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At this week’s PR News Measurement Conference in Philadelphia, there was a lot of talk about moving away from a media relations-based “coverage model” of communications toward a “community and conversation influencer” model, in which… Continued

As communicators know, crisis communication begins well before a crisis occurs. Southwest’s communicators demonstrated they were prepared for April 17’s fatal incident aboard flight 1380 from NY to Dallas. Beyond their technical competence, Southwest used several tactics to inject a human touch in its crisis communications.

Starbucks has had a rough week after an issue of racial discrimination at one of its stores in Philadelphia led to national headlines. In response, the company has gone beyond the traditional CEO apology and announced that it will close more than 8,000 stores across the U.S. for one day for antibias training among its employees.

Social media has become the foundation for communications measurement, in part because each platform comes with its own analytics feature that communicators can use to measure an endless variety of outputs and outcomes. But it’s important to remember that only using the native analytics features will not give you a full picture.

Ethics has become an issue for businesses, including PR. The new Global Communications Report from the Center for PR at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism finds PR pros and students certainly are concerned with ethics and the public’s perception of PR’s ethics. The respondents are less clear about what to do about it.

The social trends of 2017 seem to continue into 2018. In our first look at U.S. B2C brands for 2018 we see companies generally posting fewer pieces of content, but gaining consumer engagement. The data provided to us exclusively by Shareablee shows beauty and fashion brands dominating the first quarter of 2018 in terms of consumer engagement with social posts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

How many ways can data show it? Facebook is the social platform of choice for those older than 18. PiperJaffray found another way to express this thought. It asked U.S. teens to name their favorite social platform. Just 9% of them responded that it was Facebook. Nearly 50% said Snapchat was at the top of their lists.

Should your brand and CEO address a social or political issue? How about one that on its face seems to have little to do with your company? Last week during an IPR conference in Washington, D.C., Southwest Airlines’ CCO Linda Rutherford discussed a mechanism the carrier uses to advise its CEO about the social and political topics he should engage with.

Knowing your audience may be the first rule of communications and marketing. Part of that knowledge is understanding the type of messages your audience craves. A new study from Bain & Company collaborating with Google argues the best companies have added timing to their knowledge base. Using technology and measuring their results, they find the best time(s) to send messages to customers.

Communicators can never be too prepared for a crisis, especially in the age of social media. Luckily, there are dozens of tools—many of them free—your company can leverage to assist in planning for and managing crisis communications swiftly and effectively. Barry Reicherter, executive vice president and senior partner/director of insights at Finn Partners, lists three key priorities for monitoring social before, during and after a crisis and an artillery of programs for each.