I recently was looking through my files and found a blog post I wrote for Energy Central about public relations trends in January 2020 – right before the pandemic started.
I was curious as to whether those trends held up or whether the pandemic served as a game-changer as it did for so many other things.
We won’t have definitive answers for a while, but it appears that the pandemic did have some impact. Most prominently, trends that were already happening have accelerated.
For example, newsroom staffing will continue to shrink, much like it has for the past 30 years. That means media outlets will rely more on contributed articles to augment overworked full-time staffers.
In turn, that means opportunities for your utility: Provide some of that content.
Granted, that’s easier said than done. You’ll still need to offer content that will be useful to a media outlet’s audience. And many lazy PR practitioners are still just providing glorified puff pieces that are rejected out of hand.
Example: At my day job, I received an email from a national fraternity planning to re-establish a local chapter at an area school. We certainly would be interested in writing about that, but there’s a catch. The fraternity was trying to whitewash why there wasn’t a chapter already at the school – it got shut down a couple of years back after its president was convicted and sent to jail for sexual assault.
Once I told the fraternity that we would have to include those details, they lost interest.
Meantime, some of the trends we’ve seen will diminish. Conducting interviews over Zoom is helpful for journalists in many situations, but there also are times when a face-to-face meeting works better.
If a media outlet wants/needs to interview your CEO, try to set it up in person. There’s a greater chance to make a connection, and you can also set the stage for other possible stories by introducing the media to other employees and/or having them tour your facility.
Trends aside, a lot will stay the same: Content is (and always will be) king.
Despite the fake news and assorted gossip and babble fostered by the internet and social media, good reporting always will have an audience.
Quality remains of greater importance than quantity – again, that means telling a compelling story. Your utility must have plenty of good, relevant stories to tell. Just be sure to frame your pitches in a way that will resonate with your media outlets’ audiences.
If you find you’re getting nowhere, do what struggling sports teams do all of the time. Get back to the basics, or “blocking and tackling” in football vernacular.
While the millennial and Generation Z PR practitioners will sneer at the press release as an outdated tool, it can remain a building block for getting out your news. Keep all releases short and to the point and include plenty of contacts.
I’ve mentioned it before, but thought leadership is something you should pursue. While it’s great to get media coverage for news specifically related to your utility, you also want to position your organization’s employees as experts in the field. Considering all the trust issues the public seems to have with everything these days, your utility needs to come off as a trusted, reliable source.
One way to do that is by writing op-eds or appearing on television and radio news programs. Showcase your ability to discuss important trends in the world.
A more updated way to sound like an expert is via the podcast. If your utility isn’t doing podcasts, you should consider trying them.
People seem to enjoy podcasts, and they’re accessible whether the audience is driving, taking public transportation, relaxing at home or anywhere else, assuming they have battery power and a signal.
As a bonus, with a podcast, you largely control the content, especially if you are the host.
What are some other trends we might see in 2023?
Some people speculate that PR folks will forgo mass pitching in favor of more targeted pitches. In theory, that’s great. In reality, it’s easy for an agency to come up with a list of targets and send out a mass email. Efficiency always wins.
Don’t overlook social media as a means of reaching the media. Twitter can be especially useful.
Finally, remember when I mentioned pushing for face-to-face interviews instead of remote ones?
Apply the same principle, and make as many events as possible in-person affairs. After a couple of years of being closed up, the public is getting out and about again. COVID will remain an ongoing concern (and severe outbreaks will warrant reconsiderations), but it seems more and more that the public is taking normal fluctuations in stride.