As the media industry continues to evolve, PR professionals are moving away from media relations in favour of social media management.
New research from media listening and analytics company Talkwalker has found PR professionals are now more ‘social’ than ever.
The top PR offering is no longer media relations or press offices. Rather, the main PR offering is now social media management, according to 77 per cent of respondents, and content marketing, which was also 77 per cent.
This was followed by influencer marketing (67 per cent) and link building for SEO (56 per cent).
Despite the digitisation of the role, media reporting still focuses on traditional media coverage, with still only 38 per cent reporting on influencer campaigns.
“The PR landscape has certainly undergone a lot of changes to keep up with today’s shift to digital. It is a very exciting time for the industry with plenty of untapped potential for PR professionals to go fully social and unlock the huge benefits that social PR strategies could offer,” said Talkwalker global CEO Robert Glaesener.
‘Vanity metrics’ are still used to prove the value of PR work to stakeholders, according to the report.
When asked which metric are used to prove their value to clients or senior management, ‘engagement’ and ‘potential reach/impressions’ were the most common answers.
social listening adoption
The report also takes a look at the prevelance of social listening tools in the industry.
The most common users of these tools were social media managers (56 per cent), followed by data analysts (39 per cent) and research managers (24 per cent).
Nearly half (48 per cent) of PR professionals globally confirmed that their companies use social listening tools, with 64 per cent using the software for PR measurement and 51 per cent using it for monthly reporting.
However, only 15 per cent of these tools for ‘newsjacking’ – where brands inject themselves into breaking news.
According to Talkwalker, this marks a “huge missed opportunity”.
