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Great stories—about medical breakthroughs, heroic acts by children, emerging infectious diseases—are relegated to the trash bin, while “Grumpy Cat” is featured on national evening news. There are plenty of reasons this happens. Newsrooms are shrinking. Reporters are more harried since they are asked to write, blog, tweet, appear on video, among other duties. Brand priorities change and resources are limited. But most likely the problem lies in the execution of the pitch.

The Public Relations Society of America, New York Chapter, convened to recognize organizations, campaigns and people that reflect excellent work being done in PR over the past year on June 2 at the Mandarin Oriental in NYC. Judged by more than 80 leading industry professionals, the awards honored everything from targeted marketing to corporate social responsibility, and singled out a few individuals for prestigious awards.

As Obama’s 2008 campaign heralded a new era of political campaigning by introducing social media into the mix, the current presidential candidates are using digital technologies in groundbreaking ways. Despite Bernie Sanders’ struggles in the primary race, his success with online communications is hard to match. In many ways, it’s because of social media that many Americans now #FeelTheBern.

If you’re responsible for brand communications, then you’re expected to be an SEO expert as well as a great content creator. Yet SEO may still be somewhat of a mystery to you. If that’s the case, it might be because you’re getting stuck on what’s often the first recommendation from self-proclaimed SEO experts: Identify smart keywords and use them in your content.

When you have an important message to communicate—especially one that might be controversial or unpopular—you need more than just the message itself. You should equip yourself with a “messaging toolkit” that will help you effectively deliver (and justify) your message in various formats to various media.

A harsh reality of the digital age is that excellent content can languish in obscurity owing to its creators’ lack of knowledge about search engine optimization. And desktop search is far from the whole story. In fact, ignoring mobile search makes no sense.

It’s the tragedy of the Internet: Every cool thing that makes society more interconnected is in danger of being ruined by jerks. From misogynistic attacks on Twitter to racist comments on YouTube to general profane abuse in multiplayer video games, instances of online unpleasantness have raised questions about how to give everyone the best possible experience without crossing a line of censoring free speech.

For the Cincinnati Zoo, a horrible accident swiftly escalated into a full-blown crisis as animal rights activists and social media users were quick to criticize the zoo’s decision to take the life of the endangered animal to save a 4-year-old boy who fell into the zoo’s gorilla enclosure.

Social media works even better for B2B companies than B2C companies. Why? Because B2B companies traditionally have a smaller target audience and a higher average price point. Most importantly, however, a B2B’s customer decision funnel is even more influenced by word of mouth and reputation than a B2C company’s.

The topic of issues management has been around for decades. It’s examined and debated regularly in the PR industry mainly because it can be a very broad, overarching concept.

When the pressure of crisis management and an often-thorny public policy process are added to the mix, a conundrum can develop, especially for communicators with little to no experience in one or all of these areas. Issues management around public policy must be woven into an organization’s culture early, not just when things are tanking.