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So here you are: You’ve landed your dream summer internship. Look at you! Being an ambitious, forward-thinking go-getter, you’re already wondering how to convert it into a full-time job. We were in your shoes not long ago. Below are the most important things we did as interns to land full-time gigs. To add perspective, we’ve invited our boss, Becky Boles, to add her thoughts on what it takes to get hired by a major communications firm.

There are myriad lessons for communicators related to transparency, monitoring the social conversation and when and whom to engage from two recent news items. The first item has the Republican Party being forced to shut down its live chat on YouTube July 18. The party had urged viewers to chat while it streamed its convention live on YouTube. The reason for the shut-down were anti-Semitic comments posted on the live chat as former Hawaii governor Linda Lingle was addressing the convention. The other involves the nasty messages sent via social to actor/comedian Leslie Jones, a co-star of Ghostbusters.

Polarization is deeply embedded in the American psyche, a reality brands must accept and deal with. It affects them beyond the hot-button political issues of the day—immigration, race, gender identity, climate change, for instance—that they have to either tiptoe around or address head-on. The polarization affects the way our minds now function and speaks to the question of how to convince the undecided of anything when, for so many of us, our minds are already made up.

Brand communicators seek to influence the undecided and convince them of the value of the product or service they’re representing. They try to accomplish this through third-party media coverage, the sharing of their own content… Continued

In today’s rapid-fire social media climate, it’s important for PR pros to watch for signals that forecast the next social media platform to take off and grow exponentially with users. With that in mind, we asked you, as top communicators and public relations strategists, to predict the next social media platform that’s going to explode in popularity and user growth.

Owned content of an app, video library, article or visual is difficult for anyone to grab true exposure for, and native is still a game for those with the most money. Rarely spoken of is the power of distributing branded content via earned media in a way that is actually scalable and measurable.

By 2018, 3.6 billion people—90% of the world’s internet-enabled population—will be registered to use at least one messaging app, according to Activate, a strategy and technology consultancy. Facebook would like to have its Messenger app on each of those 3.6 billion devices, and it may get there. The company has just announced that 1 billion people globally use Messenger every month.

The PR discipline at large is still trying to come up with widely accepted measurement criteria. The Barcelona Principles—which now include specific suggestions for measuring social media—do a good job at this, but they remain unknown to many communicators. On top of this general confusion, many social networks offer their own native analytics. With these tips, PR pros will be able to gather and analyze their data to align with business goals and build social media intelligence into organizational strategies.

Sometimes pitches can get lost in the daily deluge that is a reporter’s email inbox. And there are plenty of journalists who are simply more engaged on social than other means of communication. One of the great things about social media is that PR pros can cultivate opportunities by being present on the platforms journalists use to identify story angles and sources.

Many of us dreamed of instant stardom in our childhood. Musical.ly brings that dream to life, having spawned a number of social media stars. Plus, it’s fun: Who doesn’t like lip-synching or dancing like a lunatic to their favorite songs (or at the very least, watching others do so)? Here are a few ways PR professionals and communicators can use the app creatively to boost brand awareness to the teenage set and beyond.