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Ronn Torossian On Public Relations in the Future

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According to Ronn Torossian, with the year slowly creeping to an end, plenty of companies are looking to figure out what’s going to be happening in the public relations industry in the future to be able to gain a competitive market advantage. As trends change with every year that passes by in this industry, the companies that have this important information will end up performing better and generating more positive results in the long term. However, in public relations, it’s not always about finding different ways to innovate to gain that competitive advantage that most companies are looking to attain. After all, the public relations industry is famous for having difficulty precisely tracking the results that have been generated from public relations efforts in a way that’s going to be measurable with specific metrics, which only started happening in the last few years. Nevertheless, figuring out what is currently popular in public relations and making predictions for the future of the industry can greatly help companies prepare for what they should be expecting and what they need to improve that’s already working well for them as well.

Personalization

Torossian says that although personalization has been a trend in public relations efforts for a couple of years now, it’s still going to continue to be important in the coming months and years as more and more consumers want to see personalized efforts from the companies they do business with. Reaching the target audience is more difficult than ever, and one of the best ways for companies to do that, and effectively stand out from all the other promotional efforts like marketing and advertising campaigns that consumers have to come across and ignore on a daily basis is through personalization. However, companies will have to take personalization to a new level by creating personalized pitches for the journalists, reporters, and editors they reach out to when they want to generate positive media coverage for their press releases and stories they want to share with the rest of the world. To truly get people in the media interested in what a company has to say, it’s important for businesses to create very personalized messages that will compel the journalist to open the email and respond afterward. Instead of sending out generic email pitches, companies will have to thoroughly research the journalists that they’re going to be pitching, and figure out an angle to their story that’s going to be both newsworthy and relevant for that journalist as well as their readers. Finally, all that work needs to be tied together with a strong and engaging subject line. Although all this takes a lot more work, companies tend to generate a lot better results when personalizing their pitches compared to the ones that send out generic ones.

Flexibility

Ronn Torossian adds that one thing that the pandemic taught pretty much everyone around the world is the importance of flexibility in everyday life. The same fact is true in terms of public relations efforts, and although companies could create annual content calendars and plan out their campaigns ahead of time in the past, all of that has changed, and companies these days have to stay on their toes. This trend is also going to continue in the future with the news cycle constantly changing and breaking stories from brands being released practically every week. All of this points to the fact that companies shouldn’t be over-planning their public relations efforts in the future, and become more flexible instead. However, this tends to be a bit more difficult for many businesses, simply because of the fact that they haven’t developed a system where they can work and communicate more effectively. Fortunately, by investing in better internal communication and ensuring that the company’s public relations calendar has room to be a bit more flexible, any company will be able to change up its promotional efforts at a moment’s notice without completely sidetracking any ongoing campaigns.

Platforms

For about a decade now, public relations has not been what it used to be in the past, given the popularity and prevalence of use of social media platforms, nontraditional outlets, and the rise of social media influencers and content creators, all of which have changed the way that many traditional public relations platforms like TV and print used to operate. The reason why many companies have to keep track of all these major industry changes is that each successful public relations campaign is located at the intersection of creativity and strategy, where owned, paid, and earned media are working together for a company to be able to meet its target audience in a place where each one of those members already is. All of this simply means that most people these days tend to get the information that they might need from a number of different sources as well as platforms, which means it’s no longer guaranteed for companies that a single outlet – whether traditional or digital – is going to be able to reach the audience that a company is trying to reach through its promotional efforts. In fact, in many cases, the people that the company is trying to reach are active and operating across a number of different communication channels. And that, in turn, means that the company has to figure out ways to reach the target audience on platforms and channels that they already prefer and tend to frequent. After all, the main goal of any public relations efforts is for companies to be able to deliver the right messages to the right people, at the right time and on the right platform, and understanding this fractured type of target audience is simply going to be one a part of the public relations learning curve for businesses.

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Ronn Torossian

Ronn Torossian is the Founder and Chairman of 5WPR, one of the largest independently-owned PR firms in the United States. With over 25 years of experience crafting and executing powerful narratives, Torossian is one of America’s most prolific and well-respected Public Relations professionals. Since founding 5WPR in 2003, he has led the company’s growth, overseeing more than 275 professionals. With clients spanning corporate, technology, consumer and crisis, in addition to digital marketing and public affairs capabilities, 5WPR is regularly recognized as an industry leader and has been named “PR Agency of the Year” by the American Business Awards on multiple occasions. Throughout his career, Torossian has worked with some of the world’s most visible companies, brands and organizations. His strategic, resourceful approach has been recognized with numerous awards including being named the Stevie American Business Awards 2020 Entrepreneur of the Year, the American Business Awards PR Executive of the Year, twice over, an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year semi-finalist, Metropolitan Magazine’s Most Influential New Yorker, a 2020 Top Crisis Communications Professional by Business Insider, and a recipient of Crain’s New York 2021 Most Notable in Marketing & PR. Torossian is known as one of the country’s foremost experts on crisis communications, and is called on to counsel blue chip companies, top business executives and entrepreneurs both in the United States and worldwide. Torossian has lectured on crisis PR at Harvard Business School, appears regularly on CNN & CNBC, is a contributing columnist for Forbes and the New York Observer, and has authored two editions of his book, “For Immediate Release: Shape Minds, Build Brands, and Deliver Results With Game-Changing Public Relations,” which is an industry best-seller. A NYC native, Torossian is a member of Young Presidents Organization (YPO), and active in numerous charities.

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