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If you are following the crisis communications playbook, you know that taking swift, deliberate and public action to right a wrong is enough to not only mitigate a brand’s crisis—it can even flip the narrative and earn that brand new followers. So after singer/songwriter SZA was racially profiled in a store and blasted the brand on social media, Sephora’s declaration that it would shut down operations for an inclusiveness and diversity training today seemed a smart crisis response. So why is the brand declaring its training has nothing to do with the incident?

Digital teams and SEO experts are no longer comprised strictly of data nerds and left-brainers, but include writers and journalists, sociologists, and anyone with a vested interest in better understanding how people search the web. With this trend, it’s also high time to remember that your content is best optimized for search when everyone in your organization embraces SEO from the start—including PR pros.

Your company has had a data breach. No, it’s potentially had a breach. What’s your counsel to the C-suite? Should the brand reveal this information to the public or wait until you have perfect knowledge? These questions are at the crux of the communicator’s dilemma in the age of cybercrime.

Communicators can perform what looks like magic when they win approval from the C-suite. But what looks like magic starts with reading and understanding data, and presenting it in a comprehensive way. Check out the strategic takeaways from our webinar: How to Prove Social Media ROI to the C-Suite

Crisis is going to strike your clients. This is just reality. So not preparing in advance for a crisis means exposing your clients to potential disaster. In an age when bad news and missteps become public and go viral at the speed of social media, it is absolutely essential to have a concrete crisis prevention and response plan in place. Here are four tried-and-true steps to keep your clients’ reputations safe.

To kick off Pride Month, Budweiser UK announced its partnership with London Pride by launching a “Fly The Flag” campaign featuring nine different brightly-colored Budweiser pint glasses, each depicting a different pride flag. Suffice to say, Twitter wasn’t having it. Advocates in the queer community resented seeing their flags used to sell beer, calling it opportunistic and insincere. Others lamented that Budweiser went too far by over-explaining what the various flags meant.

Communicators need to take a different approach to crisis management, three senior executives from APCO Worldwide argue. They must utilize research capabilities to constantly monitor the opinions and expectations of key stakeholders. This information will prove invaluable when a crisis hits.

In gauging the pulse of industry, PRNEWS found that one area of major interest at the Social Shake-Up Show in Atlanta last month was influencers: whether or not to use them, how to use them, where to find them. PRNEWS and partner Buztubr surveyed some 150 PR pros for their insight.

Many communicators know blockchain is a technology mostly with electronic cash or cyptocurrency. They also may know Facebook plans to unveil a cryptocurrency, Global Coin , later this year. In fact, there’s a lot more senior communicators should be aware of regarding blockchain and trust could be a big factor.

In a sense, media relations is similar to a fast-food restaurant. We are competing against many others who are trying to gain the attention of a customer, in this case it’s a journalist. Why not look at one of the most successful fast-food outlets, Chick-fil-A, for training tips?