Stories by Kristina Libby, SoCu

As PR practitioners, it’s easy to forget the multitude of ways that other fields—such as social media and influencer marketing—can improve and enhance other core aspects of the job, such as media relations. Social media can offer a treasure trove of stories because it brings you closer to those who are using and loving your product. And influencers can also make for great brand ambassadors on platforms other than social media. Here are three ways you can mine these areas to take your storytelling to the next level.

The hashtag recently turned 10 years old, but after all these years, it has still got to be one of the most misunderstood social media tactics ever. Hashtags hold power, but like any other power, it can have adverse affects if not used in the right way. Here are three common hashtag mistakes that every brand needs to avoid.

Kelly Swanson and her small but capable team of PR pros oversaw PR for the recent Mayweather-McGregor fight. We asked her to discuss some of the lessons she learned from that experience.

With employees taking stands on political issues and urging their companies to do the same, what contribution can communicators make to keeping a brand’s reputation unblemished by political turmoil? Our author provides 5 steps that communicators can take to put their company in a position to receive limited negative public attention, minimize business impact and reputation damage.

We ask PR and marketing leaders to tell us about people who’ve influenced their career, the best advice they’ve received and recent trends. This week we speak with Melissa Galland, marketing manager, Adair Homes. She tells us about answering customers’ questions and listening to customers online, in person and via surveys.

You’d be hard pressed to find a Fortune 500 company without a presence on Twitter, but should the big boss also be on the medium? It depends on myriad factors, including your goal for being on the platform, who will actually compose the tweets, the type of information your CEO wants to share and, of course, whether they have a thick skin.

At Microsoft, storytelling centers on customers that are doing great things (big and small) with its products and services, instead of the other way around. The company highlights what it calls “People of Action,” sharing authentic tales of success written by none other than the customers themselves. Here are four elements that Microsoft always keeps in mind to make its storytelling shine.

If you’ve forgotten the power of Twitter, or ever doubted it, we can look at examples from the #Resistance movement this week to find evidence of the platform’s might. In the wake of Charlottesville, here are four things brands should consider when determining how/if they should take a stance.

A few years ago, each of Southwest Airline’s departments used social media in their own way, independent of each other. But the firm quickly moved to create “an enterprise-level function with multiple players and dotted lines back to operational units, while still maintaining a master strategy,” according to Linda Rutherford, Southwest’s CCO. To her, the question of who should own social media centers around how an organization approaches customer engagement.

Our look at influencers, courtesy of data from Shareablee, provided to us exclusively, shows food influencers had a fantastic June. Food was up 5% despite offering 4% fewer pieces of content month over month. Travel influencers were not as fortunate, with all 5 leaders on our list falling in terms of consumer engagement, month over month.