PR Insiders

Coronavirus has resulted in remaking the media and social media worlds into one-subject universes, at least for now. As a result, PR pros pitching stories to content creators need to adjust. And before you do anything, make sure your pre-scheduled messages won’t offend during this unsettling moment. After that, adjust expectations and pitch with the content creator’s needs in mind.

So far, no country is able to control coronavirus. Arguably, South Korea is managing it, despite taking a very heavy hit. A communicator representing the Embassy of South Korea argues the country’s daily and transparent government communications protocol is playing a large role in the nation’s successful coronavirus management.

Joe Biden’s campaign was all but dead just weeks ago. Today he’s the frontrunner for a chance to unseat the president. Working with few resources and little infrastructure in Super Tuesday states, Biden communicators honed their messages and turned to garden-variety earned media and social media. It worked.

Linking diversity and inclusion to crisis is not something communicators think of often. Yet, when an organization’s PR team does not reflect the ethnic makeup of its consumers, there is a tremendous opportunity for failed risk assessments. Simply put, less diversity can mean more bad judgement calls

Since they are roughly half the population, women should be quoted about half the time in the media. A recent analysis shows women are cited in content only about one-third of the time, however. With Women’s Day approaching, PR pros can help rectify this issue in a variety of ways, from mentoring to formal industry efforts.

The Houston Astros, as many know, are a baseball team. Without wanting to, the franchise and Major League Baseball have supplied a classic case study for PR education in the field of crisis communications. Most likely the outcome of the team’s disastrous crisis response will continue to be written during the coming baseball season and beyond.

In this continuing series about lessons in career and life, a senior communicator at a relatively unknown but major aluminum company explains why he left a very good position at a much larger firm. It was the best career move he’s made, he says.

To end Black History Month, we offer the story of Inez Kaiser, the first black woman to own a PR firm in the US. Kaiser was a polymath. A teacher, an activist, a cook book author and an entrepreneur, Kaiser accomplished all this at a time when African-Americans struggled for basic civil rights.

Social media impressions is not the number of people that your post impressed. This, in part, is why social media is outgrowing its reliance on impressions as the sole metric for success. Consumer engagement (likes, shares, retweets and comments) has become the top priority. Here are eight easy tips communicators and marketers can use to bolster consumer engagement on social.

There’s plenty to learn about PR in college programs. On the other hand, there are few better teachers than actually practicing PR on the job. Four years out of college, our author argues that managing expectations is a key area that PR classes failed to cover. Here’s what she’s learned attending the college of hard knocks.