Topics

Do you have the guts to cede control of your social media to employees? This takes trust, but according to Carmen Collins, social media lead for Cisco’s Talent Brand team, it can be a rewarding way to get out your message, promote the brand’s culture and build your following.

This is the sixth year we’re including the CSR Hall of Fame as part of PR News’ Spring Awards luncheon, which will be held March 22 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. At the luncheon we’ll also honor the winners and honorable mentions of PR News’ CSR Awards and Nonprofit PR Awards.

How many times have you received a text message you didn’t look at? The answer is most likely “almost never.” In fact, text messages receive a 98% open rate and mobile messaging is the No. 1 most frequently used feature on our phones. This unlocks a world of creative opportunity for brands. In a time when ad blocking is the new normal, marketers must embrace choice-based ad offerings in the quest for true attention. Luckily, there’s a ripe opportunity to reach the nearly 1 billion iPhone users out there with something they’ll actually appreciate—in iMessage.

If you’re a PR professional and you’ve never had the opportunity to work a SXSW show on behalf of a brand, you should definitely add it to your career bucket list. There’s the sheer geography of SXSW—every street is lined with branded facades as companies take over venues for experiential marketing stunts. Not to mention the volume of social media and social ads that pump through every channel.

Messaging apps like WhatsApp and Messenger (both part of the Facebook family) are powerful platforms that are now being used by more and more people. As mass adoption occurs, the tipping point makes it justifiable for brands and services to invest in the development of bots and AI. And judging by this week’s SXSW, that tipping point isn’t far away.

“Journalists are grammar nerds.” – Kristen Page-Kirby, Senior Arts Editor, Washington Post Express “You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.” – Attributed to several people, including: Will Rogers, Oscar Wilde, Mark… Continued

It was an effective pitch: brief, tailored to the media outlet that received it, clearly and cleanly written. It pitched an essay about a relevant topic: best practices for small companies and startups seeking to obtain media coverage. That’s why the pitch, from a PR firm representing a communications director at a brand, and its attached essay made it through several layers of editors until it reached your blogger, with a message affixed from a PR News colleague: potentially usable content. It went downhill from there.

Lyft and Uber have been locked in PR warfare against each other this year, but the first weekend of Austin, Texas’ South by Southwest was a feather in the cap of both ride-sharing platforms. And they didn’t have to do a thing—they just stood by and watched as others failed to do their job successfully.

For those of you who are dealing with customers and stakeholders (who isn’t?), a little customer service goes a long way. Little, as in, call someone back (text or email is also fine) within a reasonable time frame. Treat them like you don’t want to lose them. Bad customer service experience can not only inconvenience you, it can change the whole way you feel about a brand.

Rarely do I mess with cookies, except to eat them. But an experience over the last two weeks with a furniture retailer had me clearing the cookies from my computer. So annoyed was I by… Continued