During this transition, numerous OpenAI employees, including Murati, signed a letter threatening to leave unless Altman was reinstated. After negotiations, Altman was reinstated, Murati returned to her CTO role, and the company welcomed new board members.

Behind the scenes

Sam Altman, the former CEO of OpenAI, had held the position until his sudden dismissal, a decision that the board of directors hasn’t publicly disclosed the specific reasons behind. However, the intriguing twist in this narrative came shortly after Altman’s firing, as he was rehired as the CEO of OpenAI merely days later.

The board, while reinstating Sam Altman, didn’t provide any detailed rationale for this unexpected reversal. Sam Altman himself has maintained a degree of discretion regarding the circumstances surrounding his initial termination, deferring any discussion to an upcoming independent review led by the new board chaired by Bret Taylor.

The firing and subsequent rehiring of Sam Altman at OpenAI have sparked widespread discussions within the tech industry, leaving many curious about the undisclosed factors that prompted these dramatic shifts in leadership.

Leadership changes

Despite the lack of clarity surrounding Altman’s firing and rehiring, what remains evident is the board of directors’ conviction that a change in the company’s top leadership was imperative. Altman’s reinstatement, on the other hand, suggests a reconsideration by the board, but the specific reasons for this change of heart remain elusive.

The sudden leadership changes at OpenAI underscore the challenges that organizations face when navigating shifts in leadership. Transparent and well-communicated decision-making processes are essential to address the uncertainties that arise during such transitions.

In the case of OpenAI, the lack of transparency surrounding Altman’s firing and rehiring has led to speculation and uncertainty within the tech community.

OpenAI advancements

In the midst of this leadership turmoil, OpenAI continues to stand by its mission of developing AI in a manner that prioritizes safety and benefit. The organization’s commitment to ethical AI development remains unwavering, despite the controversies surrounding its CEO’s abrupt changes in status.

It’s important to note that OpenAI recently achieved a breakthrough in AI with the development of the Q* algorithm. However, whether this breakthrough is connected to Altman’s firing and subsequent rehiring remains unclear.

The Q* algorithm, an artificial intelligence algorithm developed by OpenAI, has demonstrated its capability to solve math problems beyond those included in its training data. While still in the research phase and not yet commercialized, this achievement underscores OpenAI’s ongoing success in advancing AI technology responsibly.

Ronn Torossian is Founder & Chairman of 5WPR.

Featured image provided by Google DeepMind; Pexels; Thanks!

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What is corporate communications?

Corporate communications includes strategies, techniques, and tools that organizations use to share their messages, values, and goals with stakeholders. It involves managing a company’s reputation and public image through different communication channels.

Scope of corporate communications

Corporate communications extends far beyond drafting press releases. It encompasses a range of activities, including internal communications, public relations, crisis management, investor relations, and brand management. It is the art of managing perceptions, relationships, and narratives.

Digital transformation

Corporate communications have also changed significantly in the digital age. While traditional media remains important, the internet, social media, and other digital platforms now have a greater impact on public perception.

The strategic significance of corporate communications

In a hyperconnected world, corporate communications isn’t merely a functional department. It’s a strategic imperative. There are some key reasons why this practice is paramount.

Reputation management

In an era where a single tweet can go viral and tarnish a brand’s reputation, managing how a company is perceived is vital. Corporate communications experts are at the forefront of safeguarding and enhancing the company’s brand image.

Transparency and trust

Trust is a valuable currency. Effective corporate communications build trust by fostering transparency and openness. The public, including consumers and investors, expects honesty and accountability.

Crisis mitigation

No organization is immune to crises. A well-prepared corporate communications team can mitigate the damage and respond effectively during challenging times. Crisis communication is a vital component of this function.

Competitive advantage

In a crowded marketplace, having a compelling narrative can set an organization apart. These professionals craft stories that resonate with the audience and differentiate a brand.

Integrated approach

Embrace an integrated communications approach that ensures consistency across all channels. The messaging should align with the organization’s values and objectives.

Digital proficiency

Stay ahead of digital trends. Leverage social media, content marketing, and data analytics to understand the audience and adapt the strategies accordingly. A strong online presence is non-negotiable.

Stakeholder mapping

Identify the key stakeholders and tailor the communications to address their specific interests and concerns. Effective corporate communications are highly targeted.

Crisis preparedness

Develop a robust crisis communications plan. Anticipate potential issues, have a response strategy in place, and ensure that the team can react swiftly in a crisis.

Storytelling

Compelling stories have the power to capture hearts and minds. Weave narratives that are authentic, relatable, and aligned with the brand’s values. Storytelling is always a potent tool.

Internal communications

Don’t overlook the importance of internal communications. A company’s employees are brand ambassadors. Keep them informed, motivated, and engaged.

Measurement and evaluation

Use data to evaluate the impact of the communications efforts. Metrics like brand sentiment, engagement rates, and website traffic can provide valuable insights for refining the strategy.

Ronn Torossian is Founder & Chairman of 5WPR.

Featured image provided by Alvin Mahmudov; Unsplash; Thanks!

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This new change makes a lot of sense in theory. Consumers tend to put a lot of trust in their social circles compared to how much they trust branded messages. That means, if a company can persuade influencers to conduct a public relations and marketing campaign on behalf of the business and its solutions, it can increase the credibility of the brand, and potentially convert a lot more people.

Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is a type of marketing effort that companies can use. It is focused on utilizing industry leaders and people with high numbers of followers on social media platforms. They promote a company and its branded messages or its solutions to a broader market. Instead of simply selling to a big audience, companies get the opportunity to work with influencers. They also get to pay digital influencers to promote the company and connect with customers.

As previously mentioned, customers these days tend to be more inclined to act and make purchasing decisions based on the recommendations and suggestions that they receive from their peers. This includes influencers they follow and various social media platforms. That’s why many influencer marketing campaigns tend to happen across social media platforms, or through content marketing efforts. If a company and an influencer both want to achieve more success, they must create high-quality content for their audiences. In fact, according to recent research, for every dollar a company invests in influencer marketing campaigns, it generates around seven dollars in return on investment.

Industry

Influencer marketing campaigns tend to generate incredibly positive results for companies that operate in the direct-to-consumer (D2C) industry. This is because most consumers in the market tend to rely on details and empathy when making purchasing decisions. However, in the business-to-business (B2B) market, a lot of customers tend to base their purchasing decisions on the personal encounters that they have with various influencers in the industry. This means that they are looking to get the same degree of connection and similar access in their professional lives too. That means if a company is looking to achieve more success through influencer marketing campaigns, it’s important to figure out innovative ways to target the people that already have a lot of industry knowledge, and a big reach in the market to influence potential customers.

Ronn Torossian founded 5WPR, a leading PR firm.

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Analytics

No social media platform would be as successful as many are these days if it didn’t have analytics tools. These allow companies to keep track of their overall performance on the platform. When it comes to marketing on Instagram and promoting the company on the platform, companies must track all of their promotional efforts. This way, they see whether they are performing as well as expected and generating positive results. Fortunately, Instagram has its own analytics, tools, and platform that allows companies to get a vast amount of data and information. This data is about the performance of its content, advertising campaigns, and more called Instagram Insights. It’s important for companies to remember that the analytics tools are only available for accounts that use Instagram for business. Also, these types of accounts can also be connected to a company’s Facebook business page.

How to Access

To get access to the analytics tools, companies must go to their profile and open up the graph symbol. Inside the Instagram Insights platform, which is the analytics platform for Instagram, companies get to see a lot of important metrics regarding their performance, including the total number of website clicks, profile visits, impressions, reach, number of story views, and the performance of each post the company has previously made, including the impressions and engagement for each one of them. Aside from all of that, companies can also see a lot of information that is important about their audiences, such as the breakdown according to age and gender, location, the number of followers the company already has, and any recent trending growth, their daily activity, which is also broken down by hourly for each day to help companies determine the ideal times when they should be sharing content on the platform.

Through Instagram Insights, companies can get a better idea of how their reach, engagement, as well as impressions, are performing monthly, and how those numbers are performing in comparison to the overall follower count of the company’s account. There are plenty of tools, such as instagram engagement rate calculator tools, that can give your analytics more context and meaning. When a company compares all this information against the posts that had the highest performance on the platform by the business and analyzes each one of them, it can figure out various patterns and trends with its target audience that helps companies create more effective promotional and marketing efforts.

Automation

Another benefit the companies can get from using Instagram is by utilizing the opportunity to create automated messaging. This was introduced last year after only being available on Facebook. After all, this platform has come a long way since the days when it was just a simple photo-sharing app for everyone. These days, Instagram has become a place where anyone can discover and connect with other people and brands. Around 90% of people that utilize the platform tend to follow at least one company. Plus these types of people regularly tend to reach out to the companies that they follow on the platform. This can be either in the form of replying to a story from the company, interacting in the comment section of a post, mentioning it in their own content, or directly reaching out with a direct message.

To make the entire communications process a lot easier for companies, Instagram introduced a new tool. It allows companies to manage all the conversations on the platform in a single place. This way, companies can automatically keep track of all the conversations that they have with other people all over the platform. This is whether it’s in direct messages, comments, replies to stories or posts, and simple mentions. Additionally, companies can also create automated messages to immediately reply to users whenever they reach out. This makes them feel more valued and motivates them to convert sooner, and generates higher retention rates with consumers overall.

Reels

A couple of years ago, Instagram decided to introduce a brand-new feature to compete with the ever-growing, popular social media platform, Tik Tok. Instagram Reels are short, vertical videos, lasting from 10 to 60 seconds. They can be shared on the Instagram feed. Additionally, they give companies the opportunity to appear on the explore page of users. This is where they can be seen by hundreds of thousands of potential customers. This brand-new feature from Instagram provides companies with a very unique opportunity. It gets itself in front of a potentially brand-new audience that doesn’t follow the company quite yet.

This is especially true if the company creates engaging and interesting videos. They are a lot more likely to show up to more people on their explore pages. This allows companies to increase their growth on the platform and generate a lot more sales. This new feature also creates a great way for companies to allow their target audiences to learn more about the business by showing off the company’s personality, filming behind-the-scenes videos, and other creative content.

Companies can also use the feature to present their products and how they’re used for the followers, launch new products through teasers, as well as curate user-generated content to make the audience feel even more valued. That’s why it’s important for companies to start using Instagram Reels as part of their Instagram marketing campaigns, to generate a lot more attention, and increase their followers, which, in turn, will help companies increase their sales and revenue.

Ronn Torossian founded 5WPR, a leading PR firm.

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Beauty

Beauty influencers mainly review beauty products; they partner with beauty brands to create strategies that help reach the target audience in authentic ways. Influencers in the beauty realm understand buyers. With the emphasis being on vegan and cruelty-free products, people think twice before buying any beauty product. This is where influencers help to generate awareness about beauty products. Their content can be of various types such as product reviews, tutorials, or makeup hacks. Beauty brands of all types rely heavily on influencers.

Health and Fitness

Health and fitness products are always in demand and people these days are increasingly concerned about their health, physical and mental. Influencers who work in this niche are often fitness enthusiasts who focus on communicating and supporting the fitness goals of their followers. They help their followers to get into shape. The fitness influencers can be anybody from at-home mums to athletes. They often share content such as self-paced workout routines that match the level of fitness of their followers. For instance, Jennifer Selter often shares fitness tips on her Instagram account, and they often go viral among her followers.

Travel

During the pandemic, people fantasized about going off to exotic locales and would think of dream vacations. That is when travel influencers started to become increasingly popular. Travel influencers can be campers or outdoor enthusiasts and they are seeing great results in recent years. They often recommend airlines, restaurants, and hotels and use captivating visual content. This often helps to increase the following of brands that they endorse. Couples often make a living by traveling the world together and writing a blog about it. For instance, Matt Kepnes, popularly known by his Instagram handle Nomadic Matt, regularly shares posts on how to travel cheaply yet ethically.

Gaming

The gaming market is worth big money and influencers in this niche are popular for live streaming their games on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch.  They help brands to reach a worldwide audience and as such are immensely valuable for brands. Influencers may not seem an obvious partner for a game but with the increasing popularity of games as a hobby, gamers can endorse anything from cars to tea. They create online content, and that content has led to a significant rise in a loyal following. Gaming influencers are assets and occupy a unique position between the audience and the industry. People are willing to spend to watch other people play and give reviews of games. They are followed by millions who want to improve their own game.

Ronn Torossian is Chairman of 5WPR, a leading PR firm.

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Social media policy

The first thing that companies need to do before a crisis even happens is create a social media policy for all employees. Companies can’t predict any public relations crisis. But, they should always be ready to face any sort of situation like that. Having a social media policy in place for employees helps companies figure out the best way to respond to situations. That means companies must document any communication strategies that they will be using during a crisis. Then, figure out a way that they can approach and handle social media platforms.

A great way to create a social media policy is to have an up-to-date contact list for emergency situations. Plus, guidelines will help the company identify the scope of the public relations crisis. There should also be an approval process for the response strategy for the company. Additionally, it needs an internal communication plan for the company’s employees.

Communication

During a PR crisis, the best way for a company to navigate such situations is through openness, honesty, transparency, and compassion. Companies are always investing time and effort into creating ways to develop stronger and more trusting relationships with their target audiences. That shouldn’t stop during times of crisis. By being transparent on the issues that the company is struggling with and taking responsibility, companies will have an easier time navigating any sort of crisis.

Response

Once a company has made its public statement regarding the public relations crisis, there should always be room for questions. Most people are going to have additional questions about the situation. The best way to navigate such situations is to be clear on the best way to reach out to the company. Then, the company needs to take the time to answer all those questions. Additionally, they need to provide the public with reassurance and engage with them. The last thing that a company should do is completely disappear from any communication channel. Especially one that has been previously used. That is the easiest way for a situation to get out of control and permanently damage a company’s reputation with the public.

Ronn Torossian is Founder of 5WPR, a leading PR firm

The post Navigating Social Media Platforms During a PR Crisis appeared first on DMNews.

Companies try to reach out to their potential consumers through social media platforms, emails, print materials, surveys, and more. Additionally, all those efforts focus on the same idea or promotional message. Each one of those efforts is done in an attempt for companies to convince their target audiences to start thinking about a company and its solutions. Also, motivate them to start making purchasing decisions with that business.

Audience segmentation

The first step in successfully managing a marketing campaign is for the company to segment its target audience into different groups that share similar qualities with each other. To define each audience segment, companies rely on the information that they have on the target audience. This includes demographic and psychographic information, their location, profession, income level, and more. Through segmenting the target audience, companies can make sure that each one of their promotional messages for their marketing campaigns, as well as pieces of content, are able to reach the right people.

Another way that companies can segment the target audience and improve the overall customer experience is by mapping out the buying journey of each segment of that target audience. This is simply a graphic representation of the stages of the buying journey that each customer goes through. This includes the first point of contact that they have with the company and details of each action they are expected to take until they make a purchase.

Content

Companies must create high-quality, valuable, informative, and educational content. Content that’s going to inform the target audience about the company and its solutions. Also, content informs the rest of the public about what the company might be able to target. It generates more brand awareness. One of the biggest content creation elements is inbound marketing efforts. This is simply when companies are creating educational content to target the audience to get them to visit the company’s business website or social media accounts. Companies need to remember when creating content that each piece of content needs to focus on the consumers and their values, interests, beliefs, as well as purchasing behaviors, and habits.

Personalization

Companies also must invest in personalization efforts for their marketing campaigns. So they better manage those campaigns and make sure that the target audience believes that the company truly knows its consumers and cares about them and their lives. This is achieved through ad retargeting and message personalization. Companies can send their target audiences an email. This email highlights specific categories of products that consumers previously expressed an interest in online.

Additionally, through ad retargeting, companies can still show up on banner ads or search ads to the consumers that have stopped looking at the company’s website to remind potential consumers that the company is available to them and can meet their needs.

Ronn Torossian is Chairman of 5WPR, a leading PR agency.

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A powerful tool for connecting with people

A business is about relationships, and every relationship starts with a connection. When connecting to someone via LinkedIn, customize the message for the person. Standard messages should not be used as they might not make a great impression.

It is wise to look at a person’s profile and find something interesting to comment on. The comment can be on an article that they have shared. The message should be about the person and not about the business that is reaching out. There shouldn’t be a direct attempt at selling something as that would ruin any chance of forming a meaningful relationship.

Nurturing a relationship

To build an important relationship, nurturing is important. Share articles that grab the attention of connections on LinkedIn. Resources that a business does not own can also be shared as that does not come across as being blatantly promotional.

LinkedIn is also a great way to introduce people to each other, people who would benefit from knowing each other. Nurturing helps to build trust with a network. Once you build trust, a person potentially becomes a customer or a collaboration partner. The conventional sales script should never be used, it is better to be helpful and not pushy. Any business relationship formed on LinkedIn should be kept alive by checking in occasionally and being helpful.

Join groups

LinkedIn groups are a great way to meet potential customers and like-minded people. It is always wise to join LinkedIn groups that the audience is in for your content strategy. While joining a group, a business should be careful that it does not spam members. On the other hand, it can demonstrate its expertise by adding value and people will automatically flock toward it.

A business can also start its own group. An advantage of running a group is that a business can send a message to the entire group once a week. You need clarity on the purpose of the group. Who is the group meant for? What type of content do users share with the group? Give thought to what type of useful conversation helps members of the group.

Run LinkedIn events

If a business runs events or webinars, share them on LinkedIn and set up business updates. Invite connections on LinkedIn. People who attend events can also invite their own networks to attend. This would increase the reach of a business to a wider audience.

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Strategy

Every single marketing campaign needs to have a strategy. Aside from that, companies must define every strategy for every social media platform they’re going to be using. This is because every single platform is going to be different in various ways. This means companies need to understand what’s going to work best. It makes sure that the content is going to generate engagement with a target audience. That means changing the original content idea in terms of presentation and format. So, either in a written or a more visual format.

Some of the things that companies have to take focus on due to the generation are the reasons why the business is choosing to use the specific platform. This also includes the audience it is targeting, the content that is going to work best on the platform and engage the audience, the brand messages the company is trying to promote, and all of the ways that the content can be made unique. This way the company can stand out from the crowd.

Consistency

The consistency of sharing content on social media platforms must be different depending on which platform the company is using. But it’s important to share content regularly.

To do that companies can create a social media content calendar to help them keep everything on track. This type of calendar lays out what type of content the company needs to create and share over a longer period. Therefore, no matter the size of the company, its industry, or even the platform that’s being used, it’s important to keep hashtags, brand message and image, and the publishing frequency in mind when creating and sharing content on social media platforms.

If a company is just now starting to get on social media platforms, it’s important to focus on the quality instead of the quantity of content, because it’s not always easy to maintain a few different platforms with a large amount of content on each one of them.

Content

Social media platforms have been saturated by millions of people and businesses. This means it’s important for companies to work hard to stand out from the crowd. The best way to do that is through good content. That term itself tends to be quite subjective and depends largely on the platforms that are being used.

One thing that companies must keep in mind is that their content has to be newsworthy. This way, more people engage with it. That means making the content that the business creates either controversial, relevant, timely, or focused on a human-interest story.

Companies also must keep track of the current trends to be able to create more relevant content. Also, they then use storytelling as a way to engage the target audience and develop a better brand voice. This voice helps connect with the customers and develop a trusting relationship with them.

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