Digital & Technology

Each month we’ll be asking communicators to unload their toolkits and tell us what falls out. In other words, What do you use to do your job? There’s no better duo to begin this feature than Manu Muraro, founder of Your Social Team, and Danielle Brigida, national social media manager, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. We asked them what tools they use to bolster their Instagram feeds.

In a world constantly disrupted by technological advances, how can we make sure we’re the ones making change, and that change isn’t making us? That was a question posited by keynote speaker and futurist Anab Jain at the International Association of Business Communicators’ World Conference in Montréal.

The digital in digital PR shouldn’t be reserved for promoting content, it should be the starting point for how we create content. Besides seeking trending topics and content gaps, digital tools can help analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles to establish opportunities. More than that, measuring digital data should inform your next steps, argues Kerry Sheahan, who heads content and PR at Britain’s Better. agency.

With Instagram boasting 800 million active monthly users and 80% of them following brands on the platform, we asked communicators for best practices for being successful on the graphic-based platform. They told us carefully picked influencers and attention to creating consistent visuals are critical.

An overwhelming majority of brands choose Facebook as the front lines of their customer-service efforts. And while many organizations seek to resolve questions or complaints as quickly as possible, about a quarter of brands still take up to 24 hours to respond. Those are just two of the findings of a recent survey conducted by The Social Shake-Up Show and Lithium Technologies.

Burger King scotched its Have It Your Way slogan back in 2014, but it still urges customers to personalize their burgers. That was part of the conception behind a recent campaign in Spain, where the brand’s Instagram account polled visitors to pick their favorite toppings in exchange for a free Whopper, customized with toppings from the survey. The effort turned out to taste good for both the brand and Instagram respondents.

Journalists and consumers know the feeling well: each wants a personalized experience but usually they receive a generic email or marketing message. The issue may be more than poor communications practices. It could be a lack of technical knowledge on the part of PR pros and marketers, a new study argues.

Podcasts remain a niche marketing tool, though they can be an attractive element. Those who listen to them regularly often take in some 7 shows each week and tend to stick through the entire podcast. The demo is young and male, a marketer’s delight.

Promoting an event in 2018 is a tough gig, especially at this time of year. Summer vacations are around the corner and it’s hard to compete with Coachella or a night of binge-watching “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Luckily, there are some tactics that will grab your potential attendees’ attention and help ensure they show up on the big day. Here are four tips for upping RSVPs for your next event.

When you bring hundreds of communicators together over two days for a conference on PR Measurement in Philadelphia, it gets interesting in a way the founding fathers never anticipated. “It’s like one big therapy session… Continued