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The veteran PR pro Arthur Solomon begins his annual review of lessons for communicators pulled from the year’s headlines and news reports. In this initial installment, the lessons involve crisis communications, media relations and internal communications. There’s also advice about the best way to handle a difficult boss.

In 2017 PR pros realized that the plethora of breaking political news has put the earned back into earned media. What’s a PR pro to do? The answer is to learn how you can conquer some of the new forces in earned media. Our author provides a series of tips and tactics rooted in the basics that will get your brand back in the media spotlight.

Within a month of taking leadership, Jodi Brooks led what Harold Burson calls one of the most significant new business wins in the history of Burson-Marsteller. And at SAP, Atle Erlingsson drove an internal campaign on gender pay equality and a successful media campaign that garnered coverage in Forbes, Fox, CNBC and the Wall Street Journal, helping the company to be named for the first time to Fortune’s Top 100 workplaces.

It’s traditional to look to the New Year with hope and optimism. As a result, this post, which highlights difficulties communicators will face in 2018, might not be the most pleasant read. On the other… Continued

During a morning session of last week’s PR News Media Relations Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, attendees were asked to discuss professional pain points. In a late-afternoon session, the attendees, working in groups, spent a few minutes thinking about solutions to the issues discussed during the morning session. Here’s a summary of the issues and the ideas proposed for solutions.

When it comes to holiday tweets, should brands play naughty or nice? Netflix’s snarky tweet, calling out fans of its program “A Christmas Prince,” begged the question. In a statement to PR News, Netflix wrote: “The privacy of our members’ viewing is important to us. This information represents overall viewing trends, not the personal viewing information of specific, identified individuals.”

For the third article in this five-part series about measurement-related issues, PR News and partner PublicRelay, a media monitoring and analytics firm, held a Communications Leadership Roundtable in New York during this holiday season. One dozen senior communicators discussed the challenges of refining and cleaning data, among other measurement-related issues.

Communicators assume social media and influencers are influential to some degree on peoples’ decisions. The more important questions: How influential are they? Which demographic groups are influenced most? And do people value the advice of influencers and what they see on social media equally across the board? In other words are there particular sectors where social media content and influencers’ advice carries the most weight? A new report attempts to answer some of those questions.

We’ve been told there are fewer journalists who are being asked to do more. In addition to reporting the news, journalists now are asked to provide content to social media platforms such as Facebook. They’re also being asked to take pictures and provide video. A new survey looks at how much more journalists are being to do. Its findings suggest savvy PR pros should think visually.

An area where data has influenced communicators heavily is in corporate social responsibility (CSR). Instead of addressing social issues based on what communicators felt the public was thinking about, savvy PR pros are using data to assess needs prior to mounting a CSR effort. Here’s how one health organization used data and research before beginning its CSR initiative.