The world of public relations is more dynamic than ever. With the unprecedented and unexpected events of 2022, we’ve seen some disruptive changes in the PR world. With more and more campaigns diverting into the digital PR realm, we will still encounter new trends and industry patterns building up in the upcoming year.
The public relations industry trends are important to keep up with for PR specialists and up-and-coming businesses. In this article, we’ll go through the importance of keeping up with PR trends in 2023, what these trends are, and how the industry progresses, transforms, and impacts the business world.
Staying on top of industry trends is part of a PR professional's job, and the industry is ever-changing. The issues that mattered to consumers three years ago might look completely different today. It is crucial to understand how specific tactics and strategies may resonate with your audience at various times when it comes to PR since it aims to shape your image in the minds of consumers.
Like in any other industry, PR trends are influenced by employee expectations, technology, consumer preferences, and more. And as those impactful characteristics change, your PR plans and processes must adapt alongside the change as well. Now, let's dive into the trends that define PR today.
This transformation focuses on human experiences (be it in the digital world or the real world). It allows PR to have a tangible impact on the target audience.
A more humanized approach is a strong and steady trend that’s being practiced more and more and is an even more fantastic opportunity for PR strategies to prosper and PR specialists to follow. Data-driven ideas are born that are backed by the use of technology, which increases the reach of these ideas. What is more, the two-way communication that some platforms offer is perfect for responses and striking fruitful back-and-forth communication that will undoubtedly lead to an improvement in the process of PR campaigns.
Authenticity is a key metric for a brand's success and a key industry trend. PR specialists must ensure that brands have an authentic voice and genuinely believe in what they stand for. If a slip-up is made, the audience will notice and impact your credibility. Technology helps us learn about our target audience, but there is a dissociation. PR experts are still needed to ensure a human connection. The way brands personalize their messages and content in general needs to be more authentic.
Many unexpected things happened as a result of the pandemic. Audiences are now more critical and suspicious of information because of the abundance of fake news and misinformation online. This is why authenticity is needed, and brands must ensure they go the extra mile. Otherwise, consumers will be unforgiving in the event of non-authentic content.
Whether we like it or not, influencer marketing will flourish as a key PR trend in 2023. Micro-influencers on TikTok and accounts with millions of followers on Instagram are among the many types of influencers popping up all over the web.
Understanding TikTok and video-reel creation are necessary to support an influencer marketing campaign. The first step to understanding influencer marketing is to understand authentic influence. An influencer is someone who influences through their work. Authentic partnerships begin with identifying who and what is affecting your audience and working to build mutually beneficial relationships. By tapping into a trusted person's audience, influencer partnerships and campaigns can create social proof points for brands, build engagement and drive sales.
At the core of good public relations is creating and distributing original newsworthy content. Some best ways to generate this content are interviews, events, and conferences. This also includes in-depth interviews with industry leaders and hosting meetings and round tables. As the world begins to recover from the pandemic, the return of live, in-person events is among the most exciting communications trends for 2023.
You can get the word out about your clients and agency via networking events, pop-up events, and industry conferences. Most people get more out of a face-to-face meeting, especially for in-depth features, profiles, and discussions on nuanced or controversial topics. Your clients should consider reintroducing in-person events into their launch plans. Brands should prepare for more requests for in-person interviews and make their teams available for them as much as possible.
Customers have high expectations of brands. Whether connecting customers to their brands or connecting people from different perspectives, consumers expect brands and leaders to act as connectors. How does a brand connect with its consumers? Trust is important. An alignment of brand values is also essential.
To stay competitive in 2023, you must simplify your copy to make it short and punchy. A brand's messaging must be concise, catchy, and authentic. Maintain a straightforward style without sacrificing quality. Focus on why your client is so important. Short messages translate better to social media than long ones. Regardless of where your client's target audience is, you can reach them across multiple platforms. A short, attention-grabbing subject line is best for pitches, along with images and videos that convey your client's message. Keep key messages simple. It will be easier for brands to stand out from their competitors if they differentiate themselves and focus on their target audiences.
The average representative of the new generation will use their smartphone for at least 5 hours daily. The average representative of the new generation cannot go more than 30 minutes without checking their phone.
PR experts must focus on Gen Z - the next generation of consumers. So kick off the year by analyzing this generation's trends, interests, causes, passions, communication channels, etc. It is important to be authentic, however. This generation is susceptible to inauthentic content. Either way, Gen Z is a highly emerging trend in public relations that all PR experts need to turn their eyes to in 2023.
PR pros are used to being flexible. You must be ready to shift and overhaul your strategy in the blink of an eye. Having a plan b, c and d will be crucial to client success. You may have drafted the perfect pitch and researched publications and reporters you'd like to reach, but what if all your prospective reporters don't respond? Public relations professionals must be responsive to changing news while producing content that captures these constantly evolving stories. It could mean developing multiple pitch angles in advance, brainstorming different strategies with your team, or staying on top of developing news that may affect your clients. Goal posts and client expectations change. If things go differently than planned, be ready to adjust quickly and explore new strategies. Adaptability to changes in the workplace is also a quality of a PR professional.
Upskilling is a necessity as technology advances, content changes, and the PR industry evolves. Individuals must therefore take the initiative to upskill themselves. Boosting your skills will prevent you from losing out to your competitors. The rise in the use of analytics for understanding the effectiveness of campaigns and activities across all media channels is just one area where knowledge and skills would be helpful. An example is prnewswire.com’s visibility and analytics dashboards
As PR professionals, we have many opportunities to upskill. Public relations practitioners should look to upskill in influencer marketing, social media, and marketing communications. A PR professional who fails to learn risks falling behind, making lifelong learning imperative to remain relevant.
We are already observing how the industry is shifting to a more data-driven approach. It is a fairly new approach to use a data-driven approach, especially with the advancement of software in data analytics. Companies in 2022 have heavily turned their attention to big data. Clients and brands invest in tools to acquire data, but more is needed. There is a need for more detail in the process of working with data. An environment needs to be established where data is collected and adequately customized, tracked, analyzed, and applied.
With this in mind, the PR industry will provide its clients with deeper insights into their target audience's behavior, which will improve the personalization of targeted messaging.
A more meaningful and targeted message for the audience can go a long way and have a lasting impact on the brand in question. So keep an eye on data analytics and the tools that make a data-driven approach possible.
While we talked about authenticity from the perspective of journalists, it is now the case that you need to be authentic to establish strong relationships with media outlets. The recent trends in PR have increased the expectations for PR teams. Public relations experts are finding themselves in the spotlight and need to deliver. To do so, a necessary level of networking is important. Building relationships with media outlets will lead to having a strong enough connection with journalists to rely on them putting your work into the open for people to see.
Get creative with your media relationships, and use a data-driven approach to present a new and unique perspective on a topic of interest in whatever industry you are dealing with. This will make you stand out in the media community. Working your way around a collection of data will shoot you to the top of media networking and cement your name as a trustworthy content source. Pay attention to this trend surrounding the joint works of the PR industry and the media world.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can improve a company's public relations efforts by providing tools that reach audiences' hearts and minds. The trend of AI technology shows no signs of slowing. If you have a website, artificial intelligence could help you create new content and maintain your existing content. As we all know, when it comes to SEO, content is king. In simple terms, the more content you have, the more SEO traffic you receive; therefore, AI can help automate the process. With more companies implementing AI, those who get on board early will have an advantage. You will have more time to devote to projects supporting growth by utilizing AI to automate scheduling, data mining, and personalization tasks.
We now spend more time on our phones or technological devices. This urges us to acknowledge the growing and continuous importance of multimedia content. Keeping in mind that we ought to use technology to nurture the human experience, it is through multimedia content that it can be achieved. PR strategies now increase in dynamics, as you can implement your client’s brand, product, or service into different audio and video formats and customize them in a way that reaches the target audience via their preferred interests.
For example, you can work with different podcasts, YouTube vloggers, or other media outlets to squeeze your client’s brand into the relevant form of entertainment that the specific viewer and potential customer is enjoying. PR experts need to keep an eye on this trend and look out for new and different platforms that their target audience enjoys.
With the growing global reach of PR campaigns, the ever-increasing necessity for diversity and inclusion must be applied in theory and practice. Attracting people from different ethnicities, cultures, and socio-economic backgrounds will change how we view the PR world.
It is easier for employees to be engaged, productive, and satisfied in their job when they are able to be themselves. Diverse workplaces are considered a competitive advantage. A diverse community will have a diverse effect with many new and different perspectives. It is not only customers who benefit from organizations that promote diversity and inclusion but also employees. Recent reports note that most companies go through the motions of diversity and inclusion and must do more to create a truly diversified, equitable work environment. Following this growing trend in 2023, a diverse community will present a new perspective on strategies and campaigns, and those will resonate with the global target audience.
E-commerce and its accessibility have led to a more competitive environment. PR experts need to focus on their outreach to ensure that the content not only satisfies and engages the target audience but reaches it in the first place. It can have a significant impact on their response. It is also vital to personalize your content. More personalized content based on data analytics is a great way to place your client’s brand in the right spot.
Consumers sprint across many platforms, searching for engaging and relevant content that fits their interests. A well-crafted personalized PR pitch not only can engage people more strongly but also has a higher chance of being liked by journalists and other media outlets and platforms.
Follow this trend in 2023 to establish more trust in your client’s brand and show depth and credibility in your campaigns.
Newspapers have always published content written by their journalists and content sent to them by PR agencies. Despite the increasing demand for online content, the employment of full-time permanent journalists in the news industry has decreased. This means that media outlets have a shortage of content, just the opportunity PR experts need. If a PR agency can supply content to media outlets, to support the creation of news articles and features, it could be an excellent way to expand a PR campaign’s reach. Typically full-time journalists are busy with more prominent news articles, meaning PR agencies can support the creation of less demanding news and features. The opportunity for 2023 is that PR agencies can focus on thought leadership pieces that can be widely distributed by media outlets, which need external content sources. This trend will keep growing and shift how these industries (PR and media) cooperate.
Luckily, articles that touch on the topics of thought leadership and other PR strategies are well-received by journalists and consumers, which means media outlets with a high demand for external content will engage with the content you pitch.
Metrics such as engagement, impressions, and reach are easily accessible with digital PR. With tools like Facebook Business Suite, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite, tracking digital PR success is easier than ever. Tracking traditional PR, however, is more complex. Newspaper articles and magazine ads are hard to quantify. You can see results much more quickly when you use digital PR methods. You can convey your message more creatively and subtly with digital PR. Direct PR is more traditional.
You can easily make your company's messaging creative and unique with the tools available on social media and content creation sites. Digital PR focuses on SEO and visibility, so creativity is vital. In addition, it's easy to make it subtle. Two things that make traditional PR more direct: are its format and goals that revolve around managing public opinion through the placement and focus of the brand being mentioned in whatever traditional channel was chosen. Due to the diverse goals of various businesses, a combination of the two methods may be helpful for some companies.
PR ROI has historically been challenging to quantify. Outlets can provide data such as unique visitors or ad impressions, but that does not give brands the complete picture they need. PR aims to improve brand perception, convince clients to purchase and increase loyalty, among other metrics. These things are becoming easier to measure thanks to PR analytics tools. To know what they should measure, they will need KPIs.
Over the past few years, there has been an explosion in the number of businesses exposed to poor business ethics. Two notable examples are Volkswagen’s carbon emission tampering and Wirecard’s missing 1.9 billion. Ethics is of importance to buyers. Data supports the notion that customers believe companies need a strong social conscience, while many believe companies need to do more to meet society's needs. While consumers demand that companies do more than talk about social causes and donate money, they also expect them to act on what they're saying. What they say needs to be lived and embodied.
To stay ahead of this public relations trend for 2023, you must make sure all communications, copy, and pitch angles are socially aware. People don't support brands that continue to do business as usual in a crisis, no matter who they are. PR efforts in 2023 will only succeed if brands have communicated their social values.
While companies have competitors within the market, that doesn't mean we can't build off each other to create valuable industry news and foster innovation. PR competitors allow us to learn, grow, and engage. This is especially the case in the tech industry. Tech is meant to improve the lives of people. Arguably, its purpose is to innovate as a society, not just as an individual, and not just as one firm. A trend for 2023 is to recognize this.
In the age of social media, crisis management planning has become critical. It doesn't take long for news to spread, and your actions can either work in your favor or against you. Sooner or later, every organization will experience a significant PR challenge. When negative news hits the media and the brand experiences negative publicity, social media will continue to play an important role. The issue may be minor or major. It could be a faulty product, an accounting oversight, or a supply chain issues. It doesn’t matter; unresolved issues can quickly escalate into much bigger ones, causing significant financial and reputational damage to your business. It is possible to regain the trust of your audience by using social media as a crisis management tool. Expect to see more of this in 2023.
The cost of PPC-paid social and the increased use of e-commerce have increased the importance of search engine optimization. PR is vital in SEO as it is the primary source of building links. The relationship between SEO and PR will become more critical as brands both need digital channels and can’t use paid methods. SEO techniques can provide targeted traffic to your website by improving its ranking and reaching a targeted audience. You are already losing customers if your brand doesn’t appear in organic searches. So, PR professionals should improve their SEO skills to make the most of this growing trend.
Increasing internet usage and growing technological demand are forever changing the digital market. Customer expectations of online businesses are high. Public relations professionals will continue to use more varied channels to identify the right PR opportunities as PR opportunities evolve and change.
Companies will explore more creative ways to reach potential customers. Virtual reality and other immersive experiences are now on the table. Podcasts are also relevant and are set to become more popular. As podcasts have grown in popularity in recent years, there are podcasts for everyone. The fact that these podcasts are about particular, niche topics may lead to fewer listeners and subscribers. They will have a highly engaged and interested audience, however. Another excellent way for companies to build brand awareness is through newsletters. You should highlight your expertise and value in every line of copy, whether launching your own or appearing in another company's monthly email. Provide different insights in each edition of your newsletter and keep a consistent schedule. Promoting your products through this new PR medium will reach the people most in need of them.
The metaverse is another avenue that may surprise everyone and kick-off. Customers can return to it repeatedly by creating space, and brands can build customer loyalty.
Customers can take advantage of exclusive deals, early access to new products, or special events in the metaverse if they are loyal to the brand.
There will be many changes in the media landscape in 2023, but these PR trends will shape how PR specialists get results for their clients. Start strategizing and building killer press plans for next year with this knowledge!
More than ever, combining new and old strategies is crucial to capturing attention and spreading positive brand messages. Increasingly, consumers are becoming more demanding and less forgiving as time goes on. Stay on top of the latest PR trends by following our blog. In this new normality, brands must remain authentic and fresh.
3. Social media will continue to grow
If you are a business trying to reach other businesses, Twitter and LinkedIn will continue to be important in 2023. These platforms can be used to showcase thought leadership content and to develop professional relationships with the media and fellow professionals.
Public relations strategies that have traditionally placed a high value of coverage in traditional tier 1 media, such as the Financial Times or Wall Street Journal, will start to see social media as a viable support tool. PR professionals adept at handling media and social media will begin to shift this dynamic. You'll see more large brands making significant announcements on social media in 2023 as this PR trend continues.
As a PR professional looking for opportunities to connect with new audiences, Twitter is also beneficial. The platform is often used by journalists, writers, videographers, and bloggers looking for new pitches or sources as Twitter undergoes a radical change in leadership under the reign of Elon Musk.