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Corporate social responsibility leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the best CSR campaigns and teams of the last year at PR News’ Spring Awards luncheon on March 22, 2017. CSR Award winners and honorable mentions for campaigns in categories like CSR On a Shoestring, Community Affairs and Social Media were announced at the event, held at D.C.’s National Press Club. PR News also announced the winners and finalists of the 2017 Nonprofit PR Awards.

If economics is the dismal science, then measurement surely must make a compelling argument for being PR’s grim discipline. There are plenty of tools for PR measurement, but which one to choose? And then, what should you measure? Yet there are ways around these issues and many of them probably are well within your means and abilities. More than that, measurement actually can be an upbeat exercise. And while we’re at it, the connection between dismal and economics may be faulty.

If economics is the dismal science, then measurement surely must make a compelling argument for being PR’s grim discipline. Similar to regular exercise and eating a balanced diet, measurement is something communicators know they should… Continued

Video features, even live video, are ubiquitous now on social media. “Just press this button and post a video!” we’re urged. This may lull PR practitioners into the false sense that creating a good video for social is as easy as creating a video. But not so. Thoughtful video production is important, and it’s attainable even for those of us who didn’t go to film school and don’t have large budgets.

At its Social Shake-Up Show in Atlanta May 22-24, PR News will celebrate its first annual Movers & Shakers Awards winners—communicators from b2b and b2c companies, nonprofit organizations and agencies who have produced measurable, positive results from their social media efforts on behalf of their organizations.

Building a mutually beneficial relationship with journalists is arguably the biggest challenge for a PR professional. In a perfect world, emailing a story pitch about your business should be enough to connect with a journalist. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. In the real world, where we live, journalists are busy and their inboxes are probably always inundated with pitches. So how do PR pros ensure that they make the cut and grab the attention of journalists? Here are tips that will help.

The departure of a leadership figure from a brand is not often smooth on the PR front. It may signify internal conflict, failure to meet expectations or simply a lack of interest on that leader’s part in continuing to build the brand. In the wake of three major role changes at brands in the past week, we examine the official messages surrounding the occurrences and the media’s interpretation.

As you know, social media has an important role to play in any PR effort. The ability to connect with and put thought leadership content in front of large social networks via these tools lends itself exceptionally well to addressing the need to influence. Practitioners, though, focus so often on short-form communication on social that the power of long-form publishing in the medium has failed to become as widely recognized—or at the very least, its rate of implementation is lower. Here’s why that should change and how you can be a part of it.

All industries recycle trends. If an expert declares a style, medium or influence is dead, beware! You’ll almost always see it again several years later in a modified form. Who thought we’d use record players again? And yet here we are in 2017 collecting vinyl. Were you around to see skinny (tapered) jeans and knit ties go out in the 80s? Well, they’re back in style. It’s the same for communications.

Trying to separate the signal from the noise when it comes to PR measurement can be a daunting task. There is so much data at your disposal that it’s tempting to try and embrace it all. But one of the most common traps companies fall into when starting a measurement program is in taking too wide of a view of what should be measured, says Jessica Onick, corporate public relations program manager at B2B software firm Citrix. “The biggest mistake that we as PR people make is the tendency to want to measure the universe,” she said.