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In our January 2020 edition, this column began its celebration of Black History Month with a remembrance of Joseph Varney Baker (1908-1993), who is believed to be the first black man to own a PR firm. This month’s edition remembers the first African-American woman to own a PR firm in the U.S.

The hunt for the perfect influencer usually starts with seeking out those social media accounts that can increase reach, raise awareness, build engagement and drive business results (sales, donations, conversions, etc.) for your organization. This means pinpointing the influencers who stand out among billions of users; true digital denizens capable of adjusting to ever-changing social media platform algorithms. It also means attracting the right influencers to your brand, and ensuring they yield a strong return on investment.

The Super Bowl can be a benchmark in a communicator’s career. An experience at the big game can make or break a brand, as well as bring out the best (or worst) in any professional. The hours are long, but the payoffs can be great. So what can we learn from Super Bowl PR veterans on how to handle what seems to be a larger-than-life media event?

The overarching theme at this year’s Top Women in PR Awards rooted itself in the way professionals see themselves and how they treat others. Many winners noted that having it all is nothing if colleagues don’t have each other’s backs along the way. The honorees gathered for a luncheon on Jan. 28 at the grand Gotham Hall in New York City,.

You’re not a real company unless you have an active CSR & sustainability campaign. At least that seems to be the new normal. The recent World Economic Forum pushed the green effort, though there were some cracks. To get set for PRNEWS’ CSR & Nonprofit awards in late March, we look at the ups and downs of CSR and why corporate social activism needs communicators who do it well.

The Super Bowl initiates a two-week festival of interviews, practices and storytelling through multiple platforms. Those certainly include mobile and social media, and brands have noticed. It’s now expected that brands will tease Super Bowl campaigns—not just through TV ads, but extensively on social media.

For several years, marketers and communicators have feared the damage done to the brands and public figures they represent via the propagation of “deepfakes,” videos and photos that use the assistance of machine learning technology to replace faces and objects with false, but realistic, images. As fake news and misinformation continue to plague online discourse, Facebook says it has taken a significant step to deter the spread of doctored video and photos.

You didn’t measure your communications effort in 2019? No matter, says IPR Measurement Commission member Mark Weiner. A speaker during PRNEWS’ Crisis and Measurement Summit next month in Miami, Weiner provides a basic framework to help you grab more budget in 2020 through measurement.

The media discussion surrounding the royal family break seems shrouded with mystery and hearsay—with statements being given on both sides, but no one really coming forth and explaining the real reason for the schism. This creates an open dialogue for the public, leaving the families apt to rumors and falsities. Many takeaways can be found regarding the public relations tactics taken by the famous Brits in yet another family crisis.

We’ve never experienced an economic recession in a heavily connected world. It might look very different from earlier downturns. And it might turn out that influencers, who can provide relatively low-cost content that connects authentically with audiences, will be an asset during a recession, argues Kaitlyn Hieb, a strategist at R/GA, a consultancy.