If you’re a veteran communications and public relations professional, there’s a good chance you feel like you’re being left behind in this digital age. After all, the evolution of the internet has changed—and is continuing to change—the face of PR. With more people working from home these days, a brand’s digital presence is typically one of the main factors driving the business.
You must familiarize yourself with several PR trends and then put them into practice to stay successful in your field. In the 2020s, if you don’t keep up digitally, you’re getting left behind. As you design your digital marketing strategy, be sure to include techniques from these PR trends:
Create engaging content
Digital media platforms and bloggers are now a significant part of the web, and their global reach makes their impact that much more effective. Digital media has created a different marketing world. Now, whether you focus more on transactional sales or enterprise sales, your brand’s online content is critical in building trust and credibility with your customers. It’s vital to produce the best relevant and engaging content as you can to ensure it rises to the top of search results, be it an Instagram photo, a blog post or a YouTube video.
Take advantage of social media
Social media has made it not only possible but simple for the average person to create and publish via text, photos and video from virtually anywhere, thanks to mobile technology. This technology also allows companies to be their own publishers. Businesses no longer have to cultivate relationships with the media like they used to. Being autonomous in this sense provides easy access for brands and their customers to connect and interact.
Now, successful PR strategists know where their customers hang out online, so they can meet them where they already are. Instead of regularly sending traditional press releases, a brand may now work to craft digital experiences for their customers. There are numerous options for different styles of digital experiences, including infographics, podcasts, campaigns and video gatherings.
Embrace the online influencer
These days, one way to boost your brand awareness is to get in with the right online influencer. What the newspaper once served for PR, online influencers began taking over around 2015. This has been making an increasingly significant impact in terms of PR and communications. These influencers and your target audience are already connected on various channels, such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. They already have credibility with them; your target audience views them as trustworthy. This is the ultimate form of word-of-mouth marketing, and it can be extremely beneficial for your brand. Find some well-established influencers associated with your industry to get the word out about your brand.
Utilize technology to automate communications
With all of the communications channels, there’s no way to keep up with all of your communication and publishing, much less listen to what people are saying about your brand. If you’re going to handle all of this efficiently and effectively, you must automate. There are various tools available to assist with digital marketing automation.
Measure brand influence with data metrics
Data metrics is how brand influence is most commonly measured now. Human connections and networking are still very valuable. Still, it’s even more valuable when you’re able to measure who is hearing your messages, the size of this audience, as well as the resulting actions that customers are taking. Collecting this data can give you outstanding insight into how your brand is performing and how popular it is compared with similar companies. From digital data, you can also determine which techniques are working and which are not. Then, you can use that information to better focus your marketing practices.
Conclusion
If you’re not up to date on the how-to’s of current digital trends, there are numerous ways to educate yourself. Attend webinars, learn via online training and begin browsing blogs on the subject.
