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Large companies often fail at crisis management because they view the situation only from their perspective. A more successful crisis-management effort considers the views of external stakeholders. In addition, several exercises can help communications teams boost speed and confidence during a crisis.

Google launched a $300 million news initiative just more than one year ago, including a product called News Consumer Insights. It allows publishers to crunch raw data from Google Analytics into insights around lead generation, audience segments and who’s paying for their premium content. Building on its commitment to that tool, Google just released a tool called Realtime Content Insights. While NCI is still useful for business development and looking at the longview, the RCI tool will help writers, editors, content producers and social teams make analytics-based decisions in the moment.

It’s a dirty, little secret that veteran PR pros know, but newcomers, fresh from communications school, might not: it takes more than good work to advance your career. Veteran PR pro Arthur Solomon lets us in on several ways to bolster your PR career. His top tips include building strong relationships and always making your client look good.

Most measurement initiatives proceed in three stages. First, you need to define your business goals, then you need to determine the key performance indicators that align with them. And then comes perhaps the most important, and difficult, part: Communicating the outcomes to senior leaders in language they understand and tied to the goals they are prioritizing. Here are some sample KPIs linked to three business goals popular with the C-suite.

Sometimes the most difficult parts of PR crisis management are the basics, when and if to react to something and what to say. The billionaire owner of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots provides fresh evidence as he and his entourage mangle the sex scandal he’s battling. Was issuing an inauthentic apology the way to go?

It’s no big secret that public relations professionals often do all the leg work on press releases, including writing and suggesting quotes for executives’ approval. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind while crafting or communicating these scripted soundbites.

Conventional wisdom urges brands to own their mistakes and be as transparent as possible with your explanation of them. Another maxim is that when you don’t tell your story, someone else will gladly do it for you, though that version may differ greatly from your narrative. Facebook said it exposed millions of users’ passwords to thousands of its staff. It discovered the issue in January. Why did it wait until the end of March to mention it?

As GDPR took effect, countless brands required their network to opt-in to new privacy policies and terms of service. Those changes weren’t required for domestic brands that don’t do business internationally, but they were certainly a good idea given that data regulation remains a topic du jour. But when it comes to spamming, email remains the medium where much of the bad behavior still runs rampant. Here are some other steps your communications team can take to make sure that it isn’t spamming its audience with too much information over email.

By most accounts, PR is making progress on its measurement journey. Unfortunately, many PR teams focus solely on counting impressions to assess the effectiveness of earned media. PR data science company AirPR argues more context is necessary to form a truer picture of Share of Voice and how it contributes to business goals. Today it’s releasing a product to facilitate adding that context.

Each year PR News’ CSR and Nonprofits awards lunch is a pastiche of PR tips and tactics and emotion. The 2019 edition, held Friday, was jammed with takeaways and examples of PR using its vast tool kit to do good. We offer a few memories of the awards luncheon, which was held at Washington, D.C.’s historic National Press Club.