We are happy to be working with Walmart again this Giving Tuesday and throughout the holidays, as they launch the Food Pantry Holiday Makeover campaign, a nationwide effort calling the public to vote online to help food pantries across the country win money for facility makeovers this holiday season. The 75 food pantries with the most online votes by December 12 will be awarded $20,000 each ($1.5 million total) to purchase new equipment, and renovate facilities to help safely store, prepare, serve and transport food to some of the 49 million Americans in need.

We are fortunate to have a client roster of companies that work in various ways to create better living for consumers. One such example is Savant Capital Management, a nationally recognized top 10 fee-only wealth management firm with a hub in the Washington, D.C. marketplace. Savant works with clients to build ideal futures for their customers through sound financial planning and investment strategies. BRG was brought on this year to elevate Savant’s brand, specifically in the Washington, D.C. marketplace through media relations efforts.

You’ve heard it at every social media and public relations conference. You see it in communications publications. It’s arguably the biggest catchphrase of 2014…

If you’ve developed social media posts, you know that high engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, re-tweets and hearts feel good. These engagement metrics are tangible, and obvious to everyone publicly, which means your boss might check out your brand page, and congratulate you on that post with 500 shares. You might even look at these metrics and work to tweak your content to garner even more engagement, but are these the metrics that should guide your content strategy?

BRG had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the recent PRSA Health Academy Conference here in Washington D.C. It was an engaging conference with compelling speakers and a passionate high-energy group of attendees. All in attendance shared interest in communications that increase awareness of important health issues, and positively and impact everyday choices people make in the name of health and wellness. The interactive presentations were diverse and far-reaching including organizations like the American Cancer Society, CDC, and Aetna.

Earlier this year Matt Cutts, head of the Google Webspam team, stepped forward and shared that Google will be changing the way they rank guest blogs. Guest blogs used to be a great way to generate a link, and drive traffic to a site, but over time, low quality and spammy guest posts have used “guest blogging” as a link-building strategy, and have reduced the overall quality of guest posts. Moving forward, Google will not be placing as much value on guest posts as they did before.