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Hershey is embracing employee advocacy programs as a way to pull back the curtain on life at the company, helping to improve recruitment, retention and reputation. The giant chocolatier has devoted an Instagram account (@HersheyCompany) to celebrate its employees, who in turn use the platform to celebrate the company. Here are some examples of successful posts, as well as four tips to keep in mind when crafting your own advocacy program.

All that glitters is not gold. That seems to be true with MixBin. The brand recalled nearly 300,000 of its glittery mobile phone cases after an unnamed liquid started dripping from them, burning customers’ skin. While MixBin responded quickly to the situation, offering a full refund, its written statement seems tone deaf and unapologetic.

This season, you’ll find your Trending tab awash in bizarre holidays like National Watermelon Day (Aug. 3), National Lazy Day (Aug. 10) and National I LOVE My Feet Day! (Aug. 17). We took a look at three brands in different verticals who saw high engagement around their #NationalWatermelonDay posts, and pinpointed how each contender entered the conversation in a relevant way.

Facebook engineers Jiayi Wen and Shengbo Guo explained in a newsroom post Aug. 2 that an update to News Feed will soon show users more stories that will load quicker on mobile. This will take into account not only the speed of the site itself, but also the users’ network connection at the time they are browsing. Here are 10 tips from Facebook to ensure your site is up to speed.

Instagram had cause to crow Aug. 2: It posted a celebratory blog for the one-year anniversary of Stories. Today it boasts 250 million daily users. A larger proof point for the success of Stories is how Snapchat is faring, and an auspicious date for Instagram coincided with a dismal one for Snap Inc.

A best practice of crisis communications, or any branch of PR, is to avoid making statements to the press that you are unsure about or might be unable to prove later. It’s far better to say you’ll check on the question’s answer and ask the media member when he or she needs an answer. Several recent examples have put this best practice to the test.

Mistakes of all sizes happen. We know that. PR pros often are called in after those mistakes occur. They usually attempt to mollify things. Sometimes they goof and fan the flames. At times, communicators can do very… Continued

The chief spokesperson for Cox Enterprises discusses how to make certain your CSR effort will resonate with the most importance stakeholders of all: the volunteers involved in the CSR and your audience. Remember, CSR is largely about causes or the good people doing volunteer work, not your brand.

Despite what you might think, there were other things going on in the world recently besides the resignation of Anthony Scaramucci as White House communications chief. An example of this was a deal in the social listening space. That got us to thinking about the various ways social listening can help brands, beyond crisis communication and customer service.

Pop-up ads, TV commercials, ad-blocker-blockers, sponsored posts: How many of these messages have annoyed you in the past day alone? Consumers are faced with interruptive marketing tactics at every turn, and the fierce resistance to this messaging bombardment is a common barrier for many brands—maybe even yours. In his book “Friction: Passion Brands in the Age of Disruption,” Jeff Rosenblum argues that it’s imperative for brands to escape such “Mad Men”-era aggressive marketing and find a new way to stand out, build loyalty and win evangelists.