CaringConnections
Practical Works
BLOGS
Blogs are places to establish trust with our audience. A good way to do that is to present ourselves as a subject area expert: in this case, an expert in dealing with senior loneliness.
Either way, assisting our audience in their mission is the main goal. That establishes credibility between us, and begins the relationship. The call to action brings in CaringConnections’ name to increase brand familiarity, and gives a step forward for those interested.
To create each blog, I:
- Created an audience pathway for our blog series
- From where do they start, and where do we want them to be at the end?
- Used pathway to create topics for first 15 blogs
- Introducing topics to getting more in depth
- Researched subject & gathered important information
- Outlined & drafted
- Had work peer reviewed by CaringConnections team
| Target Audiences | Goals |
|---|---|
| Adult children of lonely parents, looking to help them out | Assist the target audience with their concern, and interest some of them in working with our companions to help their parents |
| Lonely adults with a goal to fix that loneliness | Assist the target audience with their concern, and interest some of them in working with our companions themselves |
(Take a look on their site here, or check out more of my blogs here)
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is a staple of community relations. It’s the first place people go to vet an organization, and the first place people go to engage in a community. In order to strengthen CaringConnection’s community and credibility, it was essential to establish a presence online, even when we were just beginning our operations.
Starting from nothing meant that everything had to be done by hand. To do this, I:
- Connected with the website team to establish our voice
- Created themes per day of posting
- Ideated on possibilities of each theme
- Created each post in Canva
- Made a short, sweet caption for each post with a reasonable number of hashtags
- Scheduled each week’s posts for the most active times of day
- Recorded engagement for later evaluation
| Target Audience | Goal |
|---|---|
| Adults who have seen our ad, looking to confirm CaringConnection’s authenticity | Establish trust in audience in order to up the number of strong incoming leads |
Theoretical Works
This case study was created with guidance under Dr. Thrubis Stanely in her public relations class at Michigan State University. Both of these went through the process we wish all our work could take:
- Drafting
- Self-editing
- Peer editing
- Expert editing
- Self-editing 2.0
Starting from the homely blog (which has since become a practical work), it expands into an email blast for that blog, a media advisory & a pitch email. Each is uniquely suited to CaringConnections’ target audience, and was created with a specific goal in mind. The overarching goal was to achieve a strategic organizational communication objective: informing our audience on how to combat loneliness.
E-BLAST
The email blast is a tried and true tactic of the public relations professional. How many do you see in your inbox a day? Two? Fifty? To keep our communications from dropping through the cracks, it’s kept short and sweet, with an easy-click button for more.
To start the E-Blast off, I started by re-wording the initial summary of a blog in a way that would make sense without context. The blog used for this E-Blast is “My Mom is Lonely: What do I do?”, also seen above in practical works. From there, I added a simple call to action, and found an emotional image to draw eyes in.
| Target Audience | Goal |
|---|---|
| Adult children of lonely parents who have signed up for our newsletter | Get people to click into the blog |
MEDIA ADVISORY
Getting people’s attention is difficult. Keeping it, and having them leave with the appropriate information, is even harder. Making it as obvious & easy as possible is key to helping journalists cover your event. To this end, I wrote a clear media advisory to be attached to a pitch email.
To do this, I:
- Decided what information was necessary to include (WWWWWH)
- Filled out the details
- Sorted in order of importance
- Added brand & organizational edits
- Created an interesting and informational heading and subheading
| Target Audience | Goal |
|---|---|
| Print/digital journalist covering local news (Austin) | Gain coverage & increase attendance to event |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
TUESDAY, FEB. 3, 2025
CONTACT: CC Engagement team
512-996-1434
CaringConnections Celebrates One Hundred Connections in Austin
We’ve Built Every Meaningful Relationship One Moment at a Time
| WHAT: | CaringConnections hosts a free-to-attend celebration of 100 connections made in Austin. |
| WHERE: | Atelier 1205 1205 E Cesar Chavez St. Austin, TX 78702 |
| WHEN: | Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, 3 p.m. |
| WHY: | Last month marked our one hundredth successful connection made between a senior and a companion. We’d like to celebrate our community’s accomplishments with those that made it happen- our seniors, our companions, & their community. |
| WHO: | Our companions and seniors, their families, and those who would like to celebrate the seniors in their community. |
| HOW: | Contact the CaringConnections Engagement team to attend the event. 512-996-1434 |
PITCH EMAIL
We all want our events to go off, and to go off well. Like fireworks, and not a canon. Letting key media players know of the event ahead of time, and giving a good reason to attend & cover it, is an excellent way to ensure that. For this theoretical celebration, I made a short and sweet pitch email to achieve that goal.
To do that, I:
- Outlined what I needed
- Story lead
- Connection to journalist
- How we can help the journalist
- Next steps
- Filled out those steps
- Drafted from previous bullet points
| Target Audience | Goal |
|---|---|
| Chloe Young (Digital media, has written stories on new businesses & Acclaimed Angels Home Care, and writes for a local paper) | Get Chloe Young to produce a story about/attend the event |
“For Chloe Young: PR on Austin Small Business Celebrating 100 Connections”
Dear Chloe,
Our society isn’t built for our senior community. Even in Austin, loneliness hurts our parents and grandparents. It can sometimes feel impossible to find a way to help. But community is important, and I see that you understand that as well.
I think you should write a story on our 100 Connections Celebration here in Austin. We help seniors stay independent in their homes, and bolster our community with our companions and presence. I noticed your enlightening recent articles about new businesses in Georgetown and Acclaimed Angels Home Care, and thought you might be interested in this one as well.
I would love to connect you to Santosh Dave, our founder, for an interview. I can also provide you with the best photos and videos from our engagement team from the celebration, and get you behind the scenes of the event itself. You can find the media release for the event attached here. You also can reach me via email from 9-5 any day, or send an email to our team at caringconnections@getcc.us.
I’ll follow up with you via phone next Tuesday if I don’t hear from you. Thank you for your time and consideration!
Best,
JesseMae Rayer
734-263-0363