Ronn Torossian, founder of 5WPR says professionals in the public relations industry work hard to improve their clients' public image and reputation. With the help of the right PR strategies, companies can promote the image they've created, as well as protect it. And when those strategies are used at the right time, PR professionals help their clients maximize their positive media coverage, while making any bad PR matter a lot less at the same time. One of the key elements of PR is staying on top of the latest trends in the world, and in the industry, because while the world is changing, so is the PR industry. What used to be important to consumers a decade ago is different from what used to be important two years ago, and still, even six months ago, let alone today. With PR being all about shaping a company's public image and reaching the target audience in the right way, PR professionals have to stay on top of the latest strategies and tactics to develop campaigns that resonate with customers.
Staying on top of trends
Like most other industries, the public relations industry has its own trends too. However, with the gap between public relations and some similar industries, such as communications, advertising, or marketing, steadily decreasing over time, the PR industry has created some notable trends of its own these days. Similar to those other industries, there are plenty of things that can influence trends in public relations, such as the development of new tools and technologies, the preferences of the customers, expectations from employees, and more. With everything and everyone constantly trying to evolve, companies and PR professionals have to stay on top of the changing demands and capabilities so they can continue presenting businesses to the public in a positive manner that relates to target audiences.
Staying on top of trends in public relations can help businesses know the when, how, and who while addressing various opportunities or problems. It also helps companies decrease the odds of missing any potential opportunities for positive PR while giving them a better idea of how to best promote themselves or respond to situations in a way that's going to be appreciated by the target audience. Knowing what to say, when to say it, and ensuring that those words will resonate with the right people is incredibly important.
For instance, back in the day, if a company has released a brand new product that hasn't been positively received by the target market, it was up to the PR professionals to respond to any negative comments. As the times have shifted, so have these types of responses, and these days, the marketing professionals have started getting involved too, so companies can create better responses.
Inclusion and diversity
There's a great reason why plenty of companies have started seriously pursuing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the workplace. That reason is that whenever employees have a workplace they can go to where they can really feel like they can be themselves, they're going to be a lot more productive, engaged, and overall happy with their jobs. Plenty of companies saw inclusion and diversity as a great way for them to gain a competitive advantage in the labor market, especially while most people started quitting their jobs recently. The businesses that promoted inclusion and diversity as one of the key elements of their public relations strategies managed to appeal both to potential new hires, as well as their target audiences, much better. Unfortunately, plenty of those companies only decided to go through the motions of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, without actually working toward truly creating an equitable and diverse workplace.
This situation makes a great example of why companies need to use strong PR strategies for promotion. If a company is truly working hard toward creating a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable work environment, it can easily share everything that it has done so far to uphold and support the initiatives. Instead of making generic or vague statements about inclusion and diversity, companies would fare much better by showing the actions they've taken as evidence to support any of their DEI initiatives which is always going to be more effective.
Both employees and consumers have started to increase their expectations of the brands they decide to do business with. One of those expectations is real investment and action toward a diverse and inclusive workplace. Companies and their PR teams should start working toward meeting those expectations, as well as incorporating them in their PR campaigns.
Ronn Torossian On Personalization in PR pitches
Ronn Torossian says that instead of simply sticking to advertising and marketing efforts, personalization has started becoming popular in the public relations industry too, these days. When it comes to marketing efforts, companies use personalization efforts to build more customer loyalty because they're able to send the right messages to the right customers, wherever they might be in their buying journey. With advertising, on the other hand, personalization efforts are used to increase sales by providing potential customers with personalized ads while they're surfing the web. These types of strategies from advertising and marketing can also be used for personalized public relations efforts from companies.
One of the most effective ways that companies can do that is by creating custom PR pitches for every journalist, editor, media outlet, and even influencer that a business is trying to reach out to. This strategy helps companies create more personal messages that are going to connect with the other side much better because they'll be speaking directly to that person's interests. Instead of companies mass emailing their PR pitches to every journalist, reporter, blogger, and influencer in their contact lists with a generic pitch or message, they can send out a tailored message that's going to grab their attention and interest. With this strategy, companies can instantly start developing a credible and trusting relationship even when they're pitching to someone for the very first time. On the other, they can deepen the tryst they already have with previously established professionals or outlets. As a result of personalizing every PR pitch, companies also increase their odds of getting positive media coverage from the outlets or resources they targeted with them.
Values
Any company that wants to be relevant these days should first know its own values, and then start communicating those values to the public. When simply sending employees a good paycheck no longer helps a business ensure that that company is going to get the best possible employees, many businesses started turning toward defining or redefining their values and communicating them with the public. In fact, value communication and employer branding became a part of many PR strategies that companies started using lately. These days, companies have to extend their value communication beyond reaching out to potential new hires, to the communities that the business is in constant contact with, as well as their local communities and the overall environment.
These days, defining a company's values goes far beyond referencing a single sentence on the company's business website, and instead, businesses have to invest in creating their corporate and social responsibility programs. It's no longer enough for companies to simply state how much they donate from their profits to a good cause every year because that effort no longer shows the public any of the brand's values aside from that company being smart about the tax benefits it can get from donating. One thing that companies should be learning from what's been titled as "The Great Resignation" in the last couple of years is that employee satisfaction wasn't a value that most companies truly focused on, or even invested in the past. With a large number of people starting to pursue freelance projects or careers, many of them only started working with businesses that have similar values to their own.
These days, people want to see brands taking the lead in figuring out how they can create a more sustainable future, and taking action toward achieving those goals. That's why when most businesses want to talk about their values, whether in terms of defining or redefining them, they have to dig deep to figure out which cause they really care for and are passionate about so that they'll be able to commit to that issue for a long period of time with real actions that will show the company's support and efforts.
Ronn Torossian founded 5WPR, a leading PR agency.
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of sciencetimes.com
