Some trends change, and others never go out of style.
At Durée & Company, we’re seeing a few new PR and social media trends that are on the rise this year – trends our team will use to ensure our clients are maximizing their messages. Check out these trends to see which can benefit your marketing and public relations in 2014:
1. Be Useful – This is not so much a trend as it is a mantra. If you give your customers/clients information they’re looking for, you’ll find that they’ll respect you, and in an ideal situation, then purchase products or services from you. It helps to use online tools to first provide utility, and second, to promote yourself.
2. Be Smarter With Data Usage – A lesson learned straight from marketing analysis and business-oriented ROI: PR is learning not only to love numbers, but also understanding why and how using data can be extremely powerful. Numbers help to tell a story when you’re working with media, and also justify a budget that is larger, adding more resources and staff to an organization. Don’t shy away from numbers, statistics, and analytics. Get into the conversation and use it as a way to understand how data is able to drive the organization’s success.
3. Plan Longer Term/Think About Content Strategically – To make a big impact, you need to think ahead and be strategic in the long run. Plus, you need a plan for what type of content you want to showcase your brand, and how to platform the content which will be shared and posted.
4. Give Up Control – Since social media fans have the ability to create content such as posts, tweets, and videos about a company or brand, it’s important to embrace and accept this concept. Create content that is geared toward your “super fans,” and then give them tools to promote you.
What new trends do you see making an impact in PR and social media? Increased, personalized technology use, like wearing your smartphone on your wrist? Greater incorporation of video into all facets of marketing with short-editing apps, like Vimeo? Or a bigger emphasis on reaching audiences on the demographic edges, like the teenage or active living segments?
It’s important to always know the new and upcoming ways to get the word out about your products and/or services. You may find that new trends take a little getting used to, but once you combine them with things that already work, you’ll find that word can spread faster than ever before.
Because as the commercial says, “isn’t faster better?”
