This is a guest post by Dina Mostovaya.

The role of PR professionals has evolved significantly. Numerous global studies show that nowadays, a head of communications plays the part of a company’s business partner, becoming critical in the process of achieving the firm’s business goals.

Gone are the days when PR solely provided support; now, it is recognized that communication must have a strategic focus. The definition of public relations has expanded and now includes activities such as managing social networks, developing blogs, implementing email marketing campaigns, participating in events, and more. In essence, the goal is to use a wide range of channels to effectively convey the brand's key messages, mission, ideas, and values, all of which ultimately convert into tangible business metrics and leads.

In that context, Iliyana Stareva’s "Inbound PR" is an excellent guide on how to create content that helps generate inbound inquiries and provides data with which to measure the impact of strategic communications. I first read this book a few years ago, and still consider it one of the most useful.

One of the reasons why I wrote the Inbound PR book was to help PR professionals open their eyes to the need for modern measurement and tangible proof of PR results. Inbound Marketing is terrific at showing the monetary value of marketing efforts so there's a lot that PR could learn. 

Measurement has always been a problem in PR. For years, PR pros have used fluffy metrics (and some continue doing so). Those metrics are not what C-level people care about, they're not what will get you budget. 

There's also been a lot of effort put in from the PR industry itself to solve this problem. 

One such example are the Barcelona Principles. They were first introduced by AMEC in 2010 and recently got their third refresh. 

Let's take a look at them: 

Barcelona Principles 3.0 [Infographic]

Republished book review by Matt Bergman from Amazon. (Thanks, Matt!)

Iliyana Stareva has written what I’d call, with a considerable degree of confidence, the most important, actionable and forward-looking PR book of the past ten years. That’s true, I believe, for the following reasons, which I’ll circle back to and discuss in a bit more detail:

1. The author sets a detailed course for the future of PR that aligns with the thinking and capabilities of the relatively few genuinely progressive agencies, as well as with the needs of forward-looking clients.
2. The book beautifully, seamlessly and comprehensively integrates the inbound approach – which is unquestionably going to be the overarching structure that informs the future of marketing (AI and automation technology, by the way, are much more conducive to an inbound approach than to an outbound one).
3. Ms. Stareva addresses head on what has frankly been the negligence of the PR industry in exhibiting little in the way of creative or scientific thinking in terms of measuring value.

When I was doing some research on influencer marketing a few months ago, I came across a lot of nice infographics but the one that stood out was actually a gifographic. 

I hadn't heard the name before but it's pretty cool. 

It's just an infographic as we know them but with gifs and it makes it much more fun. 

So today, we'll look at one such gifographic (perhaps you can think about creating some for your business too) that covers some interesting influencer marketing strategies. 

It's called influencer marketing strategies but to me, they are more tactics that you can use once you have your overall influencer marketing strategy that defines why you're doing this, what your goals are, what the impact to your brand would be and how much you'd want to spend on all activities. 

Then you can choose some of the below ideas to make sure you hit the above goals based on what you want to do and what you have at your disposal. 

Now, let's take a look at those tactics.

Do you feel like everything around you is about COVID-19?

I turn on the news, it's non-stop COVID-19. 

I check my Facebook feed, it's all COVID-19. 

My LinkedIn, same story. My Twitter, likewise. Google, also. 

COVID-19, COVID-19, COVID-19...

But what's worse is that COVID-19 has overtaken my inbox - I've received dozens or more emails from companies, including a bunch of irrelevant and dry press releases on how they're tackling the crisis. 

It's a huge crisis, I won't deny it. But the more it's being talked about, the more people are getting tired of it - I've discussed this with quite a few colleagues and friends and they all agree. 

Especially, when businesses are not properly planning their messages and who they reach with them.