Guest: Ryan Gravatt

About @gravatt

Ryan Gravatt is an online strategist who specializes in using Web sites, e-mail and search engines to bolster public affairs and public relations campaigns. Mr. Gravatt is recognized as an expert in developing online strategies for crisis communications and grassroots-mobilization planning.

Mr. Gravatt draws upon his experience with communications in public affairs and as a newspaper reporter to integrate the client's online presence into their broader communication plan. He develops and maintains online strategies for Fortune 100 companies, political campaigns, issue-advocacy organizations and membership associations. These clients use Web sites and e-mail messaging for crisis communications, public affairs advocacy, outreach to grassroots supporters or for earned media.

Mr. Gravatt first worked in public affairs as a newspaper reporter. He worked in Tallahassee, Florida for the Florida Times-Union as a capitol reporter covering higher education, banking and finance regulation, and environmental legislation. He also wrote for the internationally syndicated Scripps-Howard News Service, in Washington, D.C., where he covered Congressional action. After the stint in the nation's Capitol, the Birmingham Post-Herald hired Gravatt to be its bureau chief in Montgomery where he covered politics, elections, banking and finance regulations, energy issues, legislative sessions and national news occurring in Alabama. In 2000, the Alabama Associated Press Editors awarded Gravatt for his superior coverage of the indictments of the suspects in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. These experiences in newsrooms and in the halls of capitols give him a unique perspective on public affairs communications.