Stories by Mark Renfree

For communicators looking to implement visual campaigns across the social spectrum, there’s no shortage of things to consider when building a measurement framework. Large multinational corporations like Oracle, for example, need to take into account which platforms have greater impact in various countries around the globe. Though many organizations don’t have to deal with this kind of complexity, there’s always the issue of making sure everyone is speaking the same measurement language.

President Obama’s decision to announce his endorsement of Hillary Clinton on YouTube falls perfectly in line with how he’s conducted himself throughout his presidency. The president routinely speaks to the people on popular social channels like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It’s all part of a carefully crafted strategy to increase government accessibility and transparency thought up by Obama, but orchestrated by a powerful digital team operating from the White House.

Snapchat continues to do well because it acts as a private portal into the lives of our friends—lives that are distinctively unfiltered, raw and often utterly mundane. It’s this window of authenticity that keeps users flocking to the app. And at this point, it’s the only way for organizations to have any kind of success on Snapchat. Brands like Taco Bell continue to post creative and compelling content on the platform, but there’s perhaps only one personality on the social network that truly embodies the philosophy of Snapchat: DJ Khaled.

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.

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?

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.

PR News celebrated some of the year’s best social media campaigns on June 6 at the Ritz-Carlton South Beach in Miami. This year’s Social Media Award winners embodied the curiosity and flexibility that’s required to stay on top of the rapidly changing social media space. As social continues to come of age, these practitioners are able to score unrivaled successes for their organizations and brands.

As Obama’s 2008 campaign heralded a new era of political campaigning by introducing social media into the mix, the current presidential candidates are using digital technologies in groundbreaking ways. Despite Bernie Sanders’ struggles in the primary race, his success with online communications is hard to match. In many ways, it’s because of social media that many Americans now #FeelTheBern.

For the Cincinnati Zoo, a horrible accident swiftly escalated into a full-blown crisis as animal rights activists and social media users were quick to criticize the zoo’s decision to take the life of the endangered animal to save a 4-year-old boy who fell into the zoo’s gorilla enclosure.

Donald Trump’s use of Twitter has often influenced entire news cycles, and his proclivity for the platform is well known—often tweeting 10 times a day, once as many as 59 times in a single day. But the question remains: Is Trump actually the person behind his famously contentious Twitter presence?