If the idea of technology invading the practice of PR freaks you out a little, perhaps all you need is a different perspective. Yes, technology can be daunting, but it can also make your life a lot easier, help you achieve better results and demonstrate the value of your work.

Dave Feldman, Sr Director of Digital at the NFL, is running one of the biggest, most complex, real-time social content teams on the planet. With this level of content creation, distribution and management, it’s all about strategy, scalable process, extreme coordination and everyone and I mean everyone, must be on their A game. So, when I sat down for a full hour long interview with Dave to talk about the social content machine of the NFL, I was hanging on every word.

Last month Laurence Fink, CEO of BlackRock, laid down a challenge to the business community. Or, perhaps, it’s more accurate to call it a warning. His message: Make societal progress part of your strategic plan or suffer the consequences.

The Conference Board recently released C-Suite Challenge™ 2018: Reinventing the Organization for the Digital Age. The insights for communicators, marketers, and digital media executives are extensive. We’ll explore some of those here.

My first trend update of the year focuses on the fast-growing cryptocurrency market. As of today the market is worth more than $700 billion USD. The most famous cryptocurrency is, of course, Bitcoin, but there have always been others—and they are starting to gain prominence and (slowly) entering the world of health, medicine and wellness.