Stories by Miri Rodriguez, Microsoft Americas

A salesperson, a PR manager and a marketer walk into a bar…or so your bottom line wishes. The birth of social media forced organizations to draw up new business strategies to stay competitive in the digital space. And so they did—one department at a time. Ask a salesperson what their social strategy is, or even what social media means to her profit goals and she will probably give you a completely different answer than the PR or marketing manager within the same organization. So how can you build a truly integrated communications team? By following these three steps.

What enables some customer communities to be financially productive while others remain a cost center? In the research study “The Business Impact of Online Communities,” we found that almost half (49%) of community leaders report revenue gains from their online community. This is an exciting proof-point, but it warranted further investigation. So, we analyzed the data to identify the winning conditions of the top communities and identified three key steps toward a better ROI.

Rob Rakowitz, the global director of media at Mars, has done some compelling content marketing for varied consumer brands like Snickers, the cat food Whiskas and Uncle Ben’s. So what can the man from Mars tell us about his content marketing strategy? Well, among other things, “keep it simple.” In his view, the more you can simplify your vision, the better an idea travels. Gone are the days when you could just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Instead, marketers need a targeted approach informed by data, and they need to set a simple goal.

Communicators know one word that can shake up an organization is crisis. But have you pondered how you would deal with such a situation if you were to ever face it? Survey after survey indicate most firms lack a solid crisis plan and fewer practice crisis scenarios regularly. In this digitized world, a well-worded press release is no longer enough to pacify your audience. Here are a few tips to help you use content to control a crisis.

Social media sites are popular targets when it comes to hacking. Just last month, hackers managed to access the Twitter account for McDonald’s and send out a derogatory post aimed at President Trump. But McDonald’s is a well established, multinational brand and they could gain control of their account quickly. Could your business do the same? Here are six steps to help keep your company’s social media accounts secure.

Sharp Claws: Maybe the biggest beneficiary of United’s woes was Wells Fargo, whose 113-page board report about its 2 million bogus accounts barely registered in the news cycle when it was issued Apr. 10. In short, it fingers a pair of former Wells employees: CEO John Stumpf and community banking chief Carrie Tolstedt. An encouraging note: The two will lose an additional $75 million through clawbacks, the largest clawbacks in banking history. In all, clawbacks will cost Stumpf $69 million; Tolstedt, who did not cooperate with the investigation and whose lawyer challenged its findings, will forfeit $67 million.

Data-driven marketing is not just a buzz term, it’s a real business need. But data analysis requires human intervention and it’s easy to mistakenly select metrics that are not delivering the full picture or are misleading. To understand how marketers are implementing data, we asked five of the industry’s best and brightest: Are you using data for your social media marketing efforts? How does it guide your decisions? Here’s what they said.

Most Fortune 500 brands are working hard to cultivate a network of loyal customers online. Mostly, this community-building happens on social media when brands build pages and platforms to attract and retain those loyal customers. However, many brands develop myopic views around their categorized and quantified loyalty group, which limits the ability to reach a larger group of customers. Here are three tips to keep in mind to make sure that doesn’t happen to you.

Storytelling, as explained by Douwe Bergsma, is indeed a different way of looking at marketing communications, one that requires new processes, metrics and staff. Bergsma, CMO of Georgia-Pacific—the paper goods giant behind the Brawny, Quilted Northern and Dixie brands—offers some fascinating details that often separate a good story from a great one, including three secrets to crafting a successful marketing story.

A multichannel structure can be likened to the swim lanes in a pool: We line up our channels, the gun bangs and they each swim off in their own lanes, doing their own thing. The problem is, none of the channels are collaborating because they’re so focused on beating each other. And that creates a “Hunger Games” situation. But if multichannel means staying in a swim lane, then omnichannel is basically one big pool party.