Hello, and welcome to my little corner of the Internet.

If you are looking for help with media relations and marketing, and want to learn more about an integrated approach that meshes traditional media and the ever-expanding array of online “new media” tools, custom-tailored to help you achieve the goals you have set for your organization, business or campaign, please visit my company website, www.MeshMediaStrategies.com.

With more than 20 years combined experience in traditional journalism, media and public relations and new media, I know how to build a strategy that gets the results you want.

I am based in Nashville, TN, and currently serve clients in several states.

I am a journalist, a blogger, a web communications strategist, a media relations consultant, a grassroots communicator, a husband, a father, a Christian, a Nashvillian and an American. I work with clients I believe in, and I love to help my clients win.

I am the former communications director for the Tennessee Republican Party, and directed the media relations and online communications and social networking efforts that helped the party win a majority in both houses of the state legislature for the first time in 140 years, attracted large numbers of people to online social-networking groups, and laid the foundation on which a successful “guerilla” grassoots fund-raising effort generated more than $25,000 in small donations from thousands of first-time donors in a short period of time.

I am a former media relations specialist and “blogging coach” for a university whose work there using blogs and traditional media relations strategies helped a new professor take a new program with zero marketing dollars from zero students enrolled to more than 120 students in just three years.

I frequently speak to business and professional groups about media relations and marketing in the age of the Internet.

I am an experienced writer and journalist, having worked as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for many years, for diverse print and online publications covering news, country music and various business niches including health care, transportation and economic development to technology, ecommerce, real estate and the music industry.

I have worked as a press secretary for a mayoral candidate, edited three business books, authored two comprehensive guides to Nashville for the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce; contributed content to two country music-related reference books, and developed websites for a number of clients in media, politics and business.

I recognize that today’s media landscape is nothing like that of 20 years ago – that the top-down, one-to-many, one-size-fits-all model of big-city daily newspapers and dominant televion network news programs is over. Today’s information consumer – your potential client, customer, donor, supporter or voter – is just as likely to get their information via a technology or platform that didn’t exist 20 years ago, like websites, blogs, email, podcasts, YouTube, and social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook, as they are to learn about you via the morning newspaper or the evening news.

The ever-expanding array of new media forms has opened the information floodgates, making it all the more vital that you have a communications strategist who understands the media, old and new, and what works today, so that your communications strategy employs the right tools to reach the right audience and encourage the right response.

That’s what I do.

Phone: 615.337.2934

Email: bill@billhobbs.com

LinkedIn

G100 / High Lantern Group

White House Writers Group

The Brumfield Group

The Tennessee Republican Party

State Senate candidate Stacey Campfield (2010)

U.S. Congressional Candidate Jeff Hartline (TN-5, 2010)

U.S. Congressional Candidate Kerry Roberts (TN-6, 2010)

The Bike Pedlar

I’m a photographer who doesn’t get enough time to just do photography for fun, a cyclist who currently is without a bike, an avid reader who doesn’t have time for it, and a coffee addict who gave it up for love.

I have two great kids and a beautiful wife. We go to church on Sundays.

I was born in ’64 in the suburbs of Philadelphia – yes, my hair is turning gray, no I haven’t quite been able to pull the trigger on buying Just For Men just yet.

My bucket list is getting longer, not shorter, but here are a few things on it: Hike to the top of at least a few of the “14ers” in Colorado. Visit the Ronald Reagan Library. Cycle across the country – coast to coast. Ride a bike over Trail Ridge Road, through Rocky Mountain National Park, across the Continental Divide. Visit Australia. And Japan. Learn to golf. Write a novel – and get it published.

I grew up in Philadelphia but have lived most of my adult life in the Nashville area.

I love authentic Philly cheesesteaks. Authentic Philly cheesesteaks are made on Amoroso bread. I can’t get authentic Philly cheesesteaks in Nashville. On the other hand, we don’t get blizzards here, either, for which I’m grateful.

In sports, I root for the Titans and the Eagles in the NFL, the Phillies in baseball, and the Predators and Flyers in the NHL.

My favorite place in Philadelphia is Independence Hall.

In politics, I root for the candidates who stand for more freedom, more liberty and less government.

I believe the Declaration of Independence is the greatest document ever written by man, and that the hand of God was on the writer’s pen.