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Brands that haven’t yet tried investing resources in digital-based influencer marketing face a host of unknowns, the first one being whether it’s suitable for a particular brand or nonprofit organization. Tony Balasandiran, account supervisor for Flowers Communications Group and a speaker at PR News’ June 23 Digital How-To Conference in Chicago, shares some of the advice he offers clients that have yet to make the leap to influencer marketing.

Star Wars is nearly unparalleled as a brand so popular that other brands (whether or not they have a cross-promotional deal) draft in its wake by paying tribute. Thus May 4 is a good day for us to observe how brands are riding the wave, and to see the fruits of some professional content calendars.

Every brand commits social media mistakes, from skimping on audience research to waiting too long to respond to complaints. One gaffe that brands sometimes commit on social: focusing more on generating eye-catching content than on how audiences will likely interact with that content. Monitoring Instagram can be a particular challenge for brands seeking to stay on top of user trends. To help your brand better match its Instagram presence to audience behavior, chew on these five morsels of Instagram wisdom cooked up by protein bar company RXBAR.

Are you engaged at work? Gallup says nearly 70% of employees are disengaged. How to fix that? Employee engagement begins during the hiring process and, if done well, continues throughout the employee’s career, writes PAN Communications’ chief Phil Nardone. Constant communication is critical to employee engagement. And having the right management team can make or break engagement. In addition to tips about engagement, Nardone provides other takeaways to help make your company a top place to work.

Instagram now has over 400 million daily active users, making it the fastest growing social media platform. Given that swelling volume of activity, the marketing opportunities on Instagram abound. Making the most of your brand’s presence on the platform all starts with elevating your feed through such best practices as visual consistency, user-generated content and on-point messaging. Here are three tips to keep in mind.

PR News celebrated some of the year’s best social media campaigns on May 2 at the Yale Club in New York City, as well as the digital leader and social media team of the year. Karen Raskopf, chief communications officer at Dunkin’ Brands, delivered a keynote address on the future of social media and how to create relevant social experiences.

More than 5,000 press releases are issued each day and reporters get roughly 100 pitches daily via email. So, how can you produce a release that stands out from the crowd? That was the question tackled by Mandy Menaker, head of PR and brand development for Shapr, and Erin Burke, director and vice president of APCO Worldwide, at the PR News Press Release Writing Workshop at the Yale Club in New York.

“Luxury music festival” or “$100 million lawsuit”? All it took was one weekend of social media outrage for the Fyre Festival, a music festival scheduled to start April 27 in the Bahamas, to see its reputation shift from the former to the latter. Concertgoers who had paid up to $12,000 per ticket arrived at a bare-bones campsite in disarray, learned that musical acts had pulled out of the festival and had a difficult time leaving the island location.

Our weekly roundup of news, trends and personnel announcements in PR, communications and marketing. This week stories featured include one about United Airlines settling with Dr. David Dao and CEO Oscar Munoz repenting for the widely viewed video of the doctor being dragged down the aisle of a United Flight. There’s also a story about ESPN illustrating how lines are blurring between internal and external communications.

Every fall, PR News benchmarks excellence in PR, marketing and communications campaigns with its annual Platinum PR Awards luncheon. At the luncheon, award winners are recognized for outstanding contributions to the communications and marketing landscape, from video campaigns to social media initiatives to media events and more. With the Platinum PR Awards entry deadline around the corner on May 5, it’s an ideal time to take a look back at one of 2016’s Platinum awardees, Michelin, and examine how their campaign is having a lasting impact in the communications world and beyond.