Organic reach of earned media achieves 10-50 times the conversion rates compared to paid advertising. This fact – coming from a MediaMiser infographic – puts into specifics what has been an intangible but steady increase of credibility issues amongst a tech-savvy public. 

As more time is spent online, it is becoming easier for organisations to engage their audiences; if, that is, the right media channels are chosen based on technology-enabled intelligence.

Current trends in the realm of communication

MediaMiser indicates that online advertising fraud costs the communication industry an concerning $8.2 billion per annum. Organisations trying to stay ahead and build credibility around their content creation should therefore look at adapting their approaches.

Instead of writing a news release and twiddling thumbs in the hopes that someone will publish it, communication specialists are expected to drive visibility and increase engagement in new ways. Considering that market spend on information is up more than 5 per cent, technology is driving a shift towards more intensified thought leadership, content marketing and influencer advice.

More than that though, a Nielsen-inPowered study on consumer decision-making process concluded that more than 50 per cent of information is sourced from social media and consumer reviews. Ultimately, this means traditional filter-down methods are losing their effectiveness, and the big challenge now is for expert communicators to read the situation and adapt accordingly. 

How does technology driven intelligence come in to play? 

As the industry evolves, communication specialists have been able to leverage their knowledge and expertise with regard to producing quality content, which is critical to hold reader’s interest. The main focus now needs to shift towards utilising the technology on hand effectively.

This means that being successful requires the measurement of data collected from different media channels, making sense of this information and creating business intelligence from those insights. MediaMiser specifically points towards implementing global databases, software as a service (SaaS) solutions, social media savvy operations and analytics. 

Monitoring media metrics and interpreting big data to generate useful insights into consumer behaviour is undoubtedly going to continue to grow in the coming years. It will no longer be acceptable to ‘just’ be great at offline communication and relationship building.

Instead, expert communication specialists need to look at developing and improving their skill-sets on the tech-savvy side of business, if they want to effectively communicate with their audiences.