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What can “The Walking Dead” teach us about digital PR? Here, Carmen Collins, a social media manager with Cisco, takes us through four lessons that the zombie hit sensation can teach us about the dizzying highs and terrifying lows of social media, including the importance of building your digital tribe, the need to stay humble and take nothing for granted, and the need to find and use just the right tools.

Admit it, just the thought of giving a speech makes your stomach turn just a bit. This article will help you get over that fear with four tips for crafting and presenting a speech in front of a crowd or a talk to your staff. In both situations it’s best to prepare far ahead and have goals that you wish to accomplish.

Social media can be a blessing and a curse. While it provides an information dissemination platform that an organization can use to communicate with its stakeholders during a crisis, the fact that anyone with access to the Internet or social media can broadcast information about the crisis and an organization’s actions or inactions can result in the dissemination of misleading information. This article provides guidance for using social media in a crisis environment.

The influencer bubble is about to burst. So say a rash of communicators who’re tired of paying exorbitant fees for influencers who, they claim, rarely deliver. Still, some brand communicators feel influencers can deliver messages with more authenticity than a brand can. That’s the case with Sara Dunaj, social media manager of Princess Cruises. We asked her to share some best practices.

Even the most seasoned actors will tell you that performing live is a scary thing. And many brands just starting to experiment with Facebook Live are confronting that same fear. But best practices are emerging through the trial and error of early adopters like IBM. And here, Brittany Detamore, the firm’s social engagement strategist responsible for day-to-day management of the firm’s Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, offers a few lessons learned for those new to live streaming.

Each year Mary Meeker, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, puts together an exhaustive analysis of the latest online trends and the insights that can be gleaned from them. This year the report is a robust 355 pages—but here are a few of the important highlights for PR and marketing professionals.

For some, the traditional press release is in intensive care, fighting for its life in a world of spammed inboxes and 140-character tweets. Others argue the garden-variety press release works just fine, thank you. Perhaps a compromise position is that the traditional press release must adapt to compete in today’s digital environment. Here are tips from PR pros to help you create releases that will entice writers and editors.

Spokespeople may be making poor choices this week, but PR and communications teams are demonstrating that their crisis plans are robust by taking quick, decisive action and communicating it to the public effectively. With influencer marketing on the rise, more PR departments large and small should keep these incidents in mind as potential crisis models to anticipate—and responses to emulate.

In an essay that’s far different than your deep dive at the office, a scuba enthusiast, who’s also a PR exec , relates lessons learned 130-feet underwater that you can apply in your PR career, presumably on terra firma. In addition to planning, teamwork, communications, trust and remaining calm during a crisis, divers and PR practitioners share, or should, a reverence for data. Without constantly keeping an eye on data, divers and communicators can end up all wet.

Generating new and exciting content is essential to any social media strategy, but it’s no small feat. Brands spend a good chunk of their marketing budget on copywriters, agencies and influencers to build a library of rich, dynamic content that captures and captivates their audience’s attention. But there’s another way. Here, Vanessa Sain-Dieguez, senior director of HR digital strategy at Hilton Worldwide, shows how the hotel giant built a tribe of passionate content creators in-house.