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Unfortunately for proud PR practitioners everywhere, the facilitator of the June 2016 meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Rob Goldstone, is being described in the media as a “PR exec.”

PR pros often hear the phrase, “Think like a journalist.” Sometimes they even need to work as journalists, particularly when they are interviewing brand executives or clients in search of an interesting item that can eventually be pitched to a reporter. It’s your job to move beyond the collection of facts and dry, memorized answers executives often provide. Here are tips to get interviewees to offer emotion and other insights so that the result will be an interesting story. After that you’ll be ready to pitch it to journalists.

For years, podcasting was overshadowed by other forms of emerging media, but its momentum continues to grow. More than 10 billion podcasts were downloaded and streamed on Apple devices alone in 2016, an increase of more than 2 billion from the year before. And every week, new brands jump into the space, using podcasts as a form of content marketing, a dynamic way to attract new customers. But for brands looking to build an audience, the key is to focus on content first and marketing second.

Google’s AdWords can be an expensive proposition, particularly for nonprofits. The brand’s Ad Grants can help, providing AdWords for free, with several restrictions. Here is a step-by-step account of how qualifying nonprofits can take advantage of this excellent program.

MillerCoors’ CCO Pete Marino discusses why large brands remain vulnerable to crisis and why PR blunders still occur. He also expands on a discussion about his brand’s relatively new blog, transparency and how he would spend an unlimited budget.

Many brands have added Facebook Live to their social media arsenals to give audiences a behind-the-scenes look at trade shows and events. But with live video, haste commonly creates waste. In pursuit of an insider experience one can easily disregard the time and preparation needed to ensure a live stream leaves a good impression.

Many job interviews end with the interviewer asking the candidate if he/she has questions. It’s best to use this opportunity to obtain important information. Topics to inquire about include the company’s culture, its salary/promotion review process and the structure of its work environment. After all, this is the time to figure out if the company is the right fit for you. On the other side of the table the interviewer is deciding if you will be a good employee.

So you’re writing keyword-rich copy in the inverted pyramid style, including backlinks and making sure all your pages have unique and clear titles? That’s great, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to maximizing SEO potential. At the 2017 Social Shake-Up, Carolyn Shelby, SEO director at tronc, Inc., took the audience to school on all of the above, plus more key areas where communications pros have a blind spot.

Stockholders might literally own a brand, but employees—from the C-suite to the customer-service level—are the brand. This sense of unity and shared responsibility needs to be communicated up and down the line, over and over again. At the very least, basic kindness will take root in an organization—not a bad trait to have while the world hungers for the next trending story.

Here’s one question you don’t want to be asked by a brand representative when you’re trying to resolve an ongoing issue: “Who did you speak to the last time you tried to resolve this?” Once… Continued