It was an interesting year for the PR pros. Lot’s of new things happened and we recognized the new tendencies which are coming to replace the traditional public relations tools. We understood the definition of influence. The profession is changing its ways of communication and its major approaches. Based on what we witnessed in 2010 and thanks to some very professionally considered predictions for 2011,  I wrote down some of my PR expectations for 2011.

Personal. Everything is personal. Everything will be personal in 2011. Finding the most effective and appropriate strategy of being personal and social will be the biggest obstacle the brands will face in 2011. The communication teams will be enlarging due to the necessity of being personal, interactive and communicative with everybody interested in your brand.

The publics will be even more precisely targeted. Different media channels will be used differently and accordingly to their users. Traditional media won’t die until there are people who use newspapers, for example, for information consumption. Well, these people maybe your target group as well.

Non-traditional approaches will be highly embraced as tools of the integrated marketing strategies. The fight for people’s attention will be even more severe, so being creative, different and outstanding will be the main aim of the communication strategists.

More and more brands will try to accomplish the concept of the engagement marketing. Brands will continue to try to be social, engaging and interactive.

New ways of interaction and communication with journalists will change the traditional PR-media interrelations.

PR pros will highly integrate the usage of social media, even those who undervalued the importance of social media channels in 2010. [For some brands] This will lead to shifting budgets from traditional media to online communications.

Companies will provide their own media channels. We will witness outstanding rise of corporate blogging.

People will be more technically connected than ever. This means it will be very difficult to manage your brands communications without social strategy and without interaction and transparent dialogue.

The business models will be basically changed. B2P is the new core concept. Business-to-People. We will see the social aspects of the companies. Customers and their feedback will navigate the business strategies of the companies. Value is what the consumer says it is, says Robert Passikoff and I totally agree with him.

After all, people’s attention and knowledge about a brand will be its strong assets.

It will be an interesting year for sure. Knowing what to expect is the first step for preparation. The perceptions about the PR profession will be changed as well as its functions. And the PR job will be even more interesting and different.

Last but not least, I recommend you to read also these useful 7 articles:

Best of 2010: The year of understanding influence by Brian Solis

11 branding and marketing trends for 2011

5 PR and social media trends for 2011

PR, communication and marketing trends 2011

Some PR resolutions for 2011

Top 10 PR resolutions for 2011

5 predictions for the public relations industry

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