Public Relations Pivotal Role in the Age of Fake News

Today, the rapid development of technology makes it easier to spread information. Although this is a good thing, it also facilitates the spread of fake news. 

Public relations professionals should be concerned about this and do their part to take on fake news and help the public understand the facts.   

How do PR Professionals Take on Fake News?   

In the age of massive internet usage, it is too easy to spread fake news. It is the job of PR professionals to correct and rebuild people's trust. Here is how PR professionals play the key role in the age of fake news: 

1. Be Trustworthy 

Before dealing with fake news, PR professionals must realize that they are expected to be trusted by communicating facts. Sometimes PR professionals do not intend to lie, but tend to be biased due to their personal opinion or the satisfaction of their clients. 

2. Maintain Social Media 

Use your social media not only to post product pictures, but also to create engaging content about the brand, its unique story and related facts about your product or service. Use this to build a deeper conversation with your audience about the brand. 

If your audience finds this story useful and interesting, they may share your post with their audience, increasing your exposure. In this way, you can get the facts and information out to a wider audience. 

Do not wait until the fake news breaks to do this. Facts that are shared before the fake news appears tend to be more persuasive than those that are shared after the spread of fake news.  

3. Run an Actual Test    

Run a real test with your customers to get honest feedback and reviews about your product. If you are just starting a business, pay the reviewers to do this, but remember to make it clear that they should give an honest review.    

By doing this, you gain knowledge about the good and bad things of your product. So you can keep the good things and improve the bad things to be better.  

After that, you can send the improved product to those customers or reviewers. Now ask them to give an honest review and post it on social media.     

It is okay if some of them do not like some parts of your product, as long as they mention the good things as well. For example, you send the reviewers a food to review and 2 of them say that it is too sweet for them, but it might be delicious for people with sweet tooth. 

4. Be Responsible 

Update crisis communication plans to include potential threats and responses. That way, you can be responsible and respond quickly and correctly when a problem arises. 

5. Show the Process 

If possible, show the process of creating the product in a high-quality video. You can post it on social media and send it to the wire service and journalists. If you are not sure who to send it to, ask the news service like Vritimes. 

6. Build Relationships with Journalists

While doing all of the above, you also need to build a good relationship with news outlets and journalists to get your news out. 

Whether it is a news article or a video, it is always a good idea to distribute it through the media website. This will help you reach a wider audience. The more people know about it, the better, because they can counteract the fake news if it appears. 

It is important to maintain good relations with the public by keeping their trust. Therefore, PR professionals have a responsibility to help them identify what is factual and what is not. By doing so, the public's trust will be built over time to organically filter out the fake news so that they are exposed as fake.