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In this regular feature we ask PR leaders to tell us about people who’ve influenced their career, the best advice they’ve received and trends they’ve spotted. This week’s interview is with Heather Dueitt, director, marketing/communications, at NoteVault. She discusses lessons learned about social media.

With social media’s ability to give everyone a chance to comment, brands must be particularly vigilant to monitor the cultural landscape. Here’s an example of a brand that thought its ad for athletic footwear was in good taste. It was, except several tragic news events made it far less so. Tips on how your brand can avoid a similar issue.

Our look at influencers, courtesy of data from Shareablee, provided to us exclusively, shows food influencers had a fantastic June. Food was up 5% despite offering 4% fewer pieces of content month over month. Travel influencers were not as fortunate, with all 5 leaders on our list falling in terms of consumer engagement, month over month.

Everywhere we look we hear about influencers. YouTubers, Instagrammers, bloggers and more are building online communities. Working with influencers is not as simple as merely finding someone to write about your brand, however. In this article we provide tips to help you find influencers who will be the right fit for your brand.

Dealing effectively with the news media always was a core PR skill. It’s been temporarily overshadowed as social media rises to one of PR’s top priorities. In fact social and traditional PR can and should work together. This article demonstrates how to use elements of both to gain media coverage.

Greg Kunkel, a communicator at the NW Pacific Laboratory, provides a step-by-step look at how PR can use Google Analytics to its advantage. Along the way you’ll learn about how UTM codes can help and why you need to learn about acquisition tabs if you don’t already.

What is an influencer? The definition varies depending on who’s speaking. There’s no denying, though, how important they’ve become for some brands. As such, we’ve asked Shareablee to track influencers with the most consumer engagement. Our first sectors are automotive and beauty.

In our June 26 edition, we told you about the yearly Gould+Partners benchmarking study that showed PR firms struggling last year to reach 20% profitability. Now we break down the data a bit more, looking at which specialties charged the most and how PR pros are billing their hours.

Self-help gurus say you are who you are if you think you are. Same goes with pitching, where confidence is 90% of the game. Michael Smart tells the story of two pitches that were similar but one made a critical error and ended up on in the trash.

The term fake news, or #fakenews, has become ubiquitous. The question for PR pros is how to engage with fake news and defeat it. U of FL professor Kristina Libby provides a 3-part plan that will help you defend yourself and triumph over fake news.