Stories by Seth Arenstein

With attention spans diminishing and the appeal of video and images rising, it seems like the present moment is perfectly suited to Instagram’s quick-hit, low-verbiage, less-is-more characteristics.

Is the glass half empty or half full? That’s the dilemma raised by the latest PR News survey about measurement practices. On the upside, more PR pros appear to be relying on measurement than previously. The flip side is the pace toward a more analytical mindset is incremental.

There’s little doubt that successful communicators need to constantly adapt to myriad changes in content creation and distribution.

“The digital age has not made [being a communicator] simpler,” says Erin Streeter, SVP, communications, National Association of Manufacturers(NAM). “The talent and infrastructure needed to be successful is greater and more complex than ever,” she says. Her org chart illustrates this.

Brands and organizations from Lifetime Movie Network (LMN) to the member unions of the AFL-CIO last week hopped on one of the week’s trending hashtags #EqualPayDay, celebrating a holiday that brings attention to the disparity between the pay of men and women in some sectors.

The Week in PR

The Week in PR

Many communicators and marketers make their bones on consumer engagement. Mission accomplished, for Q1 on Instagram at least. Spurred by B2B brands’ 21% increase in Instagram posts, consumer engagement rose 97% vs the same period in ’15, according to Shareablee data provided exclusively to PR News.

Governments and world leaders are increasing their presence on social media. And like brands, some are committed to it, while others use a Facebook page as a placeholder, posting mundane announcements or no content at all. Indeed many of the trends brands have observed on social are apparent with the social accounts of world governments and leaders.

It was big news Monday when Google unveiled a redesign for AdWords to select users of its cash cow product. The product of years of observing reportedly hundreds of global clients using AdWords, this first redesign in forever is expected to make it easier for users to track the words they’ve bought. Deploying Google’s Material Design strategy, users will find a series of graphs called Overviews replacing pages of data about specific words.

Are these signs of the times? Last week a sports announcer was pilloried for what some felt was an inappropriate remark. The University of Virginia men’s basketball team in the Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament had what seemed to be a comfortable 15-point lead over Syracuse with fewer than 10 minutes to play. When… Continued

The post A Lack of Crisis Planning is Trouble Waiting to Happen appeared first on PR News Blog.