With the massive embracement of social and web applications, the arsenal of tools and techniques PR professionals are required to use in their work is constantly growing. However, the overall purpose of these activities remains the same: In my latest article for Behind the Spin I note that PR is about influencing audiences and adding value. Influencing audiences has a lot to do with persuasion.

Important to note here is that persuasion is very different from manipulation. Persuasion, unlike manipulation, is not spin. Many think of PR as spin, but that's just not what PR aims to achieve. Communicators' purpose it to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between clients and their publics by building and defending reputations. That includes among other things engaging with audiences, talking to and most importantly with various publics, making use of a wide range of tools to communicate a message in the most suitable way - text, audio, images, video.

PR people aim to convey a message, a message that gets heard and understood, that moves people to undertake a specific action after receiving that message. This makes everything we do about persuasion - writing is about persuasion, storytelling is about persuasion, social media sharing is about persuasion.

Persuasion is indeed an art, but it can also become a skill, an ability that is very important for PR professionals. To develop that know-how

This year international business and political leaders met again at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos to discuss politics, economics and social issues as well as trends and solutions for future transformation. At my agency Brandzeichen, which is part of the Ketchum network, I recently had the pleasure of listening to a very insightful webinar about the key topics of the WEF. The webinar was held by Rob Flaherty, CEO of Ketchum, and Barri Rafferty, CEO for North America at Ketchum.

While listening I wrote down a few things that got my attention - these impressions are what I want to share with you today, after having done some additional research.

The following eight key areas were the focus of the 2014 World Economic Forum in Davos.

#1 Youth unemployment

According to the Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, youth unemployment is Europe's "single biggest crisis". Why? Because 1 in 4 youth are unemployed. That's a scary number!

Noticeable trends towards solving this problem are the transition back to vocational studies, increased opportunities to work from home and entrepreneurism. Literacy is key to end extreme income divide and poverty.

The major players to help tackle this issue are business, government and civil society - or the Golden Triangle.

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.