PR Insiders

Historically, content marketers and communicators have been frustrated by separate, disconnected content marketing analytics. There are different systems to measure SEO, social sharing, engagement and quality of content. Enter Christopher Penn, who created SCALE on behalf of SHIFT Communications to solve this problem. SCALE, short for Shared Content And Link Evaluation, is a cloud-based software package designed to ingest URL-based marketing data from multiple, disparate data sources, unify the data and, leveraging best-in-class analytics engines, provide actionable insights from data.

The fires in California have brought devastation to people, property and animals in the Golden State since the beginning of the month. While some fires continue to rage, those in the area of the Ojai Valley Inn have been contained. Faced with a large clean-up, the Inn refused to cut corners and instead will remain closed into 2018, resulting in a large financial loss as it will miss prime holiday weeks. Its decision to remain closed is firmly rooted in its brand promise.

Brian Kelley’s passion for PR and outside-the-box approach have contributed to a noteworthy year for him and Sage Communications. Just one of his special talents: taking clients from media obscurity to being featured on national broadcast and print coverage.

The veteran PR pro Arthur Solomon begins his annual review of lessons for communicators pulled from the year’s headlines and news reports. In this initial installment, the lessons involve crisis communications, media relations and internal communications. There’s also advice about the best way to handle a difficult boss.

Within a month of taking leadership, Jodi Brooks led what Harold Burson calls one of the most significant new business wins in the history of Burson-Marsteller. And at SAP, Atle Erlingsson drove an internal campaign on gender pay equality and a successful media campaign that garnered coverage in Forbes, Fox, CNBC and the Wall Street Journal, helping the company to be named for the first time to Fortune’s Top 100 workplaces.

During a morning session of last week’s PR News Media Relations Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, attendees were asked to discuss professional pain points. In a late-afternoon session, the attendees, working in groups, spent a few minutes thinking about solutions to the issues discussed during the morning session. Here’s a summary of the issues and the ideas proposed for solutions.

It’s traditional to look to the New Year with hope and optimism. As a result, this post, which highlights difficulties communicators will face in 2018, might not be the most pleasant read. On the other… Continued

Kate Hardin has a passion for working with corporate healthcare clients and has turned that passion into a highly profitable group within the corporate communications practice at Ruder Finn. And, At Burson-Marsteller, Jane Madden holds a unique position offering clients strategic counsel and acting as an internal expert on CR and sustainability, allowing her to direct new business initiatives.

Crisis management, our author argues, is itself in crisis. The causes of this crisis in crisis PR include challenges in philosophy, technology and ethics, not to mention that some crises (see Lauer, Matt and Rose, Charlie) begin and end so quickly that crisis PR barely has time to roll up its sleeves. What’s a company or a brand in crisis to do?

An all-star lineup of communicators who routinely go above and beyond the call of duty were honored at the 2017 PR People Awards Luncheon, held Dec. 5 at the historic National Press Club in Washington, D.C. When accepting their awards, many of them expressed the need to be humble, to be receptive to new ideas and ultimately, to be an active listener, as the keys to their success.