The outlook for public relations in 2018 makes it clear that PR has work to be done to be fit for current client demands. 

Social media and digital has been one of the biggest areas for development in the PR industry over the last couple of decades. 

The PRCA releases a yearly report about Digital PR and Communications and how these are progressing among companies and PR agencies. 

Towards the end of last year, the 2017 findings showed some insightful learnings that I want to share with you today. 

17 Must-Know Facts About Social Media & Digital Within PR Services & Education

Today’s consumers, be it of products, news, pitches and really any type of content, are fundamentally different.

Nobody wants to feel “marketed to;” we want to make our own choices based on our own research and experiences online. When problems arise, we demand answers on social media, directly engaging the company in front of a global audience.

We are the most empowered, sophisticated customer base in the history of our existence (so far). 

Unfortunately, PR hasn't yet adjusted to this new reality at scale. There are some who are doing great but most traditional PR strategies are falling by the wayside.

PR professionals must draw upon an enormous breadth of skills and techniques to serve their clients’ interests and those efforts are becoming increasingly ephemeral and difficult to track using traditional metrics.

Enter Inbound PR - the technique that allows you to combine content and measurement with revenue-aligned goals and a target persona-driven content approach that meets your business needs and your customer needs. 

This is a guest post by Nick Holland from ARPR.

Much has been said about the PR industry’s struggles to adapt and find its place in a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected.

Global PR industry growth slowed 5% in 2015, and Gould Partners says annual agency operating profits have consistently fallen, dropping from about 19% in 2011 to about 15% in 2017.

As if that weren’t enough, the roller-coaster ups and downs of 2017 has made executives more conservative by reducing their marketing and communications investments as cost-cutting activities are now prioritized over long-term investments.

While these figures can be unsettling for agencies and professionals that fail to see and adapt to PR’s growing value in departments like sales, marketing and more, PR professionals now have more resources than ever to demonstrate and prove the value of our craft from headline to sale.

The rise of new digital media channels, marketing technologies and analytics software are a few of the new tools at our disposal to accomplish this. As we transition into a new year with new possibilities, it is important to understand some of the ways PR has changed in 2017 and how you can take advantage in 2018.

In 2018 PR is….

This is a guest post by Anita Sambol from Point Visible.

These days, social media and other online mediums are main sources of information for quite a lot of people, if not all. There are plenty of blogs and websites that talk about the most random stuff you could imagine.

Despite that or maybe precisely because of that, content creation is not an easy job. Creating useful and interesting content takes a lot of time and effort, along with some creativity and imagination.

It’s true that you can talk about almost anything but that doesn’t mean every topic will reward you with the same level of engagement. The best way to ensure you’re on the right track from the start is to base all of your content-related decisions on a quality target audience analysis. That way you won’t have a mismatch between what you want to talk about and what your audience needs and wants to read, watch and consume.

All of your communication should be consumer-centered and revolve around their needs, not yours.

Trust in media is at an all-time low. In fact, trust in government, business and NGOs as well is at an all-time low.

According to the findings of the 2017 Edelman TRUST BAROMETER, a person like yourself has become more trustworthy and listened to than anyone else. Peers are just as credible as technical experts and academics.

What this all tells us is that individuals matter more than institutions and that valued communications nowadays is peer-to-peer not top-down institution-to-peer.

This, in turn, explains one of the most important daily human activities: how we make choices.

The way we make decisions has fundamentally changed. We’ve become a lot more sophisticated and we feel empowered to go online, do our research, talk to friends, read and ask for recommendations on social media, tweet at companies with questions, and expect immediate answers. We don’t want to be marketed at; we want to make choices on our own, based on our online experiences.

Content is the name of the buying game today.