Topics

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.

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.

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.

Starbucks found itself in hot water that had nothing to do with brewing coffee when the manager at a downtown Philadelphia location called the police on two black men who were sitting in the shop, waiting for a colleague to show. For communicators, this crisis offers substantial takeaways about the power of social listening and the need for timely accountability.

The USPS responded to President Trump’s executive order by aligning with his frustrations and acknowledging that it has several opportunities to improve. As a case study, this statement provides communicators with a practical, tactical example of how to handle criticism and calls for reform when those calls come from the very top.

A career in PR can be many things. Usually one thing it is not is the glamorous, party-hopping profession portrayed in movies, television and novels. Sometimes PR pros are asked to represent brands whose positions on social and political issues they abhor. In other cases they’re asked to lie to protect the brand they represent. Veteran PR pro Arthur Solomon offers three questions aspiring PR pros should ponder before making their career choice.

There’s no question that measuring the value of PR is one a communicator’s biggest challenges. Whether you’re charged with handling your brand’s media relations, social media campaigns or both, a pointed question from the C-suite lingers: “How does this tie to our bottom line?”

Not every communicator has time to study the best technical practices behind creating an effective image, of course, but understanding why certain images engage the eyes more than others requires no advanced study. Having shot news events and concerts for the better part of a decade, PR News’ Justin Joffe shares some common characteristics among his featured images that have garnered the most love, shares and engagement.

How are brands building relationships with micro-influencers to launch collaborations that result in compelling, authentic content, and what types of content resonate the most? Those are the central questions examined by “Major Insights From Micro-Influencers,” a survey of 400 micro-influencers from across the nation, conducted by Atlanta-based Everywhere Agency.

PR professionals say it all the time. They repeat the phrase so often sometimes its meaning gets lost. I’ll admit, my eyes roll when this concept is the first takeaway of a submitted essay I’m editing… Continued