Stories by Sophie Maerowitz

Many brands have added Facebook Live to their social media arsenals to give audiences a behind-the-scenes look at trade shows and events. But with live video, haste commonly creates waste. In pursuit of an insider experience one can easily disregard the time and preparation needed to ensure a live stream leaves a good impression.

Gone are the days when merely producing a Facebook Live broadcast was enough to give your brand an automatic algorithm boost. The promotion leading up to and following a Facebook Live broadcast is as crucial as the quality of the stream itself for winning and retaining viewers, according to Tracey Edouard, social media producer at Mashable and host of Mashable’s #BizChats Facebook Live series.

On June 16, Amazon announced its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods in a press release. But what does its messaging look like to its investors and top stakeholders? In the 10 days since the press release and accompanying front-page headlines, messaging for investors has centered on sales, showing that automating more jobs is a good thing, aligning with government priorities and maintaining a CSR narrative. Here are five ways Amazon has been communicating the acquisition as a benefit to investors.

Facebook Insights provides a wealth of demographic data and offers a window into what kinds of posts resonate the most. But Insights reports can also contain an overwhelming amount of data. To avoid drowning in a sea of irrelevant metrics, Kathleen Lukasik, vice president of social analytics at Ogilvy, advises clients to break down their goals into bite-size pieces before reading through Facebook Insights reports. At PR News’ Digital Boot Camp June 23 in Chicago, Lukasik laid out four steps to setting KPIs before sitting down to read through Insights results.

Uber is facing another PR crisis after a June 13 sexist boardroom exchange led to the ouster of board member David Bonderman. This shows Uber’s discriminatory culture is still deeply ingrained at the highest levels, according to Jessica Fish, senior consultant at Leader Networks. And the incident serves as a reminder for communicators to examine their own personal beliefs and workplaces for implicit and unconscious biases about race and gender long before they are exposed in a public setting.

YouTube videos can sometimes seem like the one-hit wonders of the content universe. But the good news is that through strong SEO strategy and tactical outreach, little-noticed YouTube videos can still be a powerful vehicle for drawing in new audiences. Matt Goldberg, who creates and promotes video content for Chicago-based machine tool manufacturer Lyndex-Nikken—as well as founding production company MBG Films, which boasts 8.5 million views and over 13,000 subscribers—shares 10 recommendations for increasing YouTube views.

Your brand launched an Instagram account and built a following, but your engagement and audience growth has plateaued. So, now what? To spark fresh interest in the platform, Noah Champion Buck, executive director of Los Angeles-based Wagstaff Digital, says it’s crucial to pair a data-based approach with ingenuity and experimentation. Buck shared six steps toward crafting more tactical and inventive Instagram content.

If you could give yourself one piece of advice when you started your career, what would it be? As recent PR and communications graduates embark on their first jobs out of school, we asked the PR News community to offer some advice for our profession’s rookies. Here’s a sampling of what PR pros on Twitter had to offer their soon-to-be colleagues.

It’s that time of year again: Spring is in the air and so are graduation caps. Recent college graduates looking to enter the communications field will face the challenge of their first round of interviews, rife with think-on-your-feet moments. Whether you’re graduating or have a friend or family member entering the PR workforce, here are six interview prep tips for aspiring PR pros.

Trying to replicate what made a post get 300 likes when your account routinely sees 100 likes per post can make you want to bang your head against the wall…Or, it can ignite a new test-and-learn campaign. Your team can make educated guesses about what worked and incorporate those elements into future posts.