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In PR as in any profession, it’s important to keep learning. Educational resources for PR pros abound, of course. Fortunately, PR practitioners also can gain a tuition-free education by being keen observers of the political process. Watching televised briefings and political talk shows provide plenty of takeaways, especially about what to do and avoid when dealing with the media.

Cynthia Martinez has handled some of the worst crises you could imagine. As director of global corporate communications for Royal Caribbean Cruises, Martinez has dealt with everything from fires to a guest committing suicide by jumping overboard. And since any of Royal Caribbean’s guests can tweet or post a video the moment a crisis arises, her team needs to be quick, transparent and, most of all, prepared. Martinez, who will speak at PR News’ Digital and Marketing Show Oct. 17-19 in Miami, shares a few tips on how to own the narrative.

Measuring reach on Facebook has become far more complex than simply using one metric to count how many people witnessed a piece of content. A mix of different KPIs must be considered in tandem to determine where, how and why users are seeing (or not seeing) your brand’s Facebook content, according to Karen Vega, senior director of social media activations and earned media at Viacom Velocity.

If you’re knee-deep in an all-consuming career, you probably don’t take much time out to ask yourself how and why you got there. A little navel-gazing can go a long way, though. Paychecks aside, asking yourself why you’re in a particular line of work can put you back in touch with your original inspiration, your core ambitions and your native talents.

Amazon, Reddit, Netflix, Google: This is just the beginning of the list of prominent companies that have joined the chorus to call for the preservation of net neutrality on July 12, 2017, the “Day of Action.” But your brand may not seem to be as directly affected if it is not a content provider. How, then, is this controversy relevant to you?

When Cisco’s Talent Brand team opened an Instagram account, it didn’t just throw a few photos into the feed, bedazzle them with hashtags and call it a day. The company knew that getting people to show up and remain engaged with the account would be a challenge. So, how did @WeAreCisco’s Instagram account grow from zero to 18,000 followers, with healthy engagement rates, without paying a dime? Here’s how.

Unfortunately for proud PR practitioners everywhere, the facilitator of the June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Rob Goldstone, is being described in the media as a “PR exec.”

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 John Guilfoil, who was compelled to start a PR agency focused on first responders after witnessing the terrorist attack at the 2013 Boston Marathon. His premise: No police or fire department is too small to have its own press secretary. After just three years in business, John Guilfoil Public Relations, LLC serves more than 200 clients, including over 100 police departments in six states.

PR pros often hear the phrase, “Think like a journalist.” Sometimes they even need to work as journalists, particularly when they are interviewing brand executives or clients in search of an interesting item that can eventually be pitched to a reporter. It’s your job to move beyond the collection of facts and dry, memorized answers executives often provide. Here are tips to get interviewees to offer emotion and other insights so that the result will be an interesting story. After that you’ll be ready to pitch it to journalists.

For years, podcasting was overshadowed by other forms of emerging media, but its momentum continues to grow. More than 10 billion podcasts were downloaded and streamed on Apple devices alone in 2016, an increase of more than 2 billion from the year before. And every week, new brands jump into the space, using podcasts as a form of content marketing, a dynamic way to attract new customers. But for brands looking to build an audience, the key is to focus on content first and marketing second.