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One of this year’s Platinum Hall of Fame inductees, the DoSomething.org website, was selected by PR News’ panel of judges as leading the pack in clear and achievable calls to action. Website visitors have the option to get involved on a variety of causes using a simple dropdown that filters by time commitment and type of cause. PR News spoke to DoSomething.org’s CMO Carrie Bloxson about her organization’s Hall of Fame win, and what makes DoSomething.org’s website such a standout.

AI is getting much better at measuring media, yet many PR firms continue to deploy humans to compile and analyze reports. It’s not a ploy to charge more. Measuring earned and social media entails more than merely evaluating mentions and a human touch remains essential, argues former UBS Canada communications head Graeme Harris.

Though social media marketing is vital to the success of any business, staying abreast of changing trends can be a challenge. To help communicators keep up, Pan Communications has released an infographic of user and marketing data for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn that shows how much things have changed in the past year.

Content marketing is an element of many communicators’ daily work. But it can be challenging to tie back content marketing efforts to overall communications and business goals, from audience growth to fundraising. And while there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to successful content marketing, it’s most important to play to your strengths, sourcing content that’s close to home, according to Indiegogo’s director of integrated marketing, Kira Sparks.

Nabisco’s Barnum’s Animal Crackers now features drawings of animals on the iconic red boxes roaming free, as opposed to being cooped up in cages as they’ve been shown for more than 100 years. The folks at PETA are smiling, having helped effect yet another kinder treatment of animals.

Though VR and AR have become much more ubiquitous over the last three years, most businesses are still reticent to dive in. Last week, eMarketer shared infographics culled from a Harvard Business Review study in March 2018 that found while roughly two-thirds of U.S. executives polled claimed to be exploring the use of mixed reality (MR) technology, only 20% said they are “currently in production or deploying MR.”

While presenting the award for Video of the Year, Madonna took the opportunity to deliver a lengthy speech about how her career was inadvertently started by the late singer and undisputed Queen of Soul Aretha Franklin, who died the Thursday prior. Reactions to the speech were overwhelmingly negative, with amateur and professional critics alike voicing their belief that Madonna disrespected Aretha by making the speech largely about Madonna, relegating Aretha’s influence to nothing but a footnote in Madonna’s story of her own rise to stardom.

If the sole purpose of healthcare is to improve lives, perhaps it is ironic that there is often a human element missing in the way healthcare organizations communicate with patients and customers. But communicators like Edelman’s Susan Isenberg understand there is no one-size-fits-all answer to global communications, and they are working hard to humanize their outreaches on social media and elsewhere.

A recent Grand Jury report detailed over 1,000 cases of sexual abuse by “more than 300 priests over a period of 70 years” by leaders in the Roman Catholic Church in Pennsylvania. Several Catholic bishops in Pennsylvania released statements immediately after the report was filed, but there was obvious disagreement among the responses. And Pope Francis didn’t release a statement until the morning of Aug. 20, a full six days after the report came to light.

In many industries the skills in demand revolve around science and technology. It’s not too different in PR and communications, where digital and analytical knowledge is sought. Yet writing, seemingly an old-school skill, continues to play a major role in PR, combined with strategy and the above-mentioned digital, an informal survey of communicators and academics shows.