Today people increasingly demand corporate responsibility and social consciousness from brands to strike the triple bottom line balance: 69% of respondents in a research by Havas say they expect enterprises to make the world a better place. For the first time ever though, these expectations are becoming a “license to lead” with businesses now being more trusted than governments to make a real positive change towards a sustainable future. Such is the major finding of this year’s Edelman Trust Barometer.

In its 14th annual survey in 27 countries among 33,000 respondents, Edelman found that there is a global gap of 14% between trust in business and trust in government. This number has never been so high before. Business has been consistently trusted more than government over the past years: People now expect businesses to lead on social change, not governments.

Nevertheless, half of respondents believe that the most important role of government in business is to protect consumers from irresponsible businesses as well as regulate those. On the other hand, over 70% of people agree that policymakers should be consulting with multiple stakeholders when developing regulations on business and industries. Businesses should therefore “foster an informed conversation that provides the context necessary to create regulation that is relevant and as effective in its ability to protect as it is in its ability to move society and business forward.”

With the massive adoption of image-based social media networks such as Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr, visual storytelling has become a powerful content marketing tool. Creating compelling visuals is now an art that brands should master to enhance their communications on the social web. To make the most of them though, it’s recommended that your visuals comply with the sizing requirements of each network. Here’s where this sizing chart comes in handy.

The infographic below offers an overview of the designated size parameters of all visual components for Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest. It’s based on the image requirements for 2014 so it’s pretty useful for graphic designers and community managers.

What I like about the chart is that with it you simply have everything in one place, meaning you are not required to google every time you need the size of a specific visual component of one of the networks. How many times have you searched for the Facebook profile or cover pic size? Quite a few, I’d presume :)

You can print it out, place it on your desk or save it on your desktop and whenever you need a specific image parameter just have a quick look. Pretty neat, right?

Enjoy the social media sizing cheat!

Over the past few weeks I’ve seen quite a few reviews of 2013 and pieces making predictions and sharing tips for 2014. For once I've decided to follow the crowd and share my point of view and my 2014 advice regarding the PR profession. How is this post different from the others? Well, the list of 9 traits of the future PR pro is based on my personal observations and experiences, but was also inspired by some interesting research findings (you know me, I love research!) and by the pieces of two PR professionals I highly respect.

Getting straight to the point, according to a new research by the European Communication Professional Skills and Innovation Programme (ECOPSI) the PR profession has a long way to go until it matures.

The ECOPSI is a European funded project that maps and evaluates the current and future competences of communications practitioners across Europe. The overall finding when it comes to the skills and competences of communications professionals is that PR is indeed a maturing discipline, but there are on-going gaps and deficiencies in the professional advancement of individuals. Formal qualification and life-long learning are the key aspects here – basically the need for further knowledge acquisition and skills development.

It only took a decade for new technology to completely disrupt businesses, markets and entire industries. With the emergence of social media organisations had to adapt to a much faster rate of continuous change in how society interacts, communicates, receives and finds information. Furthermore, the rapid embracement of smartphones and tablets with internet access anytime, anywhere has brought another challenge for brands as they are now required to act 24/7. Social, digital and mobile have changed our personal and professional lives to a massive extent. It’s an exciting era, isn’t it? According to a new report by We Are Social the near future is going to be even more so.

Just last week, agency We Are Social published their Global Digital Statistics for 2014. It’s an interesting read and I thought you’d find it useful too (whether out of curiosity or to help you plan your social media activities for the year), so I decided to share some of the report’s highlights.

The 180+ pages report is especially valuable for global campaigns as it covers key statistics, data and behavioural indicators for every country on Earth and presents in-depth analysis for 24 of the world's largest economies, including for example Germany, the UK, the USA, Australia, Brazil and China.

Have you ever written a blog post? If you have, you probably know that writing blog posts that not only grab, but also keep the reader’s attention is not always as easy as it may seem.

Good bloggers know what their audience likes, have great ideas how to engage it and are experts in their fields. Most importantly though, they know how to talk to that audience and how to best put their thoughts and knowledge on ‘paper’. And believe me, that’s a real challenge! This blog post will offer you some useful advice and tips to overcome it.

So, what are the ingredients of a successful blog post?

According to a brilliant infographic by WhoIsHostingThis.com that you can see below, to create a killer blog post you need a great title that grabs the reader’s attention, a catching first sentence that generates interest, and a story that keeps that attention.

Writing killer headlines

Creating a good headline is pretty much an art. And this is a skill any blogger or writer must excel at, because no matter how great the actual post it, if the headline sucks, no one will read the rest. A great headline should be clear, short and up to the point, giving a hint about the story afterwards.

5 tips and ideas: