Stories by Katrina Julia & Sophie Maerowitz

The hunt for the perfect influencer usually starts with seeking out those social media accounts that can increase reach, raise awareness, build engagement and drive business results (sales, donations, conversions, etc.) for your organization. This means pinpointing the influencers who stand out among billions of users; true digital denizens capable of adjusting to ever-changing social media platform algorithms. It also means attracting the right influencers to your brand, and ensuring they yield a strong return on investment.

We’ve never experienced an economic recession in a heavily connected world. It might look very different from earlier downturns. And it might turn out that influencers, who can provide relatively low-cost content that connects authentically with audiences, will be an asset during a recession, argues Kaitlyn Hieb, a strategist at R/GA, a consultancy.

More and more businesses are reacting to consumer demand to become environmentally aware. As a result, 2020 might go down as the year when CSR activities became table stakes for corporate America. Here are five quick ways communicators can help their companies get on board the CSR train.

Once again, Major League Baseball finds itself tangled in the details of a cheating scandal. Unlike the steroids era of the 1990s, where Congress held MLB accountable, we now find the sport policing itself, holding its own teams accountable. Is this the correct route in terms of PR and reputation?

Sure, Twitter has a relatively new 280-character limit. But just because Twitter doubled its 140-character limit doesn’t mean you should use all of them. So what’s the ideal length of a tweet? A hashtag? How else can you make your tweets more readable and engaging? Let’s look at the research.

CES 2020 is in the books, but its implications will spread throughout the year. That will be the case for communicators, who saw plenty of opportunities to help new-age tech explain itself to the public. One of the big takeaways, and one likely to provide lots of work for communicators, is that technology has broken out and will be foundational to life, several communicators say.

Every company and organization should have an up-to-date crisis plan. In addition, holding periodic crisis simulations and post-simulation analyses are important. Still, one of the keys to crisis management, and one that’s often overlooked, might be the personalities sitting around the table in the C-suite. And don’t forget the corporate politics involved, argues Jim Lindheim, a former Burson-Marsteller chairman.

It’s not easy to admit that your communications effort is not all it could be. Sometimes the culprit is failing to keep up with communications technology. It takes courage to admit you’re behind. Funds and teamwork are need to catch up. Here’s how Cleveland Clinic’s PR team remedied the situation it found itself in a few years back.

It’s 2020 and everyone is making predictions. But as that well-known PR pro Yogi Berra said, Making predictions is hard, especially when it comes to the future. Everything about SEO is going to change, right? Maybe, maybe not. There are SEO changes to be aware of, but the basic advice remains. You can’t game Google and its algorithms, so don’t try. Instead, create a valuable experience for users.

The secret behind grabbing your target market’s interest lies in understanding how they search for and discover information on your brand. Keyword research provides data-supported answers to questions about popular search trends and the ways people prefer to consume content. These answers open doors to shape content through the mind of a consumer.