Trends, Trust And Technology - What's Ahead In 2025

0:12 Thank you for joining us for this episode of That's Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers that work for themselves. People like me, Michelle Kane with Voice Matters, and my wonderful co-host, Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi, Karen. How are you? Hi, Michelle. I'm doing great. How are you doing? I'm doing well, doing well. By the time this hits, we'll have crossed that threshold into And here we are. And as promised, we're picking up from the previous episode of predictions for twenty twenty five. What's going to be hot in PR and our general communications world? And maybe what isn't or maybe what hasn't quite taken off in the way we thought it would.

0:57 I think the first thing we want to hit on is just the rise of or perhaps a more intentional, deeper use of data-driven storytelling. We recently had Lisa Gerber on who, again, beautifully helped us understand the importance of telling our stories, whether that's our experiences, that of our clients, their companies, their purposes. But how can we as pros then best, you know, make sure that that is used to its full effectiveness on their behalves? Yeah. So there's that creative, there's that storytelling side, but you also have to look at the analytical side of making sure that you're telling the right stories to the right audiences.

1:48 And so I believe that we will see PR pros grow. go deeper into using metrics to be able to decide the stories that they will tell and where they will tell them. And some of the tools that we're already using, like Google Analytics and some of the metrics, I think that we'll start to look at them in fresh ways because Up until recent years, we used those metrics in terms of reporting on our performance, on measuring how our efforts did. But I believe that we will see more people embrace digging into those metrics to measure where they should be spending their efforts. Yeah, I mean, that is the beautiful thing about that data.

2:31 You know, not to geek out too much, but aside from, oh, I got this many hits. Okay, well, then did anyone travel elsewhere on your website? Oh, did they, you know, look at your services? Did they look at a specific service? Did they read any other blogs while they were there? And that truly can and should be informing other types of content that you create to strengthen... Yes. That area. Absolutely. Because none of it matters if you cannot get your audiences to engage with that content. And so I think, you know, in addition to, you know, I'm seeing more PR posts start to look at trends and start to look at what are the types of stories that people are hungry for?

3:15 And then looking at the stories you tell to see, like, how do I fit into that universe of storytelling? Yeah. But also there are some very cool, this is where technology can really be our best friend. There's some really cool tools that can show you not only the engagement on your story, but it can break it down to geographical engagement. So for example, if you were putting out something and it's just a rich piece of content that's getting quite a bit of engagement, you might in the past think, okay, we'll keep our same targeting, this work, this campaign is working. But maybe it's working in very specific states, which then allows you to really look at those states.

3:56 So I think that we're going to get more granular in how we look at things. I also feel like that puts pressure on us to... re-educate clients, not about quantity of media coverage, but quality. So I hope that that leads to us being much more thoughtful and designing campaigns with fewer targets. So maybe it's grabbing an exclusive with that one publication that actually readers have engaged with. It's driven the most engagement around the stories that you're telling as opposed to dispersing that out among a number of publications, some that just don't perform very well for you.

4:40 And that includes very well-read publications, because I've seen this, where outlets that have millions of readers and they have the highest reach just don't drive engagement. And so we have to stop and say, Why are we bothering? Why are we using our resources to target these people when we're not seeing the results on the other end and re-educating clients that they have to take the focus off of the marquee, off of the logo and look deeper at, but does it matter? Yeah. Oh, gosh, that's so true. And, you know, it's similar to how I advise my social media clients sometimes.

5:24 It's like, no, you don't have to post a gazillion things. Do one really well done post. Target the right people with a little bit of a spend. It doesn't have to be a lot. And that's where your success is going to lie. So, yeah, we need – it's the age-old – the the age-old uh wisdom of finding where your people are and and presenting yourself well in in those spaces so so true but of course none of this matters if if nobody trusts you right so that's our next trend that that we know is going to be very important in twenty twenty five is trust building uh You know, do we really need to say why?

6:06 I mean, just, you know, with the ability for conspiracy theories and misinformation to travel faster than truth can fly, it's just more important than ever if your client is going to succeed in their enterprise, they have to be able to be trusted. I completely agree. I mean, and we've seen the erosion of trust in institutions over many, many years, but I feel like one of the trends next year, because it's important, you've got to have trust, you have to build advocacy, advocacy leads to trust, it leads to engagement. you know, higher lifetime customer value, it has a lot of financial benefit as well as, you know, just benefit to the reputation of the brand.

6:50 So I feel like public relations is going to get more deeply involved in trust building. And that will come through content that will come through, you know, really making sure that we are, you um helping brands to be proactive against crises um by you know stacking that bank of trust and being super thoughtful about what's put out how it's put out um because you know we see this and we're seeing this explode in ways that are scary and dangerous, like what happened with the UnitedHealthcare situation. And then we saw the new CEO come in and say something that further eroded people's trust in healthcare institutions, which is unfortunate because then they get Paint it with a broad brush and it really rubs off and tarnishes, you know, other brands that may have a different way of thinking.

7:49 So I think it's going to be really important to set yourself apart by being truthful and toss around the words transparency and authenticity. And I hate to use those because they seem very overused, but I think it's really building that infrastructure that supports being trusted. And so that's all of the touch points of the company. You, again, you know, I always go back to mission vision values. Those are more than just plaques on the wall or, you know, a line in your employee handbook. you really have to double down and make sure that they're being understood and lived and are able to be questioned.

8:32 When people are not living up to that, you need to empower your employees with a reporting mechanism that has a feedback mechanism that you take action on. Because sometimes there's a wink and a nod about things and I have never liked that, but I think that this twenty twenty five is a year that you really need to stand strong in that. And that starts from the top. It goes from the top, from the boardroom to the basement, as I always like to say. So I hope that that this is not just a trend of the moment, but it's something that we all dig deeper and believe in and carry that out more forcefully in twenty, twenty five and beyond.

9:17 Yeah, agree. Agree. I mean, at the very least, those who are not transparent and trustworthy, it never ends well. It can take a while, but it never usually ends well. And, you know, let's be honest. I like to think that most times when people think of starting a venture, no matter how large or small, you want to be helpful to people, right? It's like, hey, I want you to buy my thing or my service because it will help make your life better. So believe that and act that way. And you're so right. You know, when all of your employees are empowered with that ethos and know that they're expected to live it out, everybody wins. So to do otherwise is just short sighted.

10:00 But, you know, what can I say? But so another trend we were looking at that we thought by now, oh my goodness, isn't there a song from the sixties? I'm not going to sing it in the year. Twenty five, twenty five was twenty five, twenty five. OK, we got five hundred more years. Anyway, we all expected to be the Jetsons by now with our little saucer cars in the air. Maybe that's what the drones are. I don't know. Maybe by the time this hits, we'll know what they were. But just the idea of AR and huge experiential Immersive experiences. Thank you. Yes. You know, we thought that they would be a lot more commonplace by now, right? And they just haven't.

10:41 I think part of that is, as the pendulum swings out of the pandemic, we're still eager for gathering together. You know, I mean, I know I'm still kind of sick of Zooms, right? Let's do a Zoom. Do I have to attend this conference virtually? I'm like, well, you know, I'm not going to watch it at all. So now I'd rather just go if I'm going to do it at all. And I think that does tie into what we thought was going to be a huge revolution and changing of people's behavior. an interest and it just really hasn't hasn't come to pass yet not saying it's never going to but not yet It seemed like such a logical next step in technology, right, to go from, you know, to this technology being able to discover things or being able to research to actually bring you into an experience that was very real.

11:42 And, you know, it works in gaming culture. But here's the funny thing about, you know, predictions and trends. You... can never count out human behavior. And human beings, I think to some degree, still find that a little creepy. Not everybody is ready to step into immersive worlds. People are even pushing back against video interviews because they're worried about the security of all of this technology and opening doors to that. And, you know, as you said, we didn't count on people craving human interaction. We thought, you know, this is great. We don't have to leave our house. We can do everything from here. And look at this.

12:23 I can, you know, click on a product and I can see how it looks in my house and I could try on lipstick and, you know, eyeshadow. how it looks on my face or glasses. And those things are very cool. Thank you very much. They're very cool. But do we want to live our lives like that? We don't want to live our life inside of a computer, basically, which is what it feels like. It turns out we don't. We're not there yet. And it's kind of like electric vehicles. Everybody is like, this is great. It's going to be great for the planet. And it's going to save you money on gas. And while all those things might be true, People's behavior said, eh, not ready for that yet. Is there an interim step?

13:03 And so it's been a much longer time. I thought that by now solar panels would be on every house. Turns out, not true. Yeah, no, exactly, because that feels like a no-brainer, right? And I think some of this could just be barriers, either psychological barriers to, ooh, that would be really hard to do, where do I find someone, all of that. I know I feel that way about the solar panels. I'm like, ooh, that'd be kind of cool, wouldn't it? Similar to EVs, right? Because, you know, next time my lease is up, will I want to do that? I don't know. And actually, I was just talking with someone about that last week. I said, you know, I think of charging stations, like if there was a charging station at every gas station, it would be more efficient.

13:48 More of a, you'd feel there was more of a gateway to usage, right? You think, oh, okay, yeah, this is going to be easy for me to adopt. So I'll give it a shot. Whereas if the ease of it is not apparent, I think it's less likely to be adopted as quickly maybe as we're expecting or that we're projecting. I love that. The, oh, Michelle, you just hit on something. That's because technology, like with chat GPT or generative AI, once chat GPT made it easy for you to go in and type sentences, it just took off. It's not the technology itself was new, but it became accessible.

14:31 And I feel the same way about these immersive experiences. In some ways, That does sound cool to be able to take a webinar because we still do attend webinars. We have those in rotation and make it more of an interactive, immersive experience. But how accessible is that? Is the technology just built into the things that we use? Can everybody use it? Or do you have to go... and spend fifteen hundred dollars on a pair of goggles to be able to access that that's not reasonable for our audiences and you know I think that adding immersion to some of the even in-person stuff could be a way to bridge the gap of you know like conference costs because that's always a big complaint from people is how much it costs to actually attend um but we're just not there so once the once it gets to a point where it's offered and it's easy and accessible to the masses, I think that we will see greater adoption.

15:29 So I love that you brought that up because that's something for us too. It's like, you can be way ahead of time and you can invent something that one day is going to be so crazy useful and so popular, but sometimes you may be a little ahead of time and you have to be patient. You have to be patient enough to allow it to get there and for people to come along with you. yeah so true I don't know why do I think if we still went to the mall would one of the shops be an ar immersive experience store right come in and have an experience Yeah. They try to do that at our shows. And it's cool. Again, it's really cool in the moment.

16:11 But, you know, are we just doing that? Has it become a part of our routines? And, you know, do we do it with... No, we don't. I mean, there's very limited exposure to AR. And I... I believe that if you talk to man on the street, you know, just man on the street interviews for Mike around, that probably most people wouldn't even really know what AR is. Right. That's true. So true. Well, hey, we hope that you are inspired by this episode, thinking about what could be, what's going to happen this year. And if you are, please do share this around. We would really appreciate that. Hit us up at soloprpro.com.

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