AUGUST 2016 HEARTBEAT

NOTHING LAZY ABOUT THESE SUMMER DAYS

HMG has been enjoying a busy and productive summer, working with long-standing clients on their communications needs as well as proudly assisting several new clients with their projects. Here’s what we’ve been up to!

1. Inland Sea – Harlan LLC – this start-up company tapped HMG to coordinate logistics and marketing for their upcoming equity drive. They intend to build a state-of-the-art recirculating aquaculture system near Harlan, Iowa, to raise Atlantic salmon. Learn more about their project and equity drive by visiting the website we built for them at inland-sea.com.

2. Iowa Pork Producers Association – to support Prestage Foods with their second attempt to locate a pork processing facility in Iowa, IPPA hired HMG to work on messaging including editorials, letters to the editor, social media, presence at events, and other strategy. You can see some of our infographics if you visit Pork. The Wright Choice for Iowa on Facebook (not all infographics are ours).

 

3. Reicks View Farms – a family farm with a great story to tell asked us to help strategize a communications strategy to bring their point of view to legislators, regulators, and the press. Our work with them has just begun though we look forward to reputation management, social media, events, and communications strategy efforts.

4. Region XII Council of Governments – we are in the midst of designing a new website for this agency located in Carroll, Iowa. The mission will be to update their image, present information as clearly as possible, and do so with flair.

We have been going full throttle with these and other projects! And we’re here, ready to help you tell your story as well.

Remember, if you don’t tell your story, your competitors will for you, and you won’t like their version.

PROOF

For some, proofing may be about letting yeast dough rise. For HMG, it’s about reviewing documents for accuracy.

At a recent workshop, Ann attended a session on proofing your own work. Here are some of the tips and tricks she picked up, courtesy of presenter Gerri Berendzen of the American Cope Editor’s Society.

  1. Read the document
  2. Read it again
  3. Read it aloud
  4. Change your surroundings and read again
  5. Ask others to read your work for you

The key, per Berendzen, is to realize being your own editor is tough. Engaging others, as we do for each other at HMG, helps capture the typos, misspellings, and grammatical misdeeds.

Berendzen also cautioned against over-reliance on spell check software. It’s fallible! Though she did recommend investing in grammar check services such as grammarly.

Lots of eyes go over every bit of work produced at HMG. We don’t claim perfection though we do work very hard to be sure everything we do for our clients is as close to it as possible.

CLOSED LABOR DAY

In observance of Labor Day, Heartland Marketing Group will be closed September 5. Have a safe Labor Day weekend!!