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When you look closely at the things and people you’re surrounded by every day at work, do you get the sense that maybe you need to call shenanigans? Are all the portraits hanging in the company lobby of male leaders? Do your team members look and think an awful lot like you? When reviewing a candidate’s resume, do you make assumptions based on the person’s name or address?

To keep up with competition and even stay ahead of the game, PR pros should regularly be leveraging data on behalf of their brands and clients for improved media exposure. While most writers and public relations professionals know that quantitative data helps support an already-strong story, one approach PR pros may not have considered is conducting DIY survey research to help determine what the story should be.

Portraits in the hallway. Your team. Resumes. The About Us page on your website. When you look closely at the things and people you’re surrounded by every day at work, do you get the sense… Continued

Open communication between leadership and employees is integral to building employee trust, morale and engagement. Dry business language and performance metrics through company emails barely scratch the surface of who a leader actually is. More important, they do very little to make a company’s leaders relatable and connected to employees.

Just as compound interest can grow money quickly, Instagram posts bolster consumer actions, defined here as the sum of likes and comments. The most-engaged U.S. nonprofit on Instagram, PETA, saw Q1 2016 engagement jump 79% vs Q1 2015, although it increased posts just 17%, according to data provided exclusively to PR News by Shareablee. PETA knew what its audience wanted, posting photos of animal-loving celebs like Leonardo DiCaprio. Other posts that worked included salutes to Armani and SeaWorld for taking steps to end animal cruelty.

Brand communicators beware: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has declared open season on social media influencers who fail to disclose that they are paid for endorsing a brand’s products and services. Not only that, disclosures must take a specific form; they also should be ubiquitous in some cases.

Late last year the FTC issued a long-awaited policy statement regarding native advertising and influencers, which was a follow-up to an earlier FAQ on the topic. Not even three months after it issued the later document, it “put industry on notice,” says Allison Fitzpatrick, partner at Davis & Gilbert in its marketing, promotions and PR practice groups, by slapping a penalty on high-end retailer Lord & Taylor ( PRN, March 21).

There have been lots of opportunities for McDonald’s to throw a legal wrench in the film about their founder and his questionable business ethics, if only to slow down or harass the filmmakers. But director John Lee Hancock says that McDonald’s has “made no attempt to interfere” with the movie. If your brand were undergoing a withering examination on the big screen, how would you react?

How many times today did you click “send,” “post,” “tweet” or “publish” without submitting your work to a thorough read-through? Perhaps as many times as you clicked those buttons. You know you’re playing a dangerous game. You might as well be walking across a city street blindfolded. Try printing out and using this quality-control checklist for PR writing, and be sure to add your own writing peccadilloes to the list.

If social media is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. There are some notable examples of brands committing embarrassing online flubs, but don’t pat yourself on the back just because you haven’t screwed up big time: Most social media crimes are crimes of omission. If you’re like most brands, you could be doing better.

It’s increasingly becoming a reality in the communications world that once sequestered departments are now finding themselves working closely with colleagues they seldom encountered previously. For many, the breaking down of institutional borders between an organization’s various departments is a welcome trend. Even if a tumbling of silos has been a long time coming, the question of how to get all these different people with specialized functions working together efficiently isn’t any easier to answer.