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Social media can be a wonderful tool for media relations professionals, as we know. Yet it is only one of several ways to communicate with journalists. Face-to-face meetings, which you can arrange for brand executives during a media tour, can help build a personal relationship with journalists. We asked communicators about their must-haves and tips for conducting successful media tours.

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.

The ride-share company has announced that it will no longer force victims of harassment and sexual assault into private arbitration. The move by Uber raises two questions: How far does this change in policy go toward repairing Uber’s reputation, and what does this mean for other companies with arbitration clauses?

While some holdouts still believe digital is a passing fad, the latest digital advertising figures would seem to put such arguments to rest. In addition, media consumption figures may surprise you. Print isn’t dead yet.

One of the final parts of the diagnosis on Facebook’s health has arrived and the patient seems nearly fully recovered. Usage in the U.S., Facebook’s home country, has not budged despite the platform’s most difficult period since it went public in 2012. Security remains a concern to users, though, and Facebook’s demographic means it remains the adult in the room of social media channels.

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.

The latest and greatest usually is the rage at industry events such as last week’s Social Shake-Up Show in Atlanta. Beneath all the talk about social media, though, Shakers found top-flight influencers urging them to mix social platforms with good, old-fashioned PR tactics. And at least one influencer believes the secret power of social media calls for brands to be social instead of pushing sales.

The influencer with the largest audience certainly has a leg up on the competition, yet there are other factors involved when generating consumer engagement. This week we examine Travel influencers and how they’ve fared in getting consumers to engage with the content on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

The recent revelations about presidential attorney Michael Cohen’s dealings with AT&T and Novartis are the latest examples of large companies stumbling during reputational crises. Here are 5 lessons brands can learn from AT&T’s and Novartis’s pitfalls.