​Emerging PR and Media trends for 2018 and beyond

By Holly Bartlow

1) Skepticism of paid media content
 
With fake news still a hot topic, there is a lack of trust with earned media. Instagram influencers are being paid to produce content that push certain brands. Before there was a law requiring that the material must be titled “sponsored”, many people saw these images as a person like themselves.
 
Still, even with social media advertising on the rise, according to 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, 75 percent of consumer trust relies on friends and family recommendations.
 
 
2) Influencer marketing
 
Influencers will become the driving force through 2019 to engage audiences and drive a response. This doesn’t mean someone with a 1.1 million following though. The following needs to hit a target audience, and the influencer needs to be credible in order for this marketing strategy seen as useful.
 
According to eMarketer, 70 percent of US agency and brand marketers strongly agree that influencer marketing budgets will increase in 2018.
 
3) Getting noticed in growing media
 
With a growing number of niche organizations competing for business and consumers, it will be getting harder for organizations to stand apart from the rest and receive media attention.
 
4) Video content will boom
 
It has been proven that people gravitate toward imagery. In today’s world, it takes more than an enticing headline for people to read a story. Videos will be used more and more to help deliver a message in a more effective way to the consumer.
 
 
5) Growing reliance on PR firms
 
For many organizations with a small in-house PR team, it’s hard to juggle the many components of PR. Therefore, many companies are branching out to firms for reasons such as a launch of a product or bigger PR projects.