Stories by Caitlin Kelly

Getting a negative review, let alone one that goes viral, is a moment every PR pro dreads. But if a business provides a product or service, it’s unlikely they’ll completely avoid ever getting a bad review from an unsatisfied customer. In today’s click-happy environment and the ease with which people can post opinions online, ire is often taken out in words and on reputation. But there are some things you can do to control the situation and mitigate the damage.

Call it a target market, tribe, or online community: In all cases, building and maintaining an audience for your products or services is now key to maintaining a competitive edge. What’s more, with the amount of time that audiences spend online rising, even as attention spans are declining, it’s more imperative than ever for businesses to find clever ways to engage end users.

The very thought of writing a speech, let alone giving one, is enough to cause cold sweats for many of us. And if you’re in the audience for a snoozy talk—well, that’s torture too. Here are some tips from a speechwriting expert to help you hone your next presentation.

HBO’s recent “Game of Thrones” Starbucks coffee cup gaffe offers significant lessons for video content production for PR professionals investing significant time and resources into video.“We’ll fix it in post” is a phrase that should only be made by a professional who truly understands the effort and skill set required to make the fix. Here are the possibilities and limitations of post-production as well as how intense of a lift each task will be.

When you don’t check the pulse of your surrounding community, you risk losing media opportunities and relationship-building moments that could drive more customers to your brand. And when a crisis arises, community engagement can make or break you.

You spend hours crafting the perfect story concept to pitch a client, researching the reporter or producer most likely to be receptive to your client’s work, then more time still waiting on a response from the media. Even when you get the “yes” you want, it doesn’t mean your story will be published or aired immediately, or that there aren’t additional hurdles to climb. It simply means you are much closer than when you started. So what is the distance between a “no” and a “yes” in PR?

By now, we all know the power of video in communications and delivering a brand message—particularly to younger audiences. You probably already know how to shoot video, edit it, do Facebook Live. But in a cluttered world of branding, do you know how to make sure your video content rises to the top through SEO?

It’s amazing, the amount of content the annual SXSW festival packs into 10 short days. But for savvy communicators, the lessons learned in March become the refined business strategies of April and May. These trends from SXSW 2019 offer more than real-life lessons for communicators: it’s a glimpse into PR’s future.

The level of buzz surrounding “Game of Thrones” and “Avengers: Endgame” is something programmers, studios and brands once took for granted, but today they’re all too rare. They are omni-culture moments, moments that will be recounted over coffee and avocado toast in the office the next morning, moments that spur common conversations that everyone is in on. So, how can brands get in on the action?

In an ideal world, PR, social media and sales departments would be as flexible and fluid as a professional basketball team moving up and down the court. In this behind-the-scenes look at how the Atlanta Hawks integrate sales, PR and social internally, the Hawks’ social media manager, Nic Bell, shares a case study in integration: how the social team unified PR, customer service and sales functions in order to advertise a slate of games against high-profile teams. (They ultimately sold out their entire Black Friday ticket allotment.)