A recent Forrester research yet again confirms how people demand a lot more from brands than just their products or services; they demand a corporate consciousness. Not only that, individuals today have the means to express their voices openly, freely and virtually with anyone around the globe – a shift in power distribution encouraged by the rise of social media. This, in turn, has severely complicated the job of communicators and marketers to successfully win the hearts and minds of today’s consumers.

According to the research, it is trust, not buzz that builds brand resonance. This means that if organisations want to build a strong and sustainable brand, it is critical for them to first earn the trust of their customers by meeting their growing expectations . But, as we’ve seen in the 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer and 2013 Ketchum Leadership Communication Monitor, trust in companies and their leaders is not really on the rise, but quite the opposite...

So then, what does the brand of the future is supposed to look like?

Lately women, leadership and career has been a growing topic of interest and media coverage, especially promoted by Facebook COO’s Sheryl Sandberg’s bestselling and eye-opening book Lean In (which I wholeheartedly recommend and will blog about it very soon).

Unfortunately, women have a long way to go until gender inequality, pay gaps and stereotypes are solved (if ever!) and until it becomes normal for the C-Suite to be 50% female.

But, as research suggests, we are making progress – especially women in Germany (where I live) and in communications (the field I work in and want to make a career in).

The PR industry has traditionally been dominated by women; however mainly so at the lower executive or mid-level. When it comes to the managerial and the C-level though, the majority of the top positions are predominantly held by men. A study on the feminisation of PR in Germany just confirms this. As the research has found, women:

• consistently earn less than men regardless of their level of education and years of work experience;
• face much stronger salary discrimination when deciding to start a family;
• receive less recognition for their performance;

You already know what a big fan of Brian Solis I am. This blog post is also going to be dedicated to his efforts and achievements in the area of social media and I am about to show you yet another brilliant piece of work from him and design agency JESS3, namely the fourth version of the so called Conversation Prism (some of you may already be familiar with it) which is a comprehensive visualisation of the social media landscape.

As Brian Solis puts it, the various editions of the prism have managed to capture snapshots of important moments of the history and evolution of social media in the form of evolving infographics. For me the latest version is truly spectacular and to some extent scary – seeing all the platforms and channels available today in just one image is rather mind-blowing!

But before I get to version 4.0, I was thinking it would be interesting to show you all the previous editions starting with the first one from 2008 so that you can get a better overview of how the social media landscape has developed during the past five years (yes, only five!).

It’s been a while since I’ve written about PR; I have somehow mainly focused on social media lately and so today I am going to talk about how the PR industry itself needs PR. This is indeed nothing new. Since its very emergence PR has always been associated with spin and persuasion, which has affected the reputation of the practice and the acknowledgment of its importance as a management discipline that should sit at the C-level.

Unfortunately, it seems that not much progress has been made to improve PR’s reputation. A recent survey by TopLine Communications just confirms that the PR industry could certainly do with a little PR itself.

As it turns out,

Since the very emergence of social media communicators and marketers have been reluctant to invest in social media because, as they say, it’s more or less impossible to measure ROI (Return on Investment). Apparently, not much progress has been made in this area - this year’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report shows that the third most important question professionals want answered when it comes to social media is how to measure the return on their activities. Important to mention though is that normally ROI is associated with sales and not with qualitative metrics such as reputation and image, which on the other hand are also sales drivers, but in a more indirect manner.

AddShoppers did some research in this area and discovered that social sharing does indeed drive sales unlike common beliefs that it only provides qualitative benefits. After analysing $5,000,000 worth of eCommerce transactions they found some pretty interesting insights, which I thought I should share with you:

• A Google+ share is significantly much more valuable than a Facebook (or any other social media platform) share - the difference between the two is $8,43!