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Confidentiality is paramount to professional communicators, and while embargoes are hard to enforce, Google’s new “Confidential mode” positions Gmail as a top tier security safeguard. The problem with these new security features, says leading digital digital privacy nonprofit The Electronic Frontier Foundation, is that they offer users brittle security measures that can easily be breached.

We can all agree that food is an important part of our lives. So when the CEO of one of the fastest-growing startups issues a memo proclaiming that it will no longer serve meat at corporate functions or reimburse employees on expense accounts for meaty meals, the business world took note. Stomachs growled and the haters started to hate.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft announced a new program called the Data Transfer Project (DTP), an initiative to “create an open-source, service-to-service data portability platform so that all individuals across the web could easily move their data between online service providers whenever they want.”

The distinction between misinformation and disinformation is at the heart of Mark Zuckerberg’s thinking about why Holocaust deniers’ material can remain on Facebook. He’s likely debated this thorny question with his senior team. Unfortunately, his comments this week and his subsequent walk back muddled the distinction. In terms of walking back, though, he had plenty of company from other prominent people.

There was a gathering of editors from leading D.C. publications whose job includes evaluating op-ed submissions from outside writers. Their tips on how to get published amounted to a clinic for authors. A major takeaway was that while editors want jargon-free submissions with strong points of view, each publication has certain preferences. This means the road to success for media pitchers is to know those preferences.

Though many don’t realize it, SEO is influenced by every department that touches digital content in a given organization. While you don’t have to be a technical genius to understand how that impacts your marketing and communications efforts, it’s important to be aware that even if you hand off SEO to your resident SEO expert or to an agency, your actions with your brand’s digital content are already affecting your search rankings.

It is better to play offense than defense. Don’t wait until you and your team are asked to prove your value to the business. Start a measurement program now so that when the inevitable happens and the C-suite wants proof of communication’s contributions to the organization, you’ve already got it in hand.

James Nickerson will kick off the Facebook for Communicators Boot Camp at PR News’ Social Media Summit on Aug. 9 with a timely invocation on where the platform is going, including why regulation might not be a bad thing for Facebook and the ramifications of GDPR for users. Tying these future-focused topics together is Nickerson’s belief that marketers are in a unique position to heal the growing disconnect between brands’ trust in the platform and the distrust felt by end users.

At its Social Media Summit in San Francisco on Aug. 10, PR News will honor Madison Dowswell of PepsiCo, Ashley Frohnert of PETA and Jessica McGlory of Jellyfish as its 2018 Social Media Luminaries. The Social Media Luminaries awards program celebrates of-the-moment social media marketing pioneers.

Most communicators would agree it’s important for audiences to be able to find their press releases in a Google search. But how can they make sure the right audiences and journalists find those releases?

The first step is making the most of your search data, according to Laura Mitchell, director of digital for Cisco.com, who leads SEO for the technology company’s core web property. Mitchell and her team have a proven system for tying search data to desirable outcomes such as having target readers find releases and other timely content.