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Influencer marketing can significantly extend a campaign’s reach, but only if it comes off as genuine—if it’s done right, it doesn’t seem like marketing at all. The trick is to ensure that the brand and product align with the influencer’s passion, says Anna Ritchie, social digital manager of integrated marketing at Pepperidge Farm. Ritchie, who will speak to the issue at PR News’ Digital and Marketing Show Oct. 17-19, in Miami, offered a couple of lessons learned in working with influencers.

Gone are the days when merely producing a Facebook Live broadcast was enough to give your brand an automatic algorithm boost. The promotion leading up to and following a Facebook Live broadcast is as crucial as the quality of the stream itself for winning and retaining viewers, according to Tracey Edouard, social media producer at Mashable and host of Mashable’s #BizChats Facebook Live series.

Paid social just got a little easier on our favorite ephemeral social network. Snapchat announced that users can now design Custom Geofilters within the app via an easy-to-use interface. Just open the Settings menu, tap On-Demand Geofilters and you’ll be able to select from a list of occasions, such as Graduation, Wedding and Birthdays. Then you can choose from a number of templates and edit them with the same text, Bitmoji and sticker tools that you use on snaps.

Imagine that one day you wake up to find that your brand’s web domain has been seized by the FBI and there is a warning blazoned across the page alleging the brand and its customers have committed federal crimes—and that prison time and fines may be involved. Reputation trouble doesn’t get much worse than that. But this was exactly the situation PokerStars found itself in.

PR News recently asked its community to tell us who should be listed among the top game-changers of PR in the last few years. Here, we look at game-changer Ahmad Itani, who founded Cicero & Bernay in Dubai in 2005. The agency began as a two-person firm with just two clients but today boasts a staff of more than 100 serving 60 clients—with a presence in 10 countries in the Middle East and Africa. And those first two clients, Hyundai and Kia, are still with the agency today.

Snapchat introduced a new tracking feature called Snap Map last week, allowing users to share their location as well as see where their friends are and, in some cases, what they’re doing. While the new tool has raised some privacy concerns, it also has some implications for brand communicators— it could become a great tool for event-based promotion and local businesses, says Andrea Limas, social media strategist for the University of San Francisco, and Kristy Gillentine, vice president of public engagement at Drive West Communications.

PR News recently asked its community to tell us who should be listed among the top game-changers of PR in the last few years. Here, we look at game-changer Joy Hays. As chief storyteller and social strategist at AT&T, Hays took a fragmented social media division and built a department that’s become a model for others to emulate, establishing an organizational structure as well as universal processes, channel and content strategies, crisis protocols and a Center of Excellence.

Many social media teams lament that they don’t have enough budget, headcount or support to have a real impact on the business. Yet it’s often these same teams that fail to connect the dots. Your senior leaders don’t care about likes and retweets, they care about impact on business results. Here’s a four-step process on how to frame the discussion and speak their language to get more headcount and budget for social.

An online newsroom is a crucial part of a successful PR strategy. But how can you optimize your newsroom to its full potential? It all boils down to five essential elements—accessibility, easy navigation, shareability, aesthetics and engagement—governed by one overarching principle: Your newsroom should always focus on the person you’re trying to communicate with.

On June 16, Amazon announced its $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods in a press release. But what does its messaging look like to its investors and top stakeholders? In the 10 days since the press release and accompanying front-page headlines, messaging for investors has centered on sales, showing that automating more jobs is a good thing, aligning with government priorities and maintaining a CSR narrative. Here are five ways Amazon has been communicating the acquisition as a benefit to investors.