Stories by Ian James Wright

PR News will celebrate the winners and honorable mentions of its 2017 Social Media Awards at its annual Social Media Awards luncheon at the Yale Club in New York City on May 2, 2017. The Social Media Awards showcase the top social media campaigns and honor the individuals behind them. Dunkin’ Brands CCO Karen Raskopf will deliver a keynote address.

Many brands, agencies and nonprofits, no matter what their budget, have seen great results when incorporating On-Demand Geofilters into their marketing strategies for our clients. In the PR News Social Media Guidebook, Christine Wilson of MtoM Consulting provides readers a wealth of information about growing a Snapchat strategy and audience from tabula rasa. Here are her top tips to help you design effective Geofilters while maximizing your budget.

Video features, even live video, are ubiquitous now on social media. “Just press this button and post a video!” we’re urged. This may lull PR practitioners into the false sense that creating a good video for social is as easy as creating a video. But not so. Thoughtful video production is important, and it’s attainable even for those of us who didn’t go to film school and don’t have large budgets.

The departure of a leadership figure from a brand is not often smooth on the PR front. It may signify internal conflict, failure to meet expectations or simply a lack of interest on that leader’s part in continuing to build the brand. In the wake of three major role changes at brands in the past week, we examine the official messages surrounding the occurrences and the media’s interpretation.

Do you have the guts to cede control of your social media to employees? This takes trust, but according to Carmen Collins, social media lead for Cisco’s Talent Brand team, it can be a rewarding way to get out your message, promote the brand’s culture and build your following.

Lyft and Uber have been locked in PR warfare against each other this year, but the first weekend of Austin, Texas’ South by Southwest was a feather in the cap of both ride-sharing platforms. And they didn’t have to do a thing—they just stood by and watched as others failed to do their job successfully.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Snapchat must be feeling full of itself this week. Even before everyone had a chance to absorb the news and implications of Instagram’s new geostickers, parent company Facebook officially launched Messenger Day, another clone of Snapchat’s “Stories” format, for iOS and Android.

Instagram’s not shy about its attempts to encroach upon Snapchat’s territory; it even copies the names of the features it’s aping. In mid-2016 it introduced Stories, and now geostickers have come to the platform, Instagram announced March 7. As on Snapchat, the stickers are customized to a particular location (at launch, only New York City and Jakarta are supported).

How has a Trump presidency changed the way millennials think about helping to do good works for society? That issue was in the forefront of millennial panelists’ minds as they discussed the importance of brands doing social good. The millennials were given a platform when W2O Group hosted Firing Up Emerging Leaders (FUEL), Feb. 28 in New York City during Social Media Week.

Every brand tailors its image on social media. Every brand engages in crisis management on social media. From intranets for internal communications to publicizing CSR, social media is at the fore of what we do—except for media relations. Somehow, many PR professionals are still timid to venture beyond email when contacting journalists. It’s an understandable instinct. People don’t like their social life mixing too much with work. But social media made it easier than ever for PR pros to stay involved with journalists, and that kind of relationship now comes with the territory for them.