Latest Posts

Say what you will about the latest social platforms, email continues to be the old reliable when it comes to marketing. Email yielded a median ROI of 122%—more than four times higher than other marketing formats, including social media, direct mail and paid search—per a 2016 US marketers survey. On the other hand, most peoples’ inboxes are more crowded than a subway train during rush hour. The challenge is breaking through the noise. We provide three tips to help your marketing email rise above the din.

Social media pros looking for ways to make their lives easier have some new options this week. Twitteriffic and Windowed offer users working on desktop or laptop more powerful and feature-laden experiences for Twitter and Instagram, respectively.

ESPN’s social media guidelines boil down to “if you wouldn’t say it on our TV or website screens, don’t say it in social.” That leaves a lot of room for interpretation, especially in today’s highly charged climate, but it’s a rule of thumb most of us understand. We all know it’s much easier and safer to express fury and strong opinions on social media than it is to express them in face-to-face situations or on, say, national television. But still—there’s that gray area between personal expression in one’s own social media accounts and one’s responsibility to an employer.

The battle between Instagram and Snapchat for more users and marketing dollars continues its heated pace. This morning, Snapchat introduced a new marketing tool called Context Cards giving Snapchat users a way to get instant information about a business featured in a Snap. Meanwhile, Instagram announced a couple of new features in the last week, including an interactive polling sticker for Stories that closely resembles Snapchat’s third-party Polly feature.

The dark weather on Monday night in Boston was a perfect complement to some of the darker topics communicators need to wrestle with today, including dark social, rogue sites and hackers and executive terminations. Fortunately, good advice rained down on attendees as well.

Our weekly roundup of trends, news and personnel moves in PR, marketing and communications. This week’s stories include Cam Newton’s apology, Jemele Hill’s suspension and kudos to Brandi Boatner on her promotion at IBM.

The opening of PRSA’s International Conference featured a bevy of technology exhibitors, a plethora of PRSSA members and the wisdom of filmmaker and storyteller Morgan Spurlock. The super-sized presentation from Spurlock was highly entertaining and contained several good tips about content creation.

Dove is in crisis mode after running a Facebook advertisement many are calling racist. The ad, a GIF which featured a black woman removing her shirt to reveal a white woman, was pulled after being widely shared on social media and covered in national news outlets. Given how many brands fumble in getting across respectful messaging around race and diversity, it’s crucial for all communicators to ensure their brands have an internal review process for all content, including an employee culture that nixes off-mark messaging long before it reaches the public.

The Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment story underscores a question faced by many corporate communications and HR pros: What steps should be taken to prevent that kind of behavior among top executives? It starts with education and a culture of accountability, as well as instilling a reporting structure that ensures employees won’t fear retribution.

When it comes to measuring your PR and communications efforts, more is not always better. Janneke van Geuns, head of insights and analytics at Google, says that she has seen communicators who try to collect and track an overabundance of metrics. But collecting more data isn’t going to bring about better insights, she says. Instead, communicators should break through the clutter of unnecessary (and just plain meaningless) metrics to focus on the ones that truly matter to you and your organization.