PR Trends: What’s Shaping Public Relations in 2023?

Key Takeaways 📈 🔥

  • PR Landscape Evolution: The PR world is rapidly changing with media outlets converging and journalists using platforms like TikTok. This shift intensifies competition, pushing companies to innovate and prove their PR’s tangible value.
  • Data-Driven Storytelling is Essential: Modern PR hinges on data-driven storytelling. By leveraging data, PR professionals can craft impactful narratives and gain deeper insights into their target audiences.
  • Media Outlet Analysis for Strategic Planning: Advanced analytics in PR now encompass media landscape analyses. This approach identifies influential media outlets and themes, ensuring optimized PR efforts and maximized returns.
  • The Rise of the Creator Economy: The creator economy is booming, making creator marketing pivotal for reaching new audiences. Collaborating with influencers offers brands access to large, engaged communities and unparalleled credibility.
  • Monetization Focus in Content Creation: Content creation trends lean heavily towards monetization. Brands must learn to collaborate effectively with creators to harness this trend’s full potential.
  • The Future of PR in 2023: As 2023 approaches, data-driven storytelling, creator marketing, and media analysis will define PR’s future. With the convergence of digital analytics and PR, brands must invest in actionable insights to capitalize on emerging opportunities.

PR agencies and pros must innovate and rethink how they execute their public relations programs. These aren’t just current PR trends. These are communication imperatives.

Why this matters:

The PR landscape is changing. The news media is shrinking, outlets are converging, and journalists are using new platforms like TikTok to distribute news. As a result, the competition for customer attention is fierce, and most companies struggle to stand out. This also matters because successful PR has relied only on intuition. Relationships. Press Releases. These still matter, don’t get me wrong. But you need to do more to prove the value of public relations.

To stay ahead and be innovative, you must constantly keep up with current trends in public relations. It’s a fairly easy way to see what’s happening in PR and marketing. In 2023, three major digital PR industry trends will shape public relations­, and they all start and stop with data: data-driven storytelling, media analysis, and creator marketing.

1. Data-Driven Storytelling: More than a Headline

Data-driven storytelling is the future of all public relations trends. It’s not new, but essential. This needs to be more than just a talking point or a bullet point. We must stop discussing it just as public and media relations trends and start executing it as a best practice.

Data is the key to successful public relations in 2023. By making it actionable, PR professionals can craft more impactful and memorable stories than traditional methods. In addition, data helps you understand your target audiences better, enabling you to create engaging and informative stories while providing insights into your brand’s online reputation, customer behavior, and trends.

PR trend: Data-Driven Storytelling: More than a Headline

Example of Data-Driven Storytelling

By analyzing data from social media platforms such as TikTok, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter, you can gain valuable data insights into your target audience’s interests, behaviors, preferences, etc. These insights can help tailor messaging in a way that resonates with them on an emotional level. In addition, you can use this data to develop campaigns with maximum reach and engagement potential.

Once you have identified the narratives, topics, and themes your audiences care about, it’s time to use the insights to create your content. This includes everything from content posted on social media, blog posts, headlines, press, fake news releases, bylines, and all owned content.

Finally, analytics tools like Google Analytics will help measure your content performance. This can be used for both earned and owned media content. For earned media, you can track referral visits from target outlets where you’ve secured coverage. Or, if you don’t have tracking links, you can see if there’s an uptick in branded search based on when certain outlets published the article.

You can track total website visits, referral traffic, page views, and conversions for owned media.

PR Trend #2: Go Deep with Media Outlet Analysis

More advanced analytics will include a media landscape analysis, which can provide details on high-impact media outlets, coverage themes, journalist influence, and more.

A basic media outlet analysis it’s not just a PR trend but a strategic approach that should be included in your PESO PR strategy and earned media plans.

PR trends: A basic media outlet analysis it's not just a PR trend but a strategic approach that should be included in your PESO PR strategy and earned media plans.

Example of Media Outlet Analysis

For example, the first step in identifying high-impact media outlets is determining what you want to analyze. Is it a vertical like supply chain or healthcare, the brand’s industry, or is it more topically based like digital transformation or the future of work? Once you nail the topic, the next step involves blending three data points together–the volume of media coverage, media engagement, and the reach of the media outlet.

Once all the media outlets are plotted into one graph, the data will show which ones drive the most topical coverage, generate the most engagement, and have the highest reach. Depending on your business size or how many topics are relevant to the markets you serve, you’d want to do a separate analysis for each topic. The coverage volume and engagement will change even if the same media outlets appear in different analyses.

This is the first step in building your media list.

Another important factor when analyzing the media is understanding the core narrative drivers. It’s one thing to say that the Wall Street Journal drives a lot of coverage about the economy. That’s a given. It’s another thing to say that when the Wall Street Journal covers the US economy and the job market, they generate more engagement than when they write about the GDP. A topical analysis will uncover the trends and themes the media is interested in writing about based on coverage volume.

Finally, measuring success is critical when evaluating traditional media outlets. Tracking metrics such as coverage volume or message pull-through can get insight into which media outlets drive results and should be prioritized. At the same time, those performing poorly should either be dropped or improved upon, depending on the situation. Ultimately, this data-driven approach helps ensure that traditional PR and efforts are being used effectively and efficiently so you can achieve maximum ROI from your earned media campaigns over time.

PR Trend #3: Go Big on Creator Marketing

The creator economy is booming and shows no signs of slowing.

Creator marketing is a practical approach to reaching new audiences in 2023. It involves working with influencers or content creators to promote products or services through paid partnerships or organically engaging with them through their channels.

By partnering with the right creators, you can reach a large, untapped audience, increase brand awareness, and build your brand’s reputation. In addition, content creators have large communities that are highly engaged and interested in what they say about specific topics, making them perfect partners for brands looking to partner with 3rd party, influential creators.

Example of Creator Marketing

Suppose a fashion brand wanted to reach more consumers in its target demographic of women ages 18-25. First, they would use an influencer marketing and discovery platform to find a creator with an audience that matches that demographic. Then, they would negotiate a rate for sponsored content (Instagram Reels, Stories, TikTok videos, etc.) posted on the creator’s channels. This would allow the brand’s message to be seen by thousands of potential customers while providing credibility from a trusted source – something traditional advertising cannot offer.

Another benefit of collaborating with B2B creators is the ability to generate organic conversations around your product or service through online community outreach channels. By collaborating with content creators who already have an established following, you can encourage viewers of these videos/posts/stories, etc., to engage further by leaving comments and asking questions which will help build relationships between your brand and potential customers as well as boost visibility across social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram where conversations happen quickly due to the use of hashtags.

Creator marketing also allows brands access into new markets that may not be accessible via traditional advertising methods such as TV commercials or radio spots due to cost constraints – meaning there’s no need for expensive production costs when creating content for digital campaigns. This makes it easier than ever before for companies looking to expand their customer base without breaking the bank on costly ad buys.

Finally, measuring success from creator marketing campaigns is relatively straightforward compared to other forms of promotion since most platforms provide detailed analytics tools that track engagement metrics such as likes, shares, and comments. This allows marketers to see how successfully each campaign has reached its intended goals, such as increased sales.

Creator marketing has become essential for public relations professionals, allowing them to reach and engage their target audiences in new and innovative ways. Now let’s explore how social media strategies can help you take your PR campaigns to the next level.

Most content creator trends today are focused on monetization. However, brands must first learn how to partner with them and integrate them into their programs and PR strategies.

As we look ahead to 2023, it’s clear that PR trends are changing. Data-driven storytelling, creator marketing, and media outlet analysis are strategies to help brands stay competitive in the ever-evolving landscape.

What are you doing to stay ahead of the current PR trends? With digital analytics, public relations, and social media becoming more intertwined daily, it’s important to have a strategy that allows your brand or organization to capitalize on these emerging opportunities. Investing in solutions that offer actionable insights can help you keep up with the latest trends affecting B2B tech and PR teams.


FAQ

What are PR trends?

PR trends are the latest developments and approaches in the public relations industry, including digital, influencer marketing, and analytics tools.

What do PR professionals do?

PR professionals create and manage a brand’s reputation. They work with journalists, media outlets, social media platforms, and community outreach channels to build and maintain a positive public image.

How do PR efforts benefit a business?

PR efforts help businesses build credibility, increase brand awareness, and establish trust with their target audience, leading to increased sales and customer loyalty.

What is digital PR?

Digital PR uses online channels, such as social media platforms, blogs, and websites, to promote a brand and manage its reputation.

How do agencies create PR strategies?

PR agencies analyze clients’ goals, target audiences, and industry trends to develop a tailored PR strategy that includes media outreach, social media posts, and influencer partnerships.

What is the role of owned media in public relations?

Owned media refers to the channels a company controls, such as its website and social media profiles. In PR, owned media is used to share brand messages, engage with the audience, and showcase positive news.

How do PR analytics tools help PR pros?

Analytics tools help PR professionals measure the effectiveness of their campaigns, track media coverage, and analyze audience engagement, allowing them to make data-driven decisions and improve their strategies.

How do press releases contribute to PR campaigns?

Press releases are official statements issued by a company to announce news or events. They are distributed to media outlets and journalists, helping to generate coverage and increase brand visibility.

What are community outreach channels?

Community outreach channels are platforms and methods PR professionals use to engage with local communities, such as hosting events, partnering with local organizations, or participating in community initiatives.

Michael Brito

Michael Brito is a Digital OG. He’s been building brands online since Al Gore invented the Internet. You can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.