Latest Posts

What’s next for PR? Why not ask a futurist! Scott Steinberg is regarded as one of the world’s most celebrated business speakers, futurists, authors and strategic innovation consultants, as seen in 600+ outlets from CNN to Time and The Wall Street Journal. Here’s a sneak peek at his keynote for PRNews’ upcoming Measurement Conference.

Here at PR News, we see such corporate pranks as a perfect window into the optics of humor and how they can, or can’t, work in your external messaging. Following last year’s April Fools’ Day recap of the good, the bad and the ugly, let’s look at some of this year’s campaigns that had us splitting our sides, and others that made our stomachs churn.

Sure, air disasters take a long time to investigate, and much of what’s being said now on behalf of Boeing is speculation to mitigate the crisis until they have real answers. Some big companies are wary of admitting their faults, making the need for true oversight all the more pressing. But when it happens, oh how positive the results can be.

Large companies often fail at crisis management because they view the situation only from their perspective. A more successful crisis-management effort considers the views of external stakeholders. In addition, several exercises can help communications teams boost speed and confidence during a crisis.

Google launched a $300 million news initiative just more than one year ago, including a product called News Consumer Insights. It allows publishers to crunch raw data from Google Analytics into insights around lead generation, audience segments and who’s paying for their premium content. Building on its commitment to that tool, Google just released a tool called Realtime Content Insights. While NCI is still useful for business development and looking at the longview, the RCI tool will help writers, editors, content producers and social teams make analytics-based decisions in the moment.

It’s a dirty, little secret that veteran PR pros know, but newcomers, fresh from communications school, might not: it takes more than good work to advance your career. Veteran PR pro Arthur Solomon lets us in on several ways to bolster your PR career. His top tips include building strong relationships and always making your client look good.

Most measurement initiatives proceed in three stages. First, you need to define your business goals, then you need to determine the key performance indicators that align with them. And then comes perhaps the most important, and difficult, part: Communicating the outcomes to senior leaders in language they understand and tied to the goals they are prioritizing. Here are some sample KPIs linked to three business goals popular with the C-suite.

Sometimes the most difficult parts of PR crisis management are the basics, when and if to react to something and what to say. The billionaire owner of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots provides fresh evidence as he and his entourage mangle the sex scandal he’s battling. Was issuing an inauthentic apology the way to go?

It’s no big secret that public relations professionals often do all the leg work on press releases, including writing and suggesting quotes for executives’ approval. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind while crafting or communicating these scripted soundbites.

Conventional wisdom urges brands to own their mistakes and be as transparent as possible with your explanation of them. Another maxim is that when you don’t tell your story, someone else will gladly do it for you, though that version may differ greatly from your narrative. Facebook said it exposed millions of users’ passwords to thousands of its staff. It discovered the issue in January. Why did it wait until the end of March to mention it?