Your Marketing And Public Relations New Year's Resolutions

Sarah Hall helps you refresh your marketing and public relations plan for 2018

It’s that time of year when we reflect on the past 12 months and plan for the New Year. Here are seven resolutions that should be front of mind for 2018 as you review your marketing and public relations activity.

1 Living online There are currently 4.3 billion people of the world’s 7.6 billion population connected to the internet. By 2030 everyone on the planet will be connected. Organisations need to communicate in the spaces their publics do. It’s an obvious point but one that is often forgotten. Resolution: Investigate the changing media landscape in the market or sector in which you operate. Understand how publics are shifting to new forms of media thanks to the internet.

2 Social media matures Social media is maturing. It is becoming increasingly visual and in the moment. Short video messaging is the current vogue. Platforms are copying features from each other in a bid to engage users for as long as possible. This emerging media environment faces challenges with fake news and transparency. Resolution: Listen to the conversations taking place on the social web related to your organisation. You’ll almost certainly learn something.

3 Identifying audiences Two billion monthly Facebook users generate a huge amount of data. The platform has become a powerful planning tool. But it’s not alone. Every post, click, like and comment that we leave on a social media platform leaves an audit trail. Public relations and marketing practitioners use this

data to discover and identify audiences and publics, and understand their motivation. Resolution: Explore the native planning tools on platforms such as Google or Facebook as a means of characterising and understanding a public.

4 Tell me a story The craft of telling a story across different forms of media, and engaging a public, is more important than ever. It’s critical to cutting through a cluttered media environment. In the shift to data driven programmes there’s a danger that we lose sight of creativity. The ability to communicate complex messages through compelling and relevant stories remains a fundamental value of marketing and public relations. Resolution: Explore how other organisations in your market or sector use storytelling as a means of engagement. What’s your story?

5 Earned media resurgence Traditional media has modernised. It’s become social and uses data. Fake news primarily on social media, means that traditional media brands have reversed declines and are enjoying a resurgence. Unfortunately the same isn’t true for local media. It continues to struggle as ad revenue moves to Facebook and Google.

Resolution: Map your organisation’s media channels against an axis of engagement and trust to learn how and when each should be best deployed.

6 Business of influence Each new form of media from Snapchat to YouTube, and Instagram to Twitter, has given rise to a new breed of influencers. Media relations has shifted from pitching traditional media to working with these individuals across all forms of media. There’s a growing realisation that influencers are best used for their ability to create relationships through compelling content, rather than their reach. Resolution: Investigate the influencers in your market or sector, and the potential to build relationships for mutual benefit.

7 Measurement Measurement should no longer be an issue within public relations. But outdated practices mean that practitioners remain wedded to old forms of measurements. We’ll be taken serious as a discipline when we provide meaningful measurement that is aligned to the organisations that we serve. Resolution: In 2018 if you want to maximise your value you need to align your objectives with the objectives of your organisation.