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The key to Mark Zuckerberg’s fine April 10 performance before a Senate committee on Capitol Hill, which resulted in his becoming billions richer when Wall Street approved of what it heard, is something so basic it often is glossed over in PR training courses. While Zuckerberg’s vast resources no doubt helped his preparation, any PR pro can avail herself/himself of many of the same tips and tactics his handlers used.

As Mark Zuckerberg testifies before Congress, speculation is swirling as to whether Facebook will integrate portions of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) into preventive measures it’s taking against future data leaks and election meddling. Brands operating solely in the U.S. now have strong reasons to fear (and begin preparing for) GDPR.

Criticizing a brand or famous individual on social can be a great way to blow off steam. For the critic, there’s much less of a price to pay than if you blow off steam face-to-face or on email with family members and co-workers. In that sense, social media fills a great human need—to vent without repercussions for those who vent. You know where this leaves brands—on permanent 24-hour alert.

There is a slew of caveats in a new study about fake news and its influence on the 2016 U.S. presidential election from three academics at Ohio State University. While it is incorrect to deduce fake news won the election for President Trump, the paper argues fake news influenced many members of one important group and they made a difference in a close election. Imagine what fake claims about your product or a competitor’s product could do to your business.

Marketers and communicators admit they don’t always know if their messages are reaching the intended audiences. Yet most believe those messages are relevant when they make it to the target audience. Uh, maybe not, according to a new Adobe survey.

In our examination of the Restaurant sector, with Shareablee data provided to us exclusively, we find fewer pieces of content posted in 2017 resulting in a reduction in consumer engagement with the industry. This is a trend buster in that nearly all the industries we’ve seen have reduced content and gained consumer engagement.

A memo from Nike’s HR chief admitted the company has failed to promote enough women and people of color to VP offices and above. This prompted us to assemble a roundtable of communicators to discuss inclusion, diversity and communicators’ role in building a culture of inclusion.

As we went to press Tuesday a slew of top-flight communications and marketing positions changed hands. The biggest was the move of Salesforce’s CCO Corey duBrowa to Google.

In a video filmed at Robbins’ “Unleash the Power Within” event, the self-help guru told his audience of thousands that women were relying on #MeToo to “try to get significance and certainty by attacking and destroying someone else.” Audience member Nanine McCool is shown attempting to explain to Robbins that he misunderstood the importance of #MeToo before being interrupted by him with more provocative statements and actions. But is this purely bad PR for Robbins in this era?

PR News’ community on Twitter has been voting for the most overused clichés over the past several weeks—using the hashtag #WordsBracket—through five rounds of brackets. Apparently PR practitioners need a nice long break from hearing the word “engage” but, admittedly, it’ll be hard to find a workable replacement for it.