Aaron BLANK

Aaron Blank is a Vice President at The Fearey Group. He leads a growing media relations and social media practice that includes constant engagement with journalists as well as general audiences online via various social media tools. Aaron is a proven leader in social networking and relationship strategies for companies, including Swedish Medical Center, Ivy Center for Advanced for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment, Seattle’s Brain Cancer Walk, Flying Heritage Collection and Vulcan Inc., among others. He has been using social media tools since the early days of dial-up and America Online, where chat rooms were the dominant social media tool.

Today, Aaron is a knowledgeable force on developing social media strategies to help brands and their executives to get engaged online. Aaron recently served as the play-by-play voice behind a ‘‘live’’ Twitter feed of a robotic assisted partial nephrectomy surgery at Swedish. With the patient’s consent, the family watched, the news media broadcast the story and it became a breaking news segment on every regional network in the Pacific Northwest. Aaron was the conceptual designer and strategist behind Swedish’s Sleep Medicine Associates “SleepUp”, a live stream of a patient participating in a sleep study at the center. (Here is the Mashable story.) Aaron was also the mastermind behind the social media backpack used to help doctors Web stream a portion of their climb up Mount Rainier. Most recently, Aaron helped Swedish live stream its first surgical procedure on the Internet to help build broad awareness about a particular knee replacement program and to help the medical team interact with people living with chronic knee issues in new ways. Aaron is sought after for his creative social media strategies that push the boundaries of the normal day-to-day activity and achieve dramatic results. He is host of Social Media Lunch Seattle.

Aaron has placed stories in TIME, Newsweek, WIRED, PBS News Hour, The Economist, NBC News, U.S. News, USA Today, NY Times, NPR and Wall Street Journal, Mashable, among others. He is a former broadcast journalist who worked as a news reporter and producer at radio stations in New York and Connecticut before entering the public relations field. He is also a creative business development executive and second photographer for Visions of Romance wedding photography. His Twitter micro blog, “SeattleBlank,” explores the changing media industry and hot topics in public relations. And his blog, AaronBlank.com, Aaron explores the changing media landscape in the Seattle/Tacoma area and provides tips on how to master social media. The social network-review site, Yelp, recently selected Aaron as an elite member after he penned his 100th review this year. Aaron is a board member of Social Media Club Seattle.