Stories by Justin Joffe

James Nickerson will kick off the Facebook for Communicators Boot Camp at PR News’ Social Media Summit on Aug. 9 with a timely invocation on where the platform is going, including why regulation might not be a bad thing for Facebook and the ramifications of GDPR for users. Tying these future-focused topics together is Nickerson’s belief that marketers are in a unique position to heal the growing disconnect between brands’ trust in the platform and the distrust felt by end users.

Musk’s latest Twitter gaffe should remind communicators that messaging from your leadership is often the most prominent and front-facing indicator of your brand’s values. As the head of a major brand, Musk’s inflammatory style may be alienating potential Tesla customers and damaging the brand in the long term. Here are a couple of lessons brands can learn from steering clear of Musk’s tactics.

Employees of several companies, from Silicon Valley stalwarts like Amazon and Microsoft to professional services network Deloitte and its competitor McKinsey & Company, have publicly raised moral objections to the work that their companies conduct with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), which carries out border separations. The trend presents a question for internal communicators: How should brands respond when employees object to business partnerships on moral grounds?

A Nicki Minaj critic recently learned the hard way that bullying on social media is now the norm. Brands will increasingly find it harder to engage in this hostile playground without getting bruised. Here are some best practices your social team can use to keep this negativity at a minimum.

Facebook’s acquisition of Bloomsbury AI spells big things for communicators as they increasingly rely on automation tools in order to better interface with audiences. But there are two applications of Bloomsbury’s tech in particular that will help Facebook regain its recent lapse in trust with communicators and consumers alike.

More than a hollow and cookie-cutter corporate document, “Toward a Vision for Racial Equity & Inclusion at Starbucks: Review and Recommendations” reads as a realigning of perspectives and priorities. This is the work of a brand that has taken a hard, honest look at itself and is ready to share what it has learned.

In a perfect world, your summer vacation would begin the moment you set your inbox’s “out of office” message and leave your desk. As most professional communicators know, though, PR is far from a perfect world. Crises materialize that require your advice or input, while requests come down from the C-suite that you would be wise to address in a time-sensitive fashion.

This month, talk of Instagram’s bold new features has been everywhere. On June 20, the platform announced it has surpassed 1 billion active monthly users. One week later, Instagram now launches three features that were teased at Facebook’s F8 event.

Now that Instagram considers everyone to be a creator on IGTV, we all can learn from the numerous ways that brands are crushing it with their photos and videos on the platform this summer. While brands aren’t exactly pumping out the summer fun on IGTV just yet, here are three examples of brands that have perfectly captured summer elsewhere on the platform.

Just three days in, the 2018 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity’s increased emphasis on influencers and creators can be felt everywhere. Cannes has made no secret of restructuring its nine staple awards, removing more than 100 subcategories. It also added categories, the net effect of which is an increased focus on the power of influencer-led storytelling. Following suit with the restructuring, two massive social platforms unveiled timely tools for advertisers and influencers.