PR Insiders

No doubt you learned the essential aspects of PR as a student in communications school. But let’s face it. You could have purchased PR textbooks and learned some of the same fundamentals, less the tuition costs. You probably learned how to craft a program, the importance of strategies, tactics and objectives. Also, what your professors said was the correct method of pitching a story. There is, however, one critical facet of PR that you probably never learned in the classroom.

“No man is an island entire of itself…” John Donne wrote in 1624. Ah, but get that man, or woman, to work and he or she can be positively insular. Large, public companies, midsize firms and… Continued

It certainly takes a village to run a company, small, medium or large. Yet the landscape is filled with brands where one part of a company doesn’t seem to know what the other parts are doing. Ditto the lack of communication between business units. In an era of social media, this lack of coordination between business units can be devastating. Communicators should be leading the charge for integration.

It can’t hurt to learn from the best, right? We imagine that’s what the team behind Quintly, a professional social media analytics platform, was thinking when they analyzed the habits of the 30 biggest companies on Facebook. The study revealed interesting trends about content, fans and engagement on the Facebook pages of major brands like WhatsApp, Starbucks and Nike.
Here are some major takeaways to help other brands make the most of their Facebook presence.

Instagram and Snapchat feature Stories, which gives users the ability to post (and view) ephemeral photos or videos that can be viewed for up to 24 hours. This is a fairly recent for Instagram—it took hold in fall 2016. Fast forward a few months, and users and brands have had time to play with both apps, gauging which (if either) is a useful tool to reach fans and customers. With two strikingly similar options, which is best for your brand?

Online communities can deliver a richly rewarding experience for the organizations that create them and the members who participate in them. But as more B2B customer communities crop up, how is this space evolving? Here are seven key trends our research uncovered.

Brand reputation is built on the public’s critical judgment, pro and con. And that feedback is coming from every direction, posted as comments and star ratings on review websites that have a big influence on potential customers. As most things are with the internet, online review sites are double-edged swords. Positive ratings slice through advertising and SEO clutter to bring new customers and life to your enterprise. But credible-sounding negative reviews can cut the heart out of your marketing effort before prospective clients have a chance to learn anything about you directly.

As the Super Bowl went into overtime and the Patriots took the lead and won the Vince Lombardi Trophy, my husband looked over at me and did not say “Wow, that was amazing!” Nor did… Continued

We’ve been put in positions where we’ve had to inspire our colleagues to soldier on, even when we can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. We have our game-time playbook and have had to adjust it in real time. While the Falcons played hard, the Patriots played harder when it mattered most. That’s a lesson for the times, for these times.

Is anybody paying attention to what’s happening on the gridiron? Who’s on first? Not so slowly the Super Bowl is becoming more and more about social media and brands and less and less about football. If history is an example, there will be far more talk online about the commercials than the game. And this year several prominent brands will be drifting away from TV ads in favor of social media. What can communicators take away from the developments influencing this cultural phenomenon?