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Before you hit send, go back and visualize the recipient for a couple of seconds. Are they at the desk when it comes in? Will they read it from their phone while on the road? In other words, have you written something that will cause them to open it and/or something that stands out from the 90 other emails waiting on them?

Andrew Hayes, VP, corporate communications at Fifth Third Bank, has seen media relations from the other side, and he wasn’t too impressed by the view. After running his own PR agency for 10 years, he… Continued

A step-by-step approach for communicators to use when setting up a program to train sales personnel to use social media for selling. Since social selling sits at the intersection of marketing communications and sales, putting such a program in place is a great opportunity for communicators to drive social selling adoption and help close the gap between sales and marketing. Another benefit for communicators is that social selling lets them directly measure their influence on business results, sales and bottom-line revenue.

Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel moves in PR and communications. This week we features stories about British Airways weekend crisis, a fond farewell to Ketchum’s David Rockland, notes about expansion and a slew of personnel moves, including a White House ouster and Staples naming Michelle Bottomley as its CMO.

Similar to one of the themes running through the recent, sold-out Social Shake-Up Show, an idea at the heart of the Conference Board’s new study is that some members of the C-Suite continue to doubt the importance of social media as a valuable business tool. The culprits most often reside in the C-Suites of B2B brands, says the report, made available early and exclusively to PR News Pro. One solution is emphasize the positive attributes of social in business terms, the study says.

The recent rise in popularity of live video has many brand marketing plans in a bit of a tailspin—if you’re not leading in the space and killing it, you’re falling behind and struggling to stay relevant

A pair of Brits, chef Jamie Oliver and filmmaker Louis Cole, were the top influencers in food and travel, respectively during the month of April, according to data provided exclusively to PR News Pro by Shareablee. The rankings were compiled looking at social media shares, retweets, comments and likes. Interestingly, Oliver’s top post lacked any mention of food.

After an industry show, the question we receive often is a variation on “What did you hear?” With some 90 speakers over two and a half days, one person’s experience during last week’s sold-out Social Shake-Up show in Atlanta likely was a bit different from anyone else’s. One theme was that many, though not all, brands and organizations understand social media is far from a fad, but instead can be a valuable communications tool, a listening aid and a useful platform for e-commerce and customer care.

If I had to pick one thought to summarize this week’s sold-out Social Shake-Up Show, it would be this: The lines between content and marketing are blurring so rapidly, the phrase “content marketing” is starting to become redundant. Words such as authenticity, experiential, immersive and storytelling were heard often during panel sessions and networking breaks to describe this zeitgeist, this evolution of messaging. But to me, it really all comes down to a single, often misunderstood word—empathy.

File under “signs of the times”: Republican candidate for the House of Representatives Greg Gianforte violently assaulted a reporter Wednesday, according to the eyewitness account of a a team from the Fox News Channel. The victim, Ben Jacobs of The Guardian, entered a room at Gianforte’s Bozeman, Montana headquarters where the Fox News team was preparing for an interview with the candidate and began questioning Gianforte about the controversial American Health Care Act.