Public Relations in 2024 continues to be of prime importance because of the ever-evolving media landscape. PR remains a crucial piece of the puzzle with the growing accessibility of technology and media.
According to an exhaustive report on PR Trends and Challenges by Determ, survey and social listenings are the most preferred methods of data collection in 2024. This shows how PR professionals are giving importance to technology to excel their PR game.
This study had participants from various industries like Healthcare, Finance, Startups, Food and Beverage, Transportation, Legal, Automotive, and more.
Here’s what PR experts are predicting:
- Rise in storytelling. Instead of relying solely on traditional ways of doing PR, writing press releases, or corporate messaging disguised as thought leadership content, organizations and individuals are understanding the missing piece of the puzzle, i.e., storytelling. Stories connect people. A press release may inform, but stories create a sense of familiarity and develop empathy far more than organizations or brands may realize.
- Influencer Collaboration. Influencers bring a certain kind of authenticity coupled with credibility—qualities that are difficult to replace. Consumers trust brands advocated by influencers. Hence, brands that collaborate with vetted and authentic influencers will be reinstating the authenticity narrative in their brand.
- Content accessibility and inclusivity. Accessibility and inclusivity are vital pillars in PR. Brands that ensure their content is accessible are reinstating that they cater to people across every spectrum. Creating content or messaging that accommodates the needs of people with disabilities, goes a long way in building trust. Practicing inclusivity in content-building efforts also ensures that organizations cater to the ever-changing demographics of their audiences.
We, at Interdependence, sit at the intersection of storytelling and technology. With our expertise in storytelling, coupled with our proprietary technology—Interviewed, we have helped numerous brands tell their stories and gain media coverage in some of the biggest publications in the world.
Tell Better Stories: Consult Us
Here are some dos and don’ts to evolve your PR game in 2024.
Let’s start with some of the DOs of PR.
1. DO: Build relationships with stakeholders
Building lasting relationships with stakeholders is of prime importance in PR. Developing a solid relationship with stakeholders helps to build a mutually beneficial communication style that directly impacts the performance of PR campaigns.
- Conflict resolution becomes easy because a strong foundation leads to honest and transparent communication. Additionally, a strong relationship also encourages support and access to resources in times of need. PR runs on tight deadlines, requiring last-minute changes in schedules, projects, and budgets.
- Understanding stakeholder needs and aligning them with business goals becomes an important factor in business. Understanding their preferences, priorities, and expectations allows PR professionals to tailor communication strategies seamlessly.
Lastly, the long-term success of any brand or organization depends on how effectively they can maintain strong relationships internally. A strong culture often reflects on the brand’s success.
2. DO: Build relationships with media outlets and journalists
Building relationships with media outlets and journalists helps PR establish trust and credibility. As technology progressively penetrates each facet of our lives, it is becoming imperative to build more authentic relationships.
At Interdependence, we have been rocking the PR sector for decades, thanks to our long-standing and trusted partnerships with established media outlets and publications. Our vast media network gets your PR message out faster and reaches audiences worldwide in the millions.
We have partnered and continue to partner with all the major publications such as Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, CNBC, Fast Company, The New York Times, and more.
As PR professionals, we understand how significant it is to understand the writing styles and techniques of publications and journalists. Long-term relationships allow PR professionals to grasp their style guides and align with their requirements, which essentially makes the journalist’s life easier.
Long-term relationships with publications and journalists also lead to speaking/interview opportunities. A long-standing relationship and understanding between the media outlet and the PR team makes it easier for both parties to align on the brand’s purpose and align stakeholders to get more opportunities for media coverage.
3. DO: Leverage social media
According to Sprout Social, 94% of leaders acknowledge that social media positively impacts brand loyalty. PRs can leverage social media to their advantage through various tactics and by analyzing user behavior across generations and channels.
- Choosing the correct narratives followed by the right platforms. Identifying and nailing down the core brand story is extremely important to stand out in 2024. The best example of this is Nike, which has repeatedly built newer and bolder narratives each time. Another crucial aspect of choosing social media platforms is finding an alignment between the channel and the existing demographic. However, experimentation is key here.
- An example of this is the CRM software Hubspot. Despite being a CRM software and catering to million-dollar companies across the globe, its social media content on LinkedIn signifies that it is a fun and engaging brand. It is a good lesson on breaking the rules and experimenting.
- Dove’s campaign ‘Social Media and Self Esteem’ is another example of a brand that speaks to the younger, more impressionable generation and addresses the dark side and impact social media can have on people. They ask people to take a digital pledge by ensuring they either help a young person with their self-image, not retouch their images, and advocate for a more transparent and inclusive definition of beauty online.
According to the brand’s website, they have empowered and educated over 94,500,00 young people on the real meaning of beauty.
4. DO: Monitor metrics and analyze data
Data allows teams to analyze and assess the brand’s target audience, their preferences, tastes, opinions, and demographics. These details, albeit ever-changing, empower PR professionals to make informed and sensitive decisions. They can curate campaigns and devise their messaging and marketing efforts according to the available data.
Analyzing data also helps measure metrics such as media coverage, social media engagement, website traffic, sentiment analysis, and social listening to tweak campaigns based on the information that data gives them.
Data analysis and monitoring are also crucial for crisis management. Data allows teams to keep track of controversies or crises, understand public sentiment, and cater to the same through carefully crafted messaging to maintain brand credibility and trust.
At Interdependence, we utilize our proprietary technology called Interviewed. This proprietary technology scours for content relevant to the brand and empowers experts to weave the best storylines, thereby increasing pitch conversion by 300-400%.
Interviewed notifies the team of publicists in real time about trending stories and emerging relevant trends. Once Interviewed® finds a match, it goes to the journalists who cover the match but have yet to write about the story and it sends them a custom strategic traffic-validated pitch.
This nets a less speculative pitch that rewards our clients with a higher volume of media opportunities.
5. DO: Invest in thought leadership
Why thought leadership? Although thought leadership is a highly overused keyword and often misunderstood, it has proven to be a powerful strategy when used intelligently. Basecamp is a pioneer in thought leadership.
Basecamp’s founder, Jason Fried, gained recognition and built thought leadership primarily by sharing their approach to work, building a profitable business, product development, and more through his writing and speaking.
Besides writing on the blog, the founders have co-authored several books to share their philosophies on the following books:
Rework, It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work, Remote: Office Not Required, and Defensive Design for the Web.
We give this example to share that thought leadership, when done earnestly, can have ripple effects on the individual and the company’s brand. Thought leadership is a great way to share one’s ideas with the world. It helps individuals and organizations reach a large audience who may share the same ideologies.
With thought leadership, ideas can be molded into concepts that stick with people. For example, Basecamp can be identified by a multitude of ideas and contrarian concepts surrounding work, productivity, building a profitable business, and more.
However, thought leadership must originate from honesty and lived experiences. A key theme across Basecamp and Jason’s ideas is that it originates from his experiences and his company’s values in real-time.
6. DO: Collaborate with and engage a PR expert or agency
Engaging a PR agency can have several benefits for brands. A PR agency consists of experienced professionals who can gauge the intricacies of communication, media relations, stakeholder management, brand reputation, crisis communication, and public perception.
Leveraging their expertise can lead to better and quality media placements in top publications and wider media coverage in a short period.
A PR agency that can craft cohesive crisis communication strategies, and have experience with managing controversies and protecting a brand’s reputation can help brands recover from crises quickly.
Interdependence Public Relations is a leading integrated communications firm. Our experts help companies of all sizes weave narratives and stories and help them get placed in some of the biggest publications in the world.
Interdependence is a performance-driven PR firm supercharged by the most advanced AI and predictive analytics to maximize consistent media placements in prestigious media and industry outlets.
Schedule a consultation with our PR experts and start seeing results.
Now that you have a clear picture and understanding of what to do, let’s continue with a few of the DON’Ts of PR:
7. DON’T: Neglect Crisis Management
Neglecting or deprioritizing crisis management can have far-reaching effects on a brand’s reputation. Timely and effective crisis management can help a brand redeem its reputation and credibility.
Failure to address a crisis can quickly damage and hamper trust in the minds of consumers. People associate brands with values, and if a crisis is left unattended, it can lead to a massive erosion of trust.
Brands can use tools such as Hootsuite, brandwatch, Sprout Social, or Mention to help monitor activities on several social media platforms and respond to those promptly.
Configuring tools to send real-time alerts and notifications for specific keywords and terms can be a viable strategy for addressing crises meaningfully rather than doing it haphazardly.
PR teams can define triggers or certain dialogues that signify potential crises. Establishing a set of criteria for which words or keywords comprise or signal a controversy or crisis can help with the timely addressing of such issues.
Collaborating with the social media team to respond to such scenarios. Training a team to handle and address responses can be a helpful, time-saving, and effective strategy.
People always pay attention to thoughtful responses as opposed to anything that sounds robotic, generated by AI, or communicated with monotony. Showing genuine concern for people also reflects on the brand’s values.
Additionally, acknowledging mistakes also positions brands as earnest and humane in their approach to dealing with crises. People are also more forgiving when they witness a brand being transparent and accountable for their mistakes.
Following these obvious yet important strategies can put a brand in a better position during a crisis.
8. DON’T: Avoid social listening
According to Locobuzz, approximately 58.4% of the global population actively engages with social media platforms. Additionally, Digital reports that there are 5 billion active social media users, i.e., an equivalent of 62.4% of the world’s population.
Keeping those numbers in mind, it would be mind-boggling not to invest in social listening as part of a larger band strategy. Social listening is a process brands adopt to monitor and analyze social media channels and mentions to capture a particular sentiment or keywords. Avoiding or deprioritizing social listening can be harmful for the following reasons:
- Understanding audience’s sentiment: To craft targeted and specific communication, PRs must incorporate social listening. It gives the opportunity to understand the preferences, capture audience sentiment, and get a hold of existing trends of their target audience.
- Short feedback loop: Since social media allows for quick feedback in real-time on campaigns and product launches, PR teams can use this to their advantage, improve their product and service, and work on open loops across channels, platforms, and campaigns.
- Monitoring competitors: Competitor analysis tools can quickly allow one to capture patterns, analyze brand messaging, and use it to create standout PR campaigns. If avoided or left unattended, this can quickly lead to leaving out an opportunity to create impactful and quality campaigns.
- Crisis management: Social media is akin to controversies and crises. Building a social media response team has become more vital now, and hence, it is important to train people to address crises effectively. Communicating empathetically, not being defensive, and addressing all concerns with sensitivity are all qualities required for building a solid crisis communication plan.
- Missed opportunities: By not prioritizing social listening, brands take a huge hit by leaving themselves out of participating in opportunities that may be a perfect fit for them.
9. DON’T: Ignor brand responsibility and inclusive PR strategies
Since consumers have more access to quality information and education, brands have had to up their game when it comes to creating impact or consciously choosing to become sustainable.
With such access to information, consumers can quickly spot good from bad and have begun calling out brands or individuals who do not necessarily walk the talk and posture more than they practice.
Now that it has become easier to spot companies that solely focus on profits and deprioritize actual societal impact, they face backlash easily. Reasons why an impact-led approach is crucial for PR and some approaches to create inclusive, empathetic, and people-first PR campaigns:
- Storytelling with impact. Brands that are feature and product-centric and do not highlight how they can positively impact people usually never end up capturing mind space. People now approach brands like individuals. When a brand weaves social narratives and centers around stories that make it more humane, consumers tend to relate more with the brand.
- Two-way communication; Social listening and responding. A great example of a brand that consistently communicates with people is the messaging app Slack. Slack’s social media team is centered around responding in the most human, fun, and quirky way possible. For a B2B company, they have a bright presence on social media, interacting with people in the comment section like a human would which increases their relatability factor. They allow people to freely express themselves by being expressive and human first. <add image>
- Diversity and Inclusion. Diversity and Inclusion isn’t just a buzzword or jargon. Apple INC is the perfect embodiment of diversity and inclusion. Besides reflecting inclusivity and accessibility in their product, they have also utilized the same principles in their organization. Per their website and data, they had 44% of women fill global leadership roles. They have actively built the organization to cater to minorities, women, people of color, and more.
10. DON’T: Rely solely on traditional media outlets
In today’s digital landscape, relying extensively on traditional media outlets can have grave consequences. For example:
- Depending on traditional media means you’re only targeting a select set of audiences and filtering out a demographic that may be a better fit for you or your brand.
- One-way communication; no interaction. Traditional media does not allow the level of interaction that new-age digital media does. Brands now have an additional responsibility of being interactive as opposed to being theoretical. Traditional media misses out on engaging in discussions and discourse.
- Traditional media is slow and does not allow brands to control or tweak their narratives. Social media, on the other hand, lets organizations have complete control over their narratives and allows and empowers them to cater to a wide variety of demographics.
Nike is the perfect example of a brand that integrates traditional and social media platforms in its marketing and PR strategy. Its iconic and timeless print and advertising campaigns across television, print, and outdoor advertising were always a huge success. The brand is present on all social media platforms, encourages people to share their stories, and collaborates with influencers to amplify its reach to newer generations.
11. DON’T: Disregard ethical consideration
PRSA, or Public Relations Society of America, is a non-profit trade association for Public Relations professionals. PRSA has published a code of ethics that addresses the ethical responsibilities that all PR professionals must carry out while serving their clients and employers.
To summarize, all PR professionals must advocate fairly and justly, communicate and uphold honesty, consistently practice and hone their expertise to serve their clients better and independently, demonstrate loyalty to whomever they may serve, and deal with everybody with fairness.
Failing to abide by ethics in PR leads to grave consequences such as a negative impact on brand reputation, loss of trust from stakeholders, the public, consumers, and employees, receiving negative media coverage, and long-term business sustainability issues.
Conclusion
In a world overloaded with information, what truly stands out is the ability to stay authentic. PR demands brands be more honest, transparent, ethical, and humane in communication across channels. People can look beyond the facade and understand that authenticity is what keeps them hooked to a brand.
While technological advancements can help brands build more efficiently and quickly, it’s becoming increasingly vital to keep one’s feet on the ground. This is where Interdependence can help brands reach greater heights, cover media in publications that communicate authentically, and help them grow at the right pace and reach the right set of people.
