, while also supporting clients like Virginia Spirits in its optimization efforts. SEO goes well beyond identifying the right keywords to have on your pages: there are both content and technical implications that have to constantly be monitored and adjusted to keep your business ranked where you want it. Episode Highlights

• The importance of metadata, content quality and website functionality in SEO rankings
• Why organizations need to factor in constant analytics reviews and measurement discussions
• How AI Overviews are impacting Google search results

Related Links

• Addison Clark

As you can see, Hodges has been busy getting our new brand up and running, so we were a little bit behind launching the newest season of Teaming Up – but we’re back! In this episode, Diana McMahon, vice president of InUnison, joins Meg Irvin, APR in conversation about all things local (and in our case, all things Richmond). The pair talked about InUnison’s mission to support locally owned, independent businesses in central Virginia, while also breaking down some of the benefits and advantages of getting involved have on not only individual businesses, but the entire business community as a whole.

· Exploring InUnison’s role in the Richmond community · Participating in research to help generate insights that benefit a collective · The importance of shopping and supporting local

· InUnison · Find Local Directory · Learning Lab and other InUnison Resources · Recycled Yarn