Stories by Sophie Maerowitz

Most communicators would agree it’s important for audiences to be able to find their press releases in a Google search. But how can they make sure the right audiences and journalists find those releases?

The first step is making the most of your search data, according to Laura Mitchell, director of digital for Cisco.com, who leads SEO for the technology company’s core web property. Mitchell and her team have a proven system for tying search data to desirable outcomes such as having target readers find releases and other timely content.

Although Twitter has been perhaps the slowest social platform to adopt Facebook’s pay-to-play publishing model, it’s now zeroing in on the biggest boon it offers brands: its role as a news source. Twitter is testing a new feature, Promoted Trend Spotlight, which would appear on users’ feeds as a banner ad when they navigate to the Explore tab of the app, which aggregates trending news.

Would you rather your audiences use their smartphones to point and click—or point and buy? Given the pressure on communicators to tie their efforts to the bottom line, we’d wager that the latter is preferable for most. And now, if a rumored Snapchat-Amazon integration is any indication, social media audiences will soon be able to point their smartphones at objects in their native environments and purchase those products directly through Amazon.

During crisis moments, PR professionals tend to focus on how stakeholders and audiences view their brand or client. But of growing concern is what search engines see when a negative news story hits. Whether you’re focusing on crisis proactively or after the fact (and most PR pros would agree you really should be doing both), search engine optimization has a crucial role to play. Here are four ways communicators can learn from Verizon’s SEO practices when it comes to preparing for, monitoring and addressing crises.

Now that Instagram has surpassed its billion-user mark, competition for attention on the platform is heating up. Instagram content must be positioned even more strategically in order to cut through the din.

Casie Shimansky, social media manager at the technology company’s talent recruitment brand @WeAreCisco, notes that Instagram’s growth has her team of two constantly testing their approach to content.

As a reporting powerhouse, Google Analytics has the potential to help communications professionals make more strategic decisions. But too often, web analytics aren’t owned by the communicators who make decisions about content and messaging strategy at their organizations. Here is an eight-step guide to help you develop your Google Analytics strategy for communications.

If the company’s primary goal was to raise awareness of its expanded menu through the campaign, it certainly succeeded. But cheeky campaign aside, the franchise is still known a pancake destination.

And since a short stack is typically made up of three pancakes, we thought we’d serve up three lessons communications professionals can take away from the campaign.

With so many voices clamoring for attention, total silence might be the only way to cut through. Philadelphia Eagles player Malcolm Jenkins illustrated that point in a June 6 video of a locker-room press conference that instantly went viral on Twitter, and has racked up over 1.88 million views as of this writing.

At the IABC Conference in Montreal, a cross-industry panel of three senior business leaders opened up about the value of communications at their organizations. (Spoiler alert: Their comments were overwhelmingly positive.)

In a world constantly disrupted by technological advances, how can we make sure we’re the ones making change, and that change isn’t making us? That was a question posited by keynote speaker and futurist Anab Jain at the International Association of Business Communicators’ World Conference in Montréal.