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The latest and greatest usually is the rage at industry events such as last week’s Social Shake-Up Show in Atlanta. Beneath all the talk about social media, though, Shakers found top-flight influencers urging them to mix social platforms with good, old-fashioned PR tactics. And at least one influencer believes the secret power of social media calls for brands to be social instead of pushing sales.

The influencer with the largest audience certainly has a leg up on the competition, yet there are other factors involved when generating consumer engagement. This week we examine Travel influencers and how they’ve fared in getting consumers to engage with the content on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

A weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel moves in communications and marketing. This week’s stories include unusual times in journalism as exemplified by Univision, Gizmodo, Deadspin, Splinter, the NY Times and the Denver Post; and more tight-lipped treatment from Nike as more senior executives are jettisoned, including a senior female.

Burger King scotched its Have It Your Way slogan back in 2014, but it still urges customers to personalize their burgers. That was part of the conception behind a recent campaign in Spain, where the brand’s Instagram account polled visitors to pick their favorite toppings in exchange for a free Whopper, customized with toppings from the survey. The effort turned out to taste good for both the brand and Instagram respondents.

One of the final parts of the diagnosis on Facebook’s health has arrived and the patient seems nearly fully recovered. Usage in the U.S., Facebook’s home country, has not budged despite the platform’s most difficult period since it went public in 2012. Security remains a concern to users, though, and Facebook’s demographic means it remains the adult in the room of social media channels.

Journalists and consumers know the feeling well: each wants a personalized experience but usually they receive a generic email or marketing message. The issue may be more than poor communications practices. It could be a lack of technical knowledge on the part of PR pros and marketers, a new study argues.

While some holdouts still believe digital is a passing fad, the latest digital advertising figures would seem to put such arguments to rest. In addition, media consumption figures may surprise you. Print isn’t dead yet.

eMarketer makes its predictions for global media spending, estimating rises for media spending overall and digital spending. N America will continue to lead spending, although Asia-Pacific will eclipse it around 2020, eMarketer says.

We take a look at food influencers and find that consumer engagement with their posts was down nearly 50% in the first quarter of 2018. Once again our data partner Shareablee provides the data exclusively to PR News.

Brands and organizations can rest on their laurels no longer. Even darlings of the media and Wall Street, such as Tesla, are prone to crises these days. Katie Paine looks at how Tesla and founder Elon Musk and the White House Correspondents’ Association handled recent crises.