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With the explosion of consumer-generated media, opinion research has become one of the pillars of communications strategy. To explore the ins and outs of external surveys as a media relations tool, PR News asked corporate PR heads who often field surveys and an online research firm executive about the benefits, options, challenges and possible pitfalls in conducting meaningful research.

By now it’s a mantra for PR executives and social media gurus everywhere. Listen…learn…engage. Certainly no quibbling here with that advice. But while you’re quietly, unobtrusively monitoring Facebook, Twitter, blogs and forums, there’s another strategy you should be thinking about and deploying: creating and sharing compelling content via digital platforms.

PR professionals who follow the media relations rules are growing increasingly frustrated by PR spam complaints in the blogosphere. The good news is there are things you can do to clearly signal your commitment to respect journalists’ traditional boundaries.

Data gathered by the Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that adults with chronic illnesses spend significantly less time on the Internet, which may influence the decision-making of PR professionals in healthcare.

As social media continues to explode, organizations and PR professionals have been quick to jump on the bandwagon. But one PR function hasn’t been so fast on the draw: financial communications.

Three expert panelists weigh in on the hot topics, trends and tools of media relations. What shouldd PR pros be doing to optimize media outreach? What should PR executives be thinking about for the rest of 2010?

Picking the perfect words may not have been as important in the past, but today, keywords are critical to your firm’s digital reputation and whether or not you get found.

The Hawthorne Effect may be more relevant than ever in the time of social media. But here are a few more lessons that emerge from recent research about communications to engage today’s employees.

A study by Epsilon reveals that influencers can be hard to pinpoint specifically, but they cross gender, age, income levels and channels. The one constant is their tendency to talk about products and events.

It’s safe to say that if an organization hasn’t at least experimented with Twitter by now, it has missed the proverbial boat. Now, three years since the microblogging platform’s launch, PR News speaks with a quartet of social media strategists across nonprofit, B2C, B2B and agency functions to find out how their own Twitter efforts have evolved, and how they are moving their business needle with the tool.