Stories by Larissa Bundziak

There’s plenty to learn about PR in college programs. On the other hand, there are few better teachers than actually practicing PR on the job. Four years out of college, our author argues that managing expectations is a key area that PR classes failed to cover. Here’s what she’s learned attending the college of hard knocks.

Whether you’re crafting social media posts, blogs or website content, it’s not easy to feed the dreaded content beast. This most inhospitable of creatures is sure to bite your hand when it’s hungry. And that’s 24/7. To calm this animal, spend time to make your written and visual efforts shine—even if that means producing less content at the outset. In addition, use that great content in various ways and on different platforms to fulfill the beast’s voracious appetite.

It can be a dirty business defending criminals. Whatever you might think of those who represent Harvey Weinstein in court, you have to admit his lead attorney, Donna Rotunno, is, for the most part, using earned media tactics well. Her PR goal seems to be building name recognition in anticipation of future #MeToo clients.

Moving from being a brand communicator at Pfizer to an agency executive prompted Dean Mastrojohn to think about team building. He offers three lessons he learned from his years on the client side. The veteran communicator is using these lessons as he builds an integrated media team as part of his agency position.

In this regular series with the Institute of Public Relations, veteran communicators relate lessons learned early in their careers that continue to help them. This installment features Shirley Powell, SVP, Cox Automotive, who received a great education from her first boss. One of his toughest lessons remains with Powell to this day.

A decade ago there were fewer than one billion social network users. Last month, that number was 5.2 billion. And their expectations and the number of platforms they use are rising. One expectation is that they can shop instantly from any piece of content. Hence, the rise of shoppable posts, blending e-commerce and content. PR has a large role to play in this trend.

On first glance you might not think diversity and inclusion has anything to do with crisis communications. In fact, it has everything to do with it, argues Esther-Mireya Tejeda, SVP, head, corporate communications & PR at Entercom.

In this final article of a two-part series, Ayaz Malik and Bob Pearson discuss three areas that you can use to bolster your published content everyday.

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.