PR News
10 PR Trends You Need To Be Watching In 2017
- The Traditional Media Press Release Is Dead
The traditional press release was once the best way to get news out fast. But these days, it’s faster to publish your piece of news on your own blog and then share it on social media. After that journalists will “”catch the story” and will get it published on the sites your audience reads. In fact, this can also help you avoid the consequences Google often doles out for backlinks and duplicate content when people distribute press releases to multiple sites.
- A New Primary Focus: Personal Branding
One of the newest PR trends involves becoming a thought leader. The reason for this is that you can earn the attention and trust of your audience by showing that you’re an authority on a particular subject. You can do this by publishing articles, blog posts, email newsletters and videos that educate your readers.
Non-Traditional Content Amplification
Consumers get more and more picky about the content, that atract their attention. Luckily, one of 2017’s PR trends will involve some interesting content amplification tactics. Of course, social media will continue to be one of the main ways to share your content. You can combine that with paid promotion, such as Facebook promoted posts, Twitter, LinkedIn sponsored updates and Google AdWords. You can also try asking big influencers in your industry to share and contribute to your content to give it more credibility and publicity.
- The data is important
In recent years, we’ve made it easier to collect data on nearly every process and that data use will be one of the PR trends for 2017. The data is important for every PR campaign, because you can use data to get to know your audience based on the stats you know about it, figuring out which type of content you’ve posted is most popular etc. - Personal relations
No longer do mass mails do the job. You need to build relationships with every partner, NGO, media and other stakeholders if you want to increase your chance of getting your content published fast. If you want to stand out, you should first connect with them on social media. Then any time you send an email, add a personal touch to the subject line and mention their past coverage in the body of the email. - PR Pros Will Need a Broad Skillset
You already know you need to be good at writing, event planning and maintaining relationships to be successful at PR. But these are aleready not enough. You also need to be a whiz at social media, content marketing and content strategy. Basically, the once fine line between earned and owned media has blurred, so you should get better at combining these with paid media for the ultimate campaign. - PR Pros Will Need to Be Prepared for Real Time
You no longer have days to react in PR. You now have minutes, and you have to be prepared. That’s right; real-time responses will be among the PR trends next year. People are used to getting instant responses from brands and seeing them react quickly to events, and you’ll have to live up to their expectations. Being on social media – or hiring someone to represent your brand on social networks – is a great way to get started with real-time PR. - Visual Storytelling
The average person watches 32 videos per month, and there’s a 74 percent increase in understanding when someone watches a video. These are some simple reasons to start using video and other visual tools – such as images and slide shows – in your PR campaigns next year. - Measure Your Success
Metrics like impressions, shares, mentions and downloads can tell you exactly how your campaign is doing so you can adapt it as needed. Fortunately, most social networks and website platforms now make it easy to track these metrics and measure your PR success.
- Native Advertising
An alternative to straightforward ads is native advertising, in which you pay to place a fairly subtle ad in a publication, ensuring that the ad matches the form and function of the publication’s typical content.
