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PR pros know that having a Crisis Communications Plan (CCP) is critical. The more difficult task is keeping the plan’s steps top-of-mind for rapid recall when you need them. Chances are your CCP is sitting on a shelf somewhere. This article provides a handy checklist of CCP steps as well as a step-by-step approach to handling crisis communications in a way that will be easy for staff to remember.

What are the best ways to get buy-in on social media from the C-suite? The Conference Board’s senior researcher Alexander Parkinson shares what he found as he conducted research for a recent report on the subject.

In the upcoming Arthur W. Page Society New CCO podcast, MillerCoors CCO Pete Marino talks about the company’s internal video channel MCTV, among other topics. PR News was provided an advance copy. In an interview with us, Marino expands on MCTV as well as what keeps him up at nights.

When we dive deeper into the Gould+Partners study about PR firm profitability that we reported about in our June 12 edition, it looks like another case of the rich getting richer. The larger firms are doing well in terms of profits, but the mid-size and smaller firms are struggling. Gould provides insight into why he thinks this is the case and what PR firms can do to raise their profits.

Communicators and marketers know the elephant in the room with Snapchat is that you can’t measure it. Wrong, argues Carmen Collins of Cisco, who not only has launched an extensive Snapchat effort at the company but also measures it. In this article she provides step-by-step directions so you, too, can measure Snapchat.

As United Way of Miami-Dade’s one-person social media team, Shairy Gonzalez has to be nimble enough to address different audiences from day to day or even moment to moment. She might attend a fundraising event with corporate movers and shakers in the morning, and later get her hands dirty at a volunteer site in the afternoon. Gonzalez, who will speak at the upcoming Digital and Marketing Show in Miami, October 17-19, shared some examples of how she engages vastly different audiences on social media.

Facebook Insights provides a wealth of demographic data and offers a window into what kinds of posts resonate the most. But Insights reports can also contain an overwhelming amount of data. To avoid drowning in a sea of irrelevant metrics, Kathleen Lukasik, vice president of social analytics at Ogilvy, advises clients to break down their goals into bite-size pieces before reading through Facebook Insights reports. At PR News’ Digital Boot Camp June 23 in Chicago, Lukasik laid out four steps to setting KPIs before sitting down to read through Insights results.

“We know data visualization is important, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy,” said Kevin Hartman, head of analytics, consumer, government and entertainment for Google, at PR News’ Visual Storytelling Boot Camp in Chicago. “You have to keep your storyline simple and readable,” said co-presenter Carolyn Barth. “And you have to know your audience and think about what’s practical for them.”

Do employees at your brand read the daily news briefing only during a crisis and on days when products launch? If so, you’re missing a big opportunity to frame internal communications. To counter sporadic reading habits you need to keep the content of the daily briefing relevant and broaden the scope of articles when your brand’s goals change. Here are best practices that will serve you and augment the importance of the PR function.

You think nobody is paying attention to the White House communications team and whether or not it’s influencing the public’s perception of the PR industry? Not so, says a new survey from USC’s Annenberg School. And as the last few weeks have shown, communications, whether at the White House, other parts of Washington, D.C. or at your brand’s offices, can be a high stakes affair.