Stories by Jerry Ascierto

It’s official: Snap Inc. has gone public. Today, the parent company of Snapchat began trading under the ticker symbol SNAP, a day after pricing its eagerly anticipated IPO at $17 a share. That might’ve been a conservative estimate: When shares began trading this morning, they opened at $24 a share, which would value the company at more than $30 billion. But the real question hanging over Snap isn’t about its short-term luster, but its long-term prospects.

In an era of severely limited organic reach, a paid social strategy that optimizes your budget is critical. But how can you best use promoted posts to reach your business goals without breaking the bank? That was the central question tackled by James Chong, senior manager of social customer engagement at TOMS, and Lauren de la Fuente, vice president of marketing and communications at Boingo Wireless, at PR News’ Digital Summit Feb. 24.

It looks like WhatsApp is taking a page out of Snapchat’s book, just as Instagram did before it. On Monday, WhatsApp unveiled a new wrinkle to its “Status” feature, adding the ability for users to share videos, GIFs and pictures with their friends for just 24 hours before disappearing. Those visuals can be customized with emojis, written upon and captioned as well. In the past, users could only update their status with text—now you can show, rather than just tell, your friends what you’re up to.

When it comes to social listening, it can be difficult to cut through the noise. While many analytics tools attempt to measure sentiment—to quantify how positive or negative a social media post or engagement is received—it has proven to be an elusive metric, even for a brand as big as Nissan. “One big misconception is trying to model the information in social media into something you want it to be, instead of listening to what the customer is saying and fixing the problem presented to you,” says Bryan Long of Nissan.

When Northrop Grumman began posting to Instagram, it wasn’t quite sure what would resonate. The global aerospace and defense technology company made the initial mistake—as many brands do—of pushing out self-serving content, viewing the platform as another method to showcase pictures of its aircraft, spacecraft and radar systems. But as it dove deeper into Instagram, the company realized the platform could be much more than just a repository of slick product pictures.

For Arby’s, Twitter isn’t just a platform on which to advertise, it’s a chance to delight. The fast-food chain’s evolving Twitter strategy isn’t concerned with promoting its sandwich of the month or the latest addition to its menu. Instead, Arby’s is focused on engaging in conversation, identifying niche areas and most of all, having fun with its followers.

When Microsoft rolled out Windows 10, it didn’t expect the deluge of social media conversations that followed. That may seem surprising for a company its size, but the response across the globe was massive. And it displayed the power of social media to force organizations to rethink their social marketing, sales and customer-care strategies.

Strong writing skills can propel a PR pro’s career, but the opposite is also true—weak writing skills can undermine your message and professional growth. Whether it’s a press release seen by thousands or an email seen by one, a PR pro’s goal is to make any piece of writing concise, impactful, polished and clear, said Sid Orlando, managing editor of curation and content at Kickstarter, at PR News’ Writing Workshop.

For years, podcasting was overshadowed by other forms of emerging media, but it continues to steadily grow in popularity. In fact, more than 10 billion podcasts were downloaded and streamed on Apple devices alone in 2016, an increase of more than 2 billion from the year before. Here, Jason Hoch, chief content officer for HowStuffWorks, offers three considerations for those brands just beginning to explore podcasting.

Many organizations make the mistake of not planning for a crisis, thinking it’s either superstitious or somewhat futile. But when dealing with a crisis, you need to be fast, transparent and most of all, prepared, says Linda Rutherford, vice president and chief communications officer with Southwest Airlines. Here are three lessons she has learned from the airline industry and beyond.