Stories by Seth Arenstein

In our June 26 edition, we told you about the yearly Gould+Partners benchmarking study that showed PR firms struggling last year to reach 20% profitability. Now we break down the data a bit more, looking at which specialties charged the most and how PR pros are billing their hours.

Consumer engagement with Twitter jumped in Q4 2016, mostly on the back of video, according to Shareablee data provided exclusively to PR News. Also of note, you barely hear people talking about Twitter going under. Now it’s all about the president’s latest tweet.

July is the six-month mark of the year, so it’s natural for forecasters to talk about trends to watch in the final half of the calendar. Our not-so-fearless prognosticator and blogger spent some of his July 4th thinking about what’s to come in PR and communications during the rest of 2017. Among the topics covered are AVEs, social media, storytelling, video, brand reputation, cyber and healthcare PR.

When we dive deeper into the Gould+Partners study about PR firm profitability that we reported about in our June 12 edition, it looks like another case of the rich getting richer. The larger firms are doing well in terms of profits, but the mid-size and smaller firms are struggling. Gould provides insight into why he thinks this is the case and what PR firms can do to raise their profits.

Our weekly roundup of trends, news and personnel moves in PR and communications. This week’s stories feature a look at Uber without its CEO; a new web site for Polaroid; Facebook offers journalists tools and training to protect themselves; and Weber Shandwick makes a bevy of personnel moves.

You think nobody is paying attention to the White House communications team and whether or not it’s influencing the public’s perception of the PR industry? Not so, says a new survey from USC’s Annenberg School. And as the last few weeks have shown, communications, whether at the White House, other parts of Washington, D.C. or at your brand’s offices, can be a high stakes affair.

In part II of our interview with Taco Bell’s social media and brand engagement manager Matt Prince, we ask him about how the brand manages during the initial moments of a potential crisis. With 7,000 restaurants across the country, incidents pop up constantly, he tells us, making social listening crucial. We also discuss the particulars of how Prince and his team measurement and report metrics to the C-Suite.

And you thought Twitter was the text-heavy, nerdy, wonky channel to exchange news and views. Perhaps. Yet Shareablee data, provided exclusively to PR News, shows video is making large inroads on the platform, even in the supposedly less-than-visual B2B space.

Few brands are enjoying more success on social media than Taco Bell. We asked Taco Bell’s social media and brand engagement manager Matt Prince to let us in on some of the secrets and best practices he uses. Rule number one: Know your audience and where it lives. Two: Talk with fans as if they were friends of yours. And drop the jargon, corporate-speak and promotional content.

Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel moves in communications and PR. This week we feature stories about the comings and (mostly) goings at Uber, the “paltry” profits that PR firms earned in 2016 and the start of a practice combining athletes, PR and healthcare. In personnel moves Weber Shandwick has a new chief of its global affairs practice and rbb has a new EVP for global and emerging markets, healthcare.