Stories by Jackie Kolek and Jacqui Emerson, Peppercomm

Few companies are trying to make a Starbucks-like statement in today’s highly politicized communication environment. Many brands want to respect the diverse opinions of their employees and customers and avoid becoming a target of unanticipated backlash. Here are a few ways communicators can help brands navigate today’s highly charged environment. Fortunately, most of them are basic tenets of PR and communications. Brushing up on the basics can be especially useful in today’s climate.

When a massive, five-alarm fire broke out on a Saturday evening in busy Gilbert, Arizona, a Phoenix suburb home to nearly 250,000 residents, the Gilbert Fire and Rescue Department partnered with Gilbert’s Digital Communications Department to take a teamwork and technology approach to communication and community outreach. Here’s how they did it.

Most of us are familiar with the core KPIs of Google Analytics such as users, sessions, page views, bounce rate, average time on page, search and CTR. These metrics are important to The Coca-Cola Company too. But do they provide the holistic view the company needs? The answer is, no, because they alone do not capture engagement. So, the company created its own KPI.

Timely content is king. The good news in today’s digital world is that companies are now in the content driver’s seat. But with so many channels and platforms at their disposal, many brands struggle to be relevant on all of them, all the time. That is leading some to make poor decisions about content type, timing and topic. Here are two examples of how Southwest Airlines strikes while the iron is hot.

A Personal Blog Network (PBN) is a network of sites that you control which are designed to direct links to a site that you’re monetizing. If you have an existing PBN, or are building one up, you’re going to need to take steps to ensure your digital presence is effective, safe and secure. Here are five tips in setting up your PBN.

Influencer marketing is undoubtably one of the hottest trends of 2017. But since this avenue is typically available only to brands with huge budgets to spend on big-name celebrities and well-connected media publishers, smaller firms often assume they can’t afford it. Not true: Here are five ways to make influencer marketing work for those with limited resources.

How many times have you received a text message you didn’t look at? The answer is most likely “almost never.” In fact, text messages receive a 98% open rate and mobile messaging is the No. 1 most frequently used feature on our phones. This unlocks a world of creative opportunity for brands. In a time when ad blocking is the new normal, marketers must embrace choice-based ad offerings in the quest for true attention. Luckily, there’s a ripe opportunity to reach the nearly 1 billion iPhone users out there with something they’ll actually appreciate—in iMessage.

If you’re a PR professional and you’ve never had the opportunity to work a SXSW show on behalf of a brand, you should definitely add it to your career bucket list. There’s the sheer geography of SXSW—every street is lined with branded facades as companies take over venues for experiential marketing stunts. Not to mention the volume of social media and social ads that pump through every channel.

Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Messenger (both part of the Facebook family) are powerful platforms that are now being used by more and more people. As mass adoption occurs, the tipping point makes it justifiable for brands and services to invest in the development of bots and AI. And judging by this week’s SXSW, that tipping point isn’t far away.

It’s not that your content sucks…in fact, it might even be pretty darn good. It’s just that every minute of every day, there are 1,300 more blog posts, 360,000 more tweets, 1.7 million more Facebook posts and 2 million more videos uploaded to YouTube. And that only accounts for a few channels. Which means your content is simply being drowned out in an ever-quickening deluge of words and images. So what’s a content marketer to do? We suggest the following seven ways to stand out from the crowd.