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Confucius said, “Life is simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” The same holds for PR firms and profitably. Data supplied exclusively to PR News Pro by Gould + Partners reveals none of the 106 PR firms, which were grouped by net revenue, reached 20% profitability, the industry benchmark. Individually, some firms polled for this 2016 study had 30% profitability, others were far less. The groups failed to reach 20% profitability in the ’14 and ’15 surveys, too.

In most cases employees are, and will always be, a brand’s greatest asset. They drive in-house and agency success. Engaging them should be the highest priority. It’s the CEO’s responsibility to help achieve a singular, straightforward vision that propels the business and energizes employees to be best in class, renowned for unrivaled talent, forward-thinking capabilities and unrelenting client service. Achieving a vision like this requires building an incredible company spirit where every employee feels that “we are in this together” and maintaining an exceptional culture that embraces doing something different for clients, colleagues and the community. Central to the creation of this shared passion for success is a dedicated plan for actively engaging and motivating employees.

One of the most significant advantages of social networks is the incredible amount of user information that each platform collects and then makes available for targeted posts. By staying on top of what users and the media are talking about on social platforms, candidates have an unprecedented ability to weigh in with the most relevant information. Each campaign can offer PR pros valuable examples of how to be aware of important topics and deploy the right messaging to the right audience at the right time.

A story does not need to be complicated to draw people’s attention and win their affection. These days, big brands invest millions of dollars in elaborate and often highly produced online content and campaigns designed to gather as much attention as possible. Yet the video that broke all the records is a simple recording from the smartphone of a woman sharing her sincere laughter with the world.

Corporate social responsibility programs simply can’t have any real lifespan without the work of professional communicators. The best PR pros breathe life into CSR programs by creating ongoing dialogues between a program’s creators and a company’s employees and C-suite, journalists, the public at large on digital channels and communities that stand to benefit from the program itself.

Snapchat’s latest update, a redesign of its Live Stories and Discover sections, goes a long way toward making the app more intuitive and bringing in more viewership. Now you will see both Discover and Live Stories intermingled in panels on the Discover page, as well as in a carousel at the top of the Stories page.

Now that audiences are well established and active on messaging platforms—many of the most popular have hundreds of millions of monthly active users—the companies behind them are moving from a focus on messaging to a heightened awareness of commerce and business needs. Now that the platforms are considering business uses for their services, does every organization really need to embrace this new digital trend?

There are many moving parts when it comes to tracking influencers, particularly those that have a reach expanding across multiple platforms. Brands with an understanding of influencer performance can activate a strategic campaign by simply following a few easy steps to track influencers and attribute their efforts to marketing success.

Your brand can ignore Snapchat if it wishes, yet with 10 billion daily views and growing (it was 8 billion just a few months ago), concentrated largely in a very young, highly desirable demographic, it might not be the greatest idea. OK, perhaps your brand isn’t ready to join the Snapchat foray today. Fine. That’s reasonable, Gavin Donovan, digital strategy lead, Mission Foods, told attendees during a PR News Digital PR& Marketing Conference in Miami Beach June 7.

The days when businesses could ignore social media are over. Even though C-suites now know they need to be on social, many ROI-focused executives still don’t see the value. One of the clichés behind this dichotomy of opinion is the left-brain, right-brain split that conventionally divides creative from more analytical professionals. But it doesn’t have to be this way.