Social Media & SEO

We’ve all read stories of an angry customer tweeting at an airline or a restaurant because they had a bad experience. But social customer care is about so much more than just dealing with irate customers, says Brandi Boatner, a digital experience manager with IBM. We recently sat down with Boatner during a Facebook Live session to pick her brain on how social customer care is evolving—and how IBM is using artificial intelligence to bolster the process.

If you want a better website with better content, Google Search Console should be one of your first stops. It’s a powerful set of tools that can give you valuable information on errors you may have in your code, usability, search traffic and so on. And yes, there can be a slight learning curve if you’re new to it. In the PR News Guidebook: Google for Communicators, Chris Hornak, owner of Blog Hands, argues that fluency with these tools is well worth the afternoon or two it might cost you to learn how to use them.

You’d be hard pressed to find a Fortune 500 company without a presence on Twitter, but should the big boss also be on the medium? It depends on myriad factors, including your goal for being on the platform, who will actually compose the tweets, the type of information your CEO wants to share and, of course, whether they have a thick skin.

LinkedIn has rolled out a targeting tool for brands that sponsor content on the platform: Audience Network. The tool increases brands’ chances of their content appearing on audiences’ LinkedIn feeds, as well as—perhaps more excitingly—tracking users across the internet once they leave LinkedIn. Here are three ways brands can start experimenting with Audience Network.

Like any good friendship, the relationship between a brand and its audience on Snapchat should be a two-way street. Matt Johnston, executive director of video at Rodale, worked directly with Snap Inc. to build a Discover platform from scratch. Here, he shares his tips and tactics for how to meet your audience halfway on Snapchat to keep the eager tapper glued to your story.

In an era where the hottest topic is fake news, how can you build trust with journalists? You’ll likely need to do so on social media. Here are tips that will help you do that and start to pitch more successfully, too.

With both Google and Facebook placing increasing value on the mobile experience, the era of focusing on “internet trends” may be over, while mobile trends have taken center stage—the internet is mobile now and vice versa. So how are smartphone users interacting with their devices and engaging with apps and websites?

Swipe, skip or scroll, audiences are increasingly dismissing advertisements on Instagram. Many users take to the platform primarily to promote their individual interests, and smart brands must think about how to give audiences the spotlight rather than the other way around. Here are five ways communicators can use the tactic to convert Instagram audiences into content heroes.

The contest Saturday night between boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. and mixed martial artist Conor McGregor is being called a fight, but really it’s an event. A PR event. The hype surrounding it has been tremendous. So, just for fun, which of these two athletic welterweights and social media heavyweights would you choose as your brand’s ambassador? We might have the answer.

You can’t always do it alone. To capitalize on a huge trend or event, sometimes your brand needs the perfect partner. Such is the case with the 2017 total solar eclipse. The ultimate eclipse experience involves traveling to an ideal location and learning about the cosmic phenomenon under expert guidance, and Airbnb and National Geographic realized that they could make this a reality by working as a team.