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At PRNEWS, we thought about how to utilize Slack to connect our readership and community. How could we leverage the relationships we’ve built with amazing contacts to benefit those outside of our circle, and bolster an entire community? And with that, we created the PR and Communications Pros Slack group.

South Dakota’s PR campaign around the state’s methamphetamine epidemic accomplished what it set out to do—create awareness around a state-wide health crisis. But the play on words, “Meth. We’re on it,” superimposed over pictures of teens, farmers and older women, also ignited a debate about the high cost of quick-won awareness, and whether it’s true that “there’s no such thing as bad PR.”

As the holiday season ramps up, social platforms continue to roll out many new features that can greatly affect the performance of your big end-of-year social campaigns. Whether you’re a nonprofit tapping into the giving spirit or a retailer seeking to boost holiday sales, here are some recent features to look into, by social platform.

Few PR professionals can say they have a dream job. Catherine Mathis was one of them. She led corporate communications at The New York Times Company. She also had a great team and plenty of job satisfaction. Sometimes dreams change, however. Her difficult decision to leave the Times led Mathis to several lessons about life and work that she uses to this day.

The media has a tendency to whack the federal government. On the other hand, when Washington does something good, and uses PR principles to do so, we feels it’s our duty to give props. That’s the case with the FTC’s clear, concise restatement of its influencer guidelines. There’s even a video.

This year’s Agency Elite Awards winners will be announced at PRNEWS’ Top Places to Work and Agency Elite Awards luncheon, Nov. 21 at the Yale Club in New York City. The awards denote excellence in PR agencies’ key practice areas, from community relations, thought leadership and social media to integrated communications, branding and business to business messaging.

November is PR and Communications Measurement Month. There’s plenty to celebrate about measurement. More communicators are measuring as they seek to meet the C-suite’s demand for data. On the other hand, many PR pros are measuring ineffectively, highlighting vanity metrics. It appears that colleges and graduate PR programs are largely ignoring measurement. And there are still a few remaining PR pros who steadfastly refuse to measure.

No one needs to tell a communications team twice that if “you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Creating a strategy which not only allows for a defensive response when something hits, but an anticipatory plan of possible situations, provides an offense your organization can depend on. Join PRNEWS on Dec. 10 for a crisis webinar: “Why a Strong Defense is the Best Offense.”

Last week, Uber reported $1 billion in losses, despite its third-quarter results beating estimates. This week, an angry social media mob reacted to Khosrowshahi’s comments by keeping the #BoycottUber hashtag trending all of Monday, dragging out many of the company’s skeletons in the process. For PR pros, the latest round of calls to #BoycottUber also contains many lessons around what constitutes good, and bad, investor relations. Here’s what we learned.

“If you want loyalty while working at a PR agency, bring your dog to the office.” That’s the advice of veteran PR pro Arthur Solomon. In addition to his words of wisdom about loyalty in PR, or the lack thereof, he offers advice about what to say and things to avoid when you’re in job-hunting mode. And you should be job hunting pretty much all the time, he says. Hey, that dog could really come in handy.