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The city of Erie received 65 inches of snow from Christmas Eve through Dec. 27—breaking a 59-year-old record for a two-day snowfall in the state. And this PR News reporter just happened to be visiting Erie for the holidays. Here are a few observations on Erie’s communications around the storm.

With Franz Paasche leading the way, PayPal’s communications function has helped shift perception of the company from its legacy reputation as a “button on a website” for online payments to an innovative financial platform that collaborates across the industry to provide secure commerce experiences wherever users are actively engaged. And after recent tragedies, including Hurricane Harvey, Paasche has acted as a key advisor in the development and launch of a disaster relief campaign.

As we enter the final days of the final week of 2017—a time when you or everyone around you is on vacation—this is the perfect time to adopt some processes so you can hit the ground running next week. And so here are 9 tips that will help you attack 2018 with renewed vigor. The best part is that they take very little time and the payoff can be large in terms of productivity and networking. In short, they’re a way to identify what you can prune so that you’ll have more time for issues that matter.

Marketer of the Year Dawn Callahan is an award-winning marketing visionary who is part of the leadership team that took Boingo Wireless from a small startup to a global Wi-Fi leader. Meanwhile, Callahan’s co-winner Luke DeRouen has been responsible for solidifying Arby’s brand communications strategy over the past three years—a strategy that has resulted in the brand delivering exceptional programming and increased sales results.

Knowing how to handle a crisis arguably is the most important skill in a PR pro’s toolkit. When it’s a social media crisis, the need to act quickly often can be paramount, requiring PR pros to have items ready to deploy almost immediately. Here are a few tips that will bolster your efforts at apologizing for a crisis on social media.

Shortly after Media Relations Professional of the Year Wimberly led a launch of the Galaxy Note7, the world turned its attention to incidents of the Note7 battery catching fire. Far from losing her cool, Wimberly immediately orchestrated a full and transparent response to a crisis without precedent. Not only did her campaign help recover 98 percent of the recalled devices, it also set the stage for future successful product launches.

Throughout his long career playing baseball, Derek Jeter was thought to have the PR sense of a crafty politician. Little if anything stuck to him. In just a few months as CEO and co-owner of the Florida Marlins, though, he seemingly has torched his good name by unloading the team’s top talent and several other questionable moves. Here are suggestions designed to help him repair his public image.

Lauren Herchert has counseled H+K’s largest clients throughout her nine-year tenure with the agency, establishing a reputation as a compassionate and inspiring team leader, leading internal coaching and training programs and building H+K’s client roster with significant new business wins.

Veteran PR pro and former journalist Arthur Solomon continues his series of communications lessons pulled from 2017 news headlines. In this edition, Solomon concentrates on lessons learned from crises that involved Equifax, BP and the White House.

When Lacey Haines joined HP in 2016, she saw an opportunity to reinvent how the company approaches product reviews by expanding the scope of the program to include lifestyle media. In short, Haines created HP’s consumer media program, building it into what it is today.