What does sustainability mean to business? Is it about reducing environmental impact? Or maybe about improving reputation through CSR activities? Is it worth it? How can we translate this sustainable business vision into actual business operations? How can we align commercial performance to sustainability for the long run? Those are questions that many leaders and company executives ask themselves when being faced with the challenge of adopting sustainability in their organisations.

The truth is, if truly embedded into every part of the business, sustainability can offer tremendous competitive advantages.

This is not something I just made up. Many studies and even my own research have shown that embracing sustainability and effectively managing the triple bottom line can be a key driver for innovation, growth and progress.

A recent survey by BSI and Verdantix confirms that yet again.

150 sustainability executives from 20 industry sectors, including retail and consumer products, consumer services, manufacturing, business and financial services, oil and gas, utilities and mining were part of the research, depicting a fairly sound representation of organisational leadership.

The overall finding was that the majority of business executives (70%) identify sustainability as key growth driver, however, connecting sustainability to overall financial and business performance still remains a challenge with only 51% believing that sustainability issues will impact their firm’s financial performance over the next two years.

The biggest change the PR industry has even faced is social media. With the massive embracement of social networks in our daily lives, it became possible for ordinary people to influence corporate behaviour with just one tweet, one Facebook post or one Instagram photo. Individuals today feel empowered to demand change and expect social consciousness from brands. This has left businesses with no other choice but to meet the triple bottom line balance between environmental, societal and economic concerns.

Did you know that 350 million photos are being shared on Facebook each day? On Instagram that number is 55 million photos. That’s more than 400 million images on just two sites every single day! Welcome to the world of the visual web. It is not a fad. It is here to stay.

Just look at the rapid growth of social networks such as Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr – people are on them and they are really active!

Visuals and photos are being facebooked, instagrammed, pinned, tweeted, tumbled and flickered every second of every day.

The rise of the visual web for business is undeniable too. The major social media players have completely redesigned their platforms to make them purposefully more visual – consider Facebook (including the new ad formats), Google+, and even Twitter.

Why did they do that? Because people love visuals.

They are easy on the eyes and the mind to comprehend, understand the information and then share this data with a simple click without having to add any further explanations.

For businesses this means that they now need to adapt their communications and leverage the power of the visual in order to reach and engage their audiences.

Not convinced?

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in a brilliant chat on Twitter. It was my first ever Twitter chat and I loved it. Amazing how much insights got shared in a number of minutes, how many brilliant people tweeted their input and thoughts, how much I got to learn and what great connections I made. What was the chat about? The issue of CSR and sustainability reporting.

David Connor – CSR, sustainability and comms expert – invited me to join the chat that was organised by 3BLMedia. Last year, David was so kind to participate in an interview with me for my second dissertation about social media and sustainability, so this time I just couldn't say no.

For those of you unfamiliar with Twitter chats, these are basically normal chats conducted on Twitter at a specific time on a specific date with a designated, unique hashtag. The chat usually has a moderator who asks questions via tweets and integrates the hashtag in each tweet. Participants follow the conversation via the hashtag and share their answers or insights by tweeting and including the hashtag too.

Research, research, and research again... That's what today's blog post is about again. For some reason so many relevant and interesting studies have published their findings all at once and I just can't withhold that information from you. And so today I am going to share with you my impressions from the latest 2013/2014 State of the PR Profession Annual Benchmarking Survey by the Chartered Institute for Public Relations (CIPR).

The survey was conducted among 2,500 public relations professionals from the UK, focusing on issues and trends around current practice, standards, budgets, skills and career development.

For the first time, non-members of the CIPR also took part in the survey, broadening the scope and the representativeness of the research.

Overall, the study this year revealed that Public Relations is at a crossroads. Nevertheless, Stephen Waddington, President of the CIPR, believes that "what we see is a terrific opportunity for anybody that is willing to embrace change."

I welcome change. And I believe that there are some fundamental things in the PR business (well, frankly in any business) that should change - one is the issue of gender inequality, another is diversity, and third is qualifications.