Our Views
The Digital Revolution is Coming for Journalists – How PR Can Adapt
As marketers have seen for years, the digital landscape is rapidly shifting – largely driven by algorithmic changes from digital advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, and Bing. While these shifts have been taking place for some time on the advertising side,...
From ‘Ping’ to Bing – LinkedIn Targeting Has Now Arrived
As marketers, we’re constantly looking at how to improve our ability to reach the right audiences with our messages – especially when we’re paying for it. In an exciting announcement last month, Bing unveiled it would now allow paid search targeting based on LinkedIn...
Social Media Trends To Watch For in 2019
As we dive into a new year it’s important to not just look back at trends from last year, but also look at what trends will emerge in the coming year. As an agency, Next Step Communications tuned into a SEMrush webinar, The Social Media Trends to Watch For In 2019, to...
Thoughts From Our Summer Intern
After an incredibly hot summer, we’re excited to welcome lovely New England fall at Next Step Communications, but sad to say goodbye to our summer intern, Amanda. Before heading off to Australia for her fall semester, Amanda reflected on her time at Next Step Communications as our PR intern, and the lessons she learned while working with us.
Meet our Spring Intern: Kate
Hello, Kate O’Kelly-Lynch! College: Boston College Major: Economics Grad Year: 2017 Hometown: Dublin, Ireland Hobbies: Spin classes, Spotify & Soundcloud, Traveling Describe yourself in three words: Diligent. Inquisitive. Ambitious. What are you most excited about...
Does the Annual Check Up Have to be in the Office?
Over the past few months there have been many conversations about the role of the annual physical for a typical, healthy adult who isn’t experiencing any kind of ‘urgent’ symptoms. Certainly these annual visits aren’t doing any harm (beyond the economic costs for...
What I’ve Learned in 24 Months
Since founding NSC, I’ve learned how much heart and effort is needed to put into a company in order to be successful. And that doesn’t even include the work! A few weeks ago we had an office situation – the toilet seat was broken and there was some serious ‘sliding’...
Bloomingdale’s Holiday Ouch
How is this possible? Who is in charge of the universal sniff test? Who thought this was holiday chic? I’m far from PC, and obviously not fashionable, but I don’t even get the ad. As a ‘communications business owner’ I often stress to my team exercise craft excellence...
Apparently we are Intimidating
Last week I had the privilege of returning to UMASS to participate and network in a Communication department Alumni Board meeting. I wasn’t given the ‘secret handshake’ but seems that I’ll be formally invited to join later this fall. As part of my visit, I had a great...
NSC Gets SpoOoOky
On Friday the team got into the Halloween spirit for our first pumpkin carving competition! It's one of my favorite traditions, but my carving skills have rarely exceeded three triangles and a gap tooth smile, so I was given the very tough job of judge. It was a tough...
Care Coordination – Can’t We All Just Work Together?
Over the past few weeks, our family has been put in the patient care continuum – with our daughter developing an infection post-surgery to fix a broken arm. Thankfully we continue to be on the mend, but from someone who considers himself ‘somewhat knowledgeable’ about...
Intel Passes the Science Talent Search Torch
This week Intel was faced with an interesting PR challenge when it announced the decision to end a 20-year relationship with the Science Talent Search program – the nation’s oldest science fair for high school students. Sure, at first blush it might look like abandon...
Golf Clap for CVS
We should all give CVS a standing ovation for its decision to stop selling cigarettes. However, today’s news that CVS is helping reduce smoking in the US is a ‘tough pill to swallow’. Should anyone be surprised this research was lead by CVS’ Health Research Institute...
Thoughts From Our Summer Intern
The end of summer means saying goodbye to the heat (actually not too sad about that one after this week!), sand between your toes, white pants and at the Next Step office, our amazing intern Sarah Strangie. Before heading back to Amherst and her favorite slice of...
What Happened to the Ebola Crisis?
Just a year ago, you couldn’t turn on the news without hearing about Ebola. As doctors and nurses were returning from West Africa after providing compassionate care to those in suffering, Ebola was labeled as the pandemic that was going to take down the US population....
Reality versus REALITY
For years I’ve struggled to grasp the senseless popularity of a family based in Southern California that manipulates the weekly tabloid silly sheets for greater marketing pull. My struggle is that people care and they are winning! Yesterday when news broke that the...
Medicare Lifeline – from 2017 to 2030
Today’s Wall Street Journal wrote about the current ‘health’ of both the Social Security and Medicare programs. As most of us in our 40s realize, what we are paying into the government retirement fund for our older neighbors certainly won’t be there when we could use...
Getting Started
Nigel's Checklist Start a company (hello, Next Step Communications!) Partner with a few companies who share a passion for improving healthcare Roll up my sleeves and dig into the work Identify, interview and hire a team of professionals who share an interest and...
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes: What’s New in Social Media
There’s no denying there is power in social media – 70% of the U.S. population has at least one social networking profile and the number of worldwide users is expected to grow from 2.1 billion last year to 2.5 billion by 2018. But as a business, weeding through the...
