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It’s true – a lot of people just don’t understand what PR people do. They think it’s about pitching the media, chasing positive coverage, then rinsing and repeating. Certainly media relations is an important component… Continued

A look at the week that was in PR. This edition includes several Wells Fargo miscues and a poor showing from NBC Today host Matt Lauer during a presidential debate.

Do hiring practices change when building a digital team? We asked ESPN’s Paul Melvin, senior director, communications, what he seeks in a digital hire. Here’s what he said: “I think people make a mistake if they hire for a ‘digital’ or ‘social’ communications role based on the idea that criteria are fundamentally different than what you look for in any communicator. I always look for the ability to write, passion, a combination of self-confidence and self-awareness, and emotional intelligence.

One of the biggest trends PR faces is too much noise. I mean this for reporters who are inundated with pitches that might not be appropriate for them as well as the competition we face within the television industry for viewers. We’ve developed three strategies for facing this competitive environment.

We conclude our 2-part series about how PR and communications are taught in colleges and universities.
There was plenty of agreement between what our PR and communications pros told us and what the quartet of academics we interviewed said. Writing—specifically, writing for PR vehicles that is clear, concise, creative and persuasive—was among the skills both the pros and academics emphasized. Several of the academics said students lack familiarity with PR writing, which, they said, is different from writing term papers. Our academics said this is an area they stress extensively with students.

In Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends report (2014), it was estimated that 1.8 billion photos were shared on select social channels daily. In her latest report, for 2016, Meeker estimates the figure for 2015 to be 3.25 billion photos daily. There are a bit more than 7 billion people on Earth. Think about how often every person on Earth, even those without internet access, would have to upload and share a photo each week to reach that figure. So the longtime practice of image analytics in traditional media has become a hot new topic in social media, and listening tools are starting to add image recognition to their capabilities.

It’s hardly a surprise for loyal Data Dive readers that video is one of the main ingredients driving consumer engagement for B2C and B2B brands. Media companies are catching on.
The latest evidence is BuzzFeed’s reorg, announced August 23, when founder Jonah Peretti told employees, “Having a single ‘video department’ in 2016 makes about as much sense as having a ‘mobile department’… as digital video becomes ubiquitous, every major initiative at BuzzFeed around the world will find an expression as video….”

PR professionals are tasked with a lot these days. From writing traditional press releases and website copy, to crisis management and social media, the list of responsibilities seems to grow almost daily. It’s hard to know which skills communicators should be prioritizing to stay at the top of their field. For insight on this career-making question, we turned to the PR News community.

Developing a unique writing voice can be a challenge. Add in the fact that many PR pros work at agencies where they have multiple clients across different industries and you’re likely facing the dilemma of pinpointing and utilizing many different voices. Here are some tips for identifying your client’s brand voice for better, more efficient written material.

MSNBC correspondent Mike Barnicle asked Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson, “What would you do, if elected, about Aleppo?” To which Johnson responded, “What is Aleppo?” Within minutes, the former governor was being mocked on Twitter and covered by scores of online news outlets, many of which posited that the gaffe was an indication of a clueless foreign policy. From a PR perspective, it indicates a lack of media training.