Latest Posts

The world’s largest unboxing broadcast live on Facebook, a luxury hotel chain sharing its service values on Twitter, pancreatic cancer awareness spread through Instagram: these are just a few of the worthy social media campaigns spotlighted by the 2018 PR News’ Social Media Awards finalists. The winners of PR News’ Social Media Awards—which showcase the top social media campaigns and honor the individuals behind their success—are announced at an annual luncheon in New York City. This year, PR News’ Social Media Awards Luncheon will be held May 23, 2018 at The Yale Club.

Our weekly roundup of trends, news and personnel moves in PR and communications. This week’s stories include the fallout at Facebook from Cambridge Analytica, LinkedIn adds video tools, Levine and Smiley fight back at #MeToo and Starbucks’ search for a new cup may produce a pot of gold for a lucky engineer.

Savvy communicators know that having a crisis plan in place before a situation emerges is crucial for any brand. But not every negative comment requires a full-scale mobilization of the proverbial troops. Some social media crises can be mitigated before they gain widespread attention. Taking a tiered approach to crisis management strategy is important for avoiding blunders. By examining your company’s audience and vulnerabilities ahead of time, you can create protocols for each tier.

The March for Our Lives on March 24 attracted huge crowds across the country in support of gun reform. But upsetting the march’s No. 1 trending position on Twitter that afternoon, the National Rifle Association released an interview with rapper and activist Killer Mike. The interview was widely criticized by gun-reform advocates but it quickly became something else: a textbook example of the power influencers have to further a national conversation, sometimes at the expense of the very organization with which they are affiliated.

Instagram recently announced a change to its algorithm so that posts will now appear in a more chronological manner, finally heeding years of user complaints. But does that mean your brand should now post more frequently? How will brands be impacted by this change? Carmen Collins, social media lead for the talent brand at Cisco Systems, weighs in.

Established in 2011, PR News’ Measurement Hall of Fame recognizes long-standing and continued efforts in advancing and championing PR measurement and analysis, and the promotion and awareness of key metrics within the PR community. On April 17 at its annual Measurement Conference in Philadelphia, PR News will induct three communications leaders into this exclusive club.

Start with the premise that all business issues can be traced to a communications breakdown. If true, this means internal communications pros should be critical to fixing organizations’ business problems. Institute for PR Measurement Commission member Mary Miller describes how internal communicators can rise from producing outputs (company-wide emails, intranet content, e-newsletters, executive videos, etc.) to influencing measurable performance outcomes.

Earlier this month, PR News launched its own version of March Madness with the 2018 Most Overused PR Words & Phrases Tournament. Communicators reached out to us via Twitter with their votes for the most egregious examples of corporate jargon, from “trending” and “industry-leading” to “quite frankly.” We present the “winners” (such as they are) of the second round here.

If you’re taking a break from Snapchat à la Rihanna or fed up with Facebook following the Cambridge Analytica revelations, LinkedIn and Instagram have got you covered with new features that could make communicators’ jobs a little easier. LinkedIn, well on its way to becoming a full-fledged social platform, continues to add visual storytelling elements to its offerings. This week it unveiled a video filter feature for users, complementing its new native video function.

We’ve seen it before but it never seems to lose its irony: A brand built on something turns out to be in short supply of it. The British arm of KFC recently ran out of chicken. Built on collecting and protecting sensitive financial data, Equifax turned out to be clueless when handling customers’ confidential information. And Facebook, which espouses “meaningful social interactions,” has leaders who have been slow to talk about its biggest crisis yet.