Stories by Seth Arenstein

With the March for Our Lives set for Saturday at venues around the country, what should brands be doing, if anything, to prepare? We asked Barie Carmichael , a senior counselor at APCO Worldwide and a former communicator at iconic brands. In sum, it’s a delicate dance and one size does not fit all.

The Global RepTrak 100, the gold standard of corporate reputation, shows corporate reputation declining for the first time since 2009. Why has it declined and what can brands do about it? We answer those questions and more in our coverage.

In a new survey small businesses, those with fewer than 500 employees, are shown to be fairly large proponents of SEO. Some 55% of small businesses surveyed said they use SEO, a slight increase from 2017. More than 90% said last year they would be using SEO, according to Clutch, a B2B researcher.

There’s been no shortage of news in the past couple of days, much of it relating to messaging, brands and crisis management. It’s difficult to know where to start, though it’s hard to ignore the messaging that emanated from the ousting of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Other interesting messages and lessons came from Tillerson’s deputy, the SEC, United and Uber’s Bozoma Saint John.

We continue our examination of consumer engagement with brands’ social posts during 2017. Data is provided exclusively by Shareablee to PR News . This week we look at the top 10 travel websites, ranked by consumer engagement. Airbnb is the leader.

Our weekly look at news, trends and personnel moves in communications and marketing. This week’s stories include James Levine’s ouster at the Metropolitan Opera, a House committee looks deeper into the U.S. Olympic Committee amid the Larry Nassar scandal and Twitter halts accounts that were tweetdecking.

Last week we told you despite a number of worries, the sky was not falling as far as Facebook is concerned. More evidence comes this week, from the Pew Research Center, whose survey confirms many of the trends contained in reports other groups have issued. Yes, Facebook dominates with Americans older than 18, although youths tend to prefer Snapchat and Instagram.

Data, data, data. Every communicator’s on top of data, right? Maybe not, according to a new report from The Conference Board’s Society for New Communications Research. The study of 102 public companies finds few are staffing their communications departments with people who bring competency in data analytics.

Similar to other segments we’ve been reviewing during the past few weeks, the Health & Fitness category owes much of its 2017 growth in consumer engagement with its social posts to video. In addition, it’s following the pattern of other industries, which have posted fewer pieces of content and increased engagement. CrossFit was the leader in this category in 2017, Shareablee says.

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” There’s good news and bad news for Facebook in terms of U.S. adult usage. The bad news is usage levels likely will fall in 2018, something that’s not happened in nearly one decade. The good news is it can absorb small reductions in usage for many years without its dominant position being threatened.