How it used to be: The comms job market has been improving for some time, but mostly for organizations doing the hiring. Thanks to assumptions about AI’s competence as well as overhiring during the pandemic, employers had their pick and took advantage of it. Many communicators were going through weeks of interviews, only to find themselves back knocking on doors. 

How it is now: For the first time since 2022, the “buyer’s market” is swinging back. However, it is still on job-seekers to position themselves properly. 

We tackled these subjects a week apart on Cracking the Comms Code, and both panels came to the same conclusion: It’s past time for communications professionals to treat ourselves like a client and put our best digital foot forward. 

The first panel covered the state of the communications job market and changing expectations for comms professionals, featuring

• Brooke Kruger, Founder of KC Partners;
• Jessica Bayer, Managing Partner, Corporate Affairs & Communications Executive Search Practice at DHR Global; and
• Michael Feuz, Consulting Manager at ITR Economics.

The other panel looked at how comms professionals can use LinkedIn to stand out in the marketplace. This one brought together

• Mollie Johnson, Founder of Three Brooks Marketing;
• Brandon Watts, Director of PR & Communications at Storyblok; and
• Monique Kelley, Communications Consultant, Professor, and Author.

Comms Upstream

The communications job market is changing in part because companies increasingly want communications leaders involved earlier in important business decisions. Instead of making a decision and then asking how to explain it to employees, customers, reporters, or other stakeholders, the boss is now calling on communications leaders to help navigate those decisions in real time. That includes mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, regulatory questions, and complicated new challenges like artificial intelligence and data centers.

That is a different role from simply executing a communications plan, and it’s the one our entire function’s been demanding for generations. However, AI is the elephant in the room here. We have to show that it is a tool, not a strategic solution to all content problems. Put another way, producing more material does not necessarily make an organization communicate better. Someone still has to designate priorities, ascertain what is credible, and choose what is worth saying to whom.

The result is a growing premium on judgment. The communicator who can connect communications to the broader business brings more to the table than the skilled but downstream executor of what’s already decided.

Sell Yourself!

This is where LinkedIn comes in.

It’s not exactly new technology, but it’s become indispensable in the new buyer’s market. If you think LinkedIn is just about celebrations, à la Facebook, then perhaps you’re not using it right.

Start with how you’re engaging with other people’s content. Maybe you’re spending time giving accolades to your former communications colleague – and that’s fine some of the time. But most of your time should be spent putting your experience and insights to work engaging on the content of key recruiters, potential direct superiors, and old contacts who can help you find work.

What does that look like? One approach is to seek to add additional value. Instead of saying, “Yeah, great point!” say, “That’s a great point. In my experience, XYZ is also valuable.” Or, better yet, “That’s a great point. How do you recommend handling XYZ NICHE ASPECT of the issue? We handled it this way at Google.”

Etc. 

You don’t need to find a million of these people, either. Maybe you have a LinkedIn list of “only” 500 contacts and not 50,000. But those 500 followers, if you actually know them and talk to them, will do you tons more good than 50,000 “followers” who scroll past your posts to hit the next Sports Illustrated ad.

In other words, you don’t need to become an influencer. The more useful goal would be too obvious to state if so many communicators didn’t fail to notice it in front of our faces: to become recognizable to the right people. You need those prospective employers, clients, reporters, colleagues, and other professionals to know you before they’ll hire you — just like you’ve always told clients and executives.

Advertising? Not Exactly.

Communicators are particularly vulnerable to thinking our own content is advertising. “I don’t know how to talk about myself” is a phrase we’ve heard a lot when discussing using LinkedIn to find a job. And it makes sense, because we’ve spent our entire career propping up others.

But here’s the thing: If you’ve been successful for 20 years, there’s a reason. You have insights, experiences, and stories that people want to pay for. This means they’ll probably want to read or listen to what you’re saying.

Once you’re comfortable reacting, it’s time to plan. Producing content on other people’s pages is good; doing it on your own is even better. And this strategy is multidisciplinary: Whether you’re trying to get a job at a tech company, a healthcare company, or a food company, you should be creating content that’s only targeted to the recruiters, hiring managers, and hiring influencers in the industries and companies on your docket. 

This disciplined content strategy gives people a reason to remember you. A communications professional’s experience is full of useful information. There is no need to invent a profound new thought every morning when the news cycle is gift-wrapping you something to think about and react to in a value-add way. 

No Cramming

The trust reservoir is not just for crisis communications (though it definitely doesn’t hurt there). The hiring-market discussion and the personal-branding discussion ultimately arrive at the same place: Visibility is most useful when you build it before you need it.

If you start posting on LinkedIn the day you lose your job, you are starting from scratch. If you begin networking only when you need an introduction, you are asking people to help based on a relationship that may not exist yet. And if you begin thinking seriously about your professional reputation only when you are interviewing for your next position, you have missed years of opportunities to demonstrate what you know.

You don’t need to make another full-time job out of social media to get yourself out there. We generated almost $200,000 in revenue from three clients, two of whom hadn’t talked to our founder in a decade. But once they reconnected on LinkedIn, it was off to the races.

A sustainable LinkedIn presence is more valuable than an “overdrive” schedule that burns you out after three weeks. Consistent engagement, thoughtful content, and genuine professional relationships can gradually create something much more valuable than viral reach: familiarity and credibility with the people who may be interviewing you in a few months.

Build the Brand, Yesterday

Ultimately, there are two sides to the professional evolution our age requires.

Companies increasingly want communications leaders who can contribute to business decisions, not simply execute them. At the same time, hiring managers, prospective clients, and other professionals have more opportunities than ever to see how communicators think before they ever sit across the table from them.

You shouldn’t turn your nose up at LinkedIn, and you can’t ignore the importance of personal visibility. It does not require posting every day. It does not require chasing viral content. And it certainly does not require turning your LinkedIn page into a constant advertisement for yourself or your employer.

It requires knowing what you are good at, understanding who needs that expertise, and consistently giving those people a reason to remember you.

Communicators already understand these principles. We tell clients that reputation takes time to build, that relationships undergird the business, that audiences need relevant information, and that credibility comes from consistent behavior.

Surprise, surprise: The same rules apply to us! 

Proven Media Solutions is proud to share both panels below. It’s hard to feel alone when you’re looking for work, so we hope these insights help!

Instead, it requires niching down to each media gatekeeper — a massive challenge when there are a half-dozen ways to reach someone, and journalists are moving at the speed of 24/7 news. 

That was the common thread running through two recent episodes of Cracking the Comms Code.

The first brought together three senior communications professionals to discuss strategies to reach diverse audiences instead of sticking to one broad (but inefficient and ineffective) cohort: 

•   Robert Kuykendall, Director of Accounts at Proven Media Solutions;
•   Ryan Cohn, Chief Strategy Officer & Partner at Sachs Media; and
•   KayAnn P. Schoeneman, President & Co-Owner of Curley Company.

The second flipped the perspective, bringing in three reporters to shed light on how communicators can get reporters to care about your pitch in the first place:

•   Anastassia Gliadkovskaya, Senior Reporter at Fierce Healthcare;
•   Jeremy Lott, Reporter at The Epoch Times; and
•   Scott Carlson, Reporter at The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The comms pros and the reporters came from opposite ends of the process to (more or less) agree: Good communication is about making what you say matter to the person hearing it.

Name the Audience

Ask your client or your boss, “Who’s your audience?” If he answers “Everybody!,” run for cover. 

One of the biggest mistakes executives can make is to treat an audience like a giant bucket. But a modest budget spread across five audiences — even if they’re all considered one bucket — will likely just get you five mediocre campaigns. Target your audiences carefully, and your resources will go farther.

Whole Foods doesn’t go after most buyers; the new product needs only 5,000 buyers in a country of 340 million people. Political candidates want only 50.5% of voters, and voters make up only a fraction of the constituency. 

Whatever the desired transaction, identify the audience with the clearest path to the desired outcome, and then work on hitting only that audience. 

“Media” Is Lame. “Journalist” Is Great.

Most pitches fail because they are too general. This means more than just avoiding email blasts. Get more specific about your recipient — down to the particular paper, or better yet, to the particular reporter.

Consider these four easy steps for research and targeting:

1. Figure out which outlets reach the target audience.
2. Zero in on the guy or girl at those outlets who reach the audience.
3. Background-check that journalist. What’s his beat, his niche? What’s he covered lately?
4. Identify the reporter’s style. How does she operate? Live interviews? Breaking news? Evergreen stories? What formats do her last five, ten, fifteen most recent articles take?

You don’t want to be like the uncle who asks his nephew, “How’s school going?” every time he sees him. Yes, fine, the kid is in school, but there’s more to him than that.

Journalists are the same. Before sending a pitch, look for patterns. Understand the questions he’s asking and the stories his publication considers important. Then ask whether your idea will find purchase in his head, and thus on his outlet’s pages. That’s how your pitch email gets a click and a read.

Zoom In, Zoom Out

Oftentimes a pitch email gets clicked because of an unconventional, niche subject. However, the pitch itself will work only if the niche that got the click is connected to a wider issue that person is covering.

Maybe you’re pitching a trade publication with a narrow focus, but the journalist is planning a wider-scale project down the line. Some beat and prior coverage research can reveal that, and you can tailor your pitch accordingly. Or your target outlet might have several different media, like print and podcasts, and your pitch fits only so-so into one but really well into another. 

Deftly laying out the broader context will help your target journalist map out the best use of your content for her outlet. Zeroing in on the hook or the unconventional angle or the exclusive information establishes that you have something to say.

Find the Eager Recruits

Another flaw with the “broadcasting” mindset is the rigid assumption that communication has to come directly from the organization. But why?

What if you can get people who aren’t officially part of the communications department to do some of the message distribution work? How about employees, partners, customers, franchisees? Industry experts? Other advocates? The world is our oyster!

Think about this from the reporter’s perspective. She doesn’t want a canned statement from the CEO. Give her a dozen testimonials from consumers whose lives were changed by the product, or an outside expert with a report that verifies your narrative, or a low-level employee who found his spouse at work. That’s fodder for a story – just ask the surrogates for presidential candidates.

The stories we’ve gotten into major media like Fox News Digital, USA TODAY, and The Hill are not from the $1,600 suits in the 32nd-floor boardroom. They’re people with personal takes with which audiences can connect.

In short, you don’t necessarily need to reach everyone directly if the people who command attention and respect are willing to carry the message for you. There are a lot of credible voices and trusted networks under the company’s top floor, and even outside the four walls. Use them! 

Bye-Bye to Spray-And-Pray

The journalist doesn’t care about making your client look good. He’s cashing a paycheck on his ability to tell a story his employer’s audience cares about.

Those who rely on spray-and-pray blast a message out indiscriminately, hoping someone will pick it up just by virtue of having heard it. Reporters delete that email. Communicators, on the other hand, go to ground. They pick out with precision exactly the kind of journalist — and then the actual, literal, flesh-and-blood journalist — who will make a good partner. Client benefits, outlet benefits, everyone wins.

Watch the most recent episodes of Cracking the Comms Code below:

The organizations that handle crises best have already done the work. They’ve built relationships across departments, empowered employees to communicate confidently, developed trust with stakeholders, and created processes that help people execute under pressure.

And best of all, they’ve trusted their communications team to play a key strategic role in all of it.

That’s the central lesson from a recent episode of Cracking the Comms Code, featuring members of one of America’s leading crisis communications programs in the country.

• Dr. Yan Jin, Professor of Public Relations at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication;
• Jason Anthoine, Senior Vice President and Managing Director at Arketi Inside;
• Jennifer Bowcock, Senior Vice President of Communications & Creative at RealPage, Inc.; and
• Chloe Clavert Hicks, Senior Social Media Content Strategist and graduate student at the University of Georgia.

The discussion centered on UGA’s Crisis Communications Think Tank, where students, professors, and corporate leaders solve real-world communications challenges. What emerged was the blueprint for an organization built to beat a crisis before it starts.

Not Every Fire Requires the Fire Department

One of the first lessons discussed was what should become standard practice in every communications department: define the term crisis before you think about particular crises.

A flood of angry comments on social media may feel overwhelming, but if the organization continues operating normally, serves its customers, and maintains stakeholder confidence, it may simply be having a bad day. A true crisis is more than the spasms of the social media outrage cycle.

Organizations can focus on only so much, and true crises deserve the lion’s share of their attention. Leaders who mobilize crisis teams every time criticism appears eventually train employees to overreact, exhaust resources, and lose perspective when genuine emergencies arise.

Panelists argued for a “continuous readiness” mindset. Crisis management isn’t an emergency procedure tucked away in a binder until disaster strikes. It requires communications, legal, finance, operations, and executive leadership to continually identify risks, challenge assumptions, and prepare for situations before they become headlines.

The Team Hears the News First

When it comes to warding off a crisis, organizations are too ready to overlook their most important audience: their own employees.

Workers answer questions from customers. Friends ask them what happened. Family members send them news articles. Even if they never speak to the media, employees become unofficial spokespersons the moment uncertainty begins.

That’s why internal communications can’t be treated as an afterthought. A polished press release accomplishes little if employees receive conflicting information—or worse, learn about company news from social media before hearing it from leadership.

To cut the wire on a company-collapsing game of “whisper down the lane,” leadership should bring multiple perspectives into the room early in the war-gaming process. Communications professionals, lawyers, finance leaders, product teams, and social media managers all view the same situation differently. Those differences in perspective safeguard against blind spots.

One such overlooked perspective brings in social media teams. These guys and gals aren’t simply publishing content; they’re gathering real-time intelligence. Every comment, direct message, and customer complaint offers valuable information about how audiences understand — or misunderstand — an organization’s response.

Companies that treat social media teams as strategic advisers instead of content distributors gain an enormous advantage during fast-moving situations.

Trust Isn’t Built During a Crisis

Long before the crisis hits, every company has an account with the “trust bank.” Every honest conversation with employees, every transparent customer interaction, every fulfilled promise, and every thoughtful decision becomes another deposit in the trust bank. When the time comes to make a withdrawal — and it will — leadership should make sure the account is well padded.

Executives often feel compelled to respond immediately when disaster hits. But sometimes strategic silence is the better choice. Rushing incomplete or inaccurate information can inflict more damage than taking time to understand the situation.

That’s not an excuse to cower under the mahogany desk. On the contrary, knowing when not to speak requires preparation every bit as much as knowing what to say.

The same principle applies to artificial intelligence. AI can quickly summarize thousands of comments, identify emerging trends, and help communications teams work faster. But today’s tools still struggle to interpret sarcasm, humor, and emotional nuance. Leadership absolutely must keep a “human in the loop,” because AI can’t handle the job on its own. Instead, combine AI’s speed with human judgment.

None of these systems can fix a disaster at the moment it’s unfolding. Every one of them needs to be in place, earning credibility for the company, well ahead of time.

The Best Crisis Plan Starts Long Before the Headlines

Crises are part of running an organization. The CEO may not show up at a Coldplay concert, but it’s up to you as the comms person to make sure you’re ready when the plague of locusts shows up out of nowhere. If it’s not one thing, it’s another, so companies need to make preparation and flexibility a part of their daily routine.

This means fostering a broader culture of readiness. It starts with acknowledging the trust bank’s existence and taking deep breaths to distinguish between a true five-alarm fire and a flash mob of loudmouths on X. From there, the rough-and-ready company makes regular trust deposits with customers, stakeholders, and employees; keeps everyone on payroll up to date; and consolidates the whole team, human and robot, into an elite crisis-crushing unit.

The strongest crisis response isn’t a perfectly crafted press statement written two minutes to midnight. It’s an organization that spent years preparing so that, when the pressure sets in, everyone already knows what to do.

That theme surfaced repeatedly across two recent episodes of Cracking the Comms Code. Communications leaders from healthcare, technology, agencies, internal communications, and media relations  —  including Jasper Hamill, Lindsay Lapchuk, Alan Shoebridge, Keith Berman, Jennifer George, and Meredith Klein  —  explored what AI is really doing to comms, not what everyone fears it’s going to do.

Put simply, AI is dividing the people who create content from the people who create business value. The winners will be the communicators who do both — but are known primarily for the second.

Content vs. Counsel

The first panel focused on the content side of the AI era. Shoebridge argued that there’s now a strong inverse relationship between content (abundant) and strategic counsel (scarce). The “A” in “AI” doesn’t stand for “adviser” – the robot won’t tell you (or at least won’t do a good job telling you) what should be communicated, when, to whom, and why it matters to the business.

That’s where Shoebridge said the best communicators will stand out. They’ll move beyond trying to outrace AI systems and move to where humans do their best work – talking to other humans, understanding problems, and creating solutions.

Part of counsel is knowing the content strategy, including what narratives hit home the best. It’s easy to use AI tools for content creation, so the next frontier is learning (quickly) to use them well.

Hamill argued that the premium now sits on exceptional stories, memorable headlines, and interviews that uncover insights experts didn’t realize they had.

How do you get the AI to do all that? It starts with asking better questions.

Instead of broad prompts, experienced communicators ask for specific moments, decisions, or turning points. That gets them the gem in a piece of content to develop into a story that hits home.

And, finally, yes, you do have to know what AI search is up to. Lapchuk explained that customers, investors, job candidates, and journalists increasingly begin their research with AI tools. Every organization already has an AI reputation, whether it is managing one or not.

The strongest communications teams are working alongside SEO, sales, and product marketing to understand the questions buyers actually ask and to ensure AI systems have accurate information about their companies. Earned media, executive thought leadership, customer stories, and owned content all contribute to the information AI uses to generate answers.

Companies can’t control every AI response. They’ll have to work twice as hard, then, to influence the information that drives those responses – starting with counsel, then finding outstanding narratives, and then making sure those narratives spread properly. 

The Right Counsel Earns Trust – and Budget

The next panel barely mentioned AI, but elevated the “counsel” conversation to its highest strategic levels.

George urged communicators to tie their work to acquisitions, restructurings, market expansion, and other major business decisions instead of communications outputs. She said asking the finance squad for help did wonders for her business education and, later, her career as a comms executive. 

Klein encouraged professionals to think like business leaders who specialize in communications rather than communicators trying to learn business. That’s the only way to ensure that the C-Suite listens to you, on everything from forward-looking predictions to urging them to ditch the tie and go with an authentic approach to executive messaging. 

But trust doesn’t always come with all of the necessary tools. The Wall Street Journal article about CCOs storming the C-Suite had a number of shortcomings, including what George called an “unfunded mandate” where a single high-paid person is doing the work of five. Sure, the title and cash are nice…if you don’t burn out.

So start quantifying your work. Measure your workloads, calculate the cost of poor communication (you can be creative about this), and demonstrate how effective internal communications improve productivity and reduce risk. When you have data to leverage, you can act like the finance department and make a business case for your work, and the resources it deserves.

And, finally, Berman argued that if you want to be trustworthy, speak candidly. He’s been in external and internal comms, and since employees are a company’s most powerful asset, speaking candidly (and intelligently, armed with the data) is the only way to ensure that you are seen as equal to the longstanding members of the C-Suite. 

Enjoy each panel discussion in full below.

The real goal is becoming someone the C-suite instinctively calls before the biggest decisions are made. That happens only when communicators stop thinking like messaging specialists and start thinking like business leaders.

That was the recurring lesson across two recent episodes of Cracking the Comms Code. In one discussion, I was joined by

•       Ellen O’Brien, founder of Hudsons Media;
•       Conrad Bellehumeur, a veteran chief communications officer now working in fusion energy; and
•       Sarah Graham, cybersecurity lead at Kickstand.

In the other,

•       Lainie Keller, a longtime pharmaceutical communications executive;
•       Alex Dudley, VP of Communications at Cognizant; and
•       Erin Weinstein, Managing Director at SKDK,

explored what it takes to position executives for success.

Six accomplished communicators  —  in healthcare, cybersecurity, technology, government, public affairs, and energy  —  came to more or less the same conclusion: Speaking C-suite isn’t a “nice-to-have” anymore. It’s a core competency.

Build Trust Before It’s Needed

Every panelist, regardless of industry, kept returning to one idea: Trust comes before influence.

O’Brien noted that communicators are often brought in simply to execute instead of being given time to build relationships with leaders. But it’s those relationships — developed long before a crisis hits — that transform a communications professional into a trusted adviser.

Bellehumeur said the same pattern has followed him through government, transportation, defense, and energy. Trust under pressure might work in a pinch, but it’s not what you want fro leaders over your career long-term. Instead, you want the people who matter to remember that you’ve consistently helped them solve business problems before those problems bled over into messaging.

Weinstein offered the flip side from the agency perspective. Clients often hire outside advisers for one reason: to hear what nobody inside the organization is willing to say. Honest counsel, even where it goes against the company grain, is what builds executive confidence.

If executives hear from you only when they need a press release, you’re a vendor. If they call you before making a business decision, then you’re an adviser.

Trust is Built on Learning the Business

Expertise is a no-brainer in every career, including communications. That’s how you get in the door. But it’s not enough anymore to keep you in the room.

Bellehumeur shared his “five keys” for becoming an executive adviser:

•       understand strategy
•       know the operating environment
•       build relationships across departments
•       speak the language of numbers
•       volunteer beyond your communications responsibilities

Alex Dudley took that even further: Be a business person first who specializes in communications — not a communicator who happens to work for a business. Saying you’re “bad at math” is disqualifying. The best communicators read the 10-Ks and earnings releases, understand the balance sheet, and know where revenue comes from. 

Lainie Keller added that business fluency also helps communicators know when not to respond. Sometimes — maybe often! — acting gets attention, customers, and revenue. But the communicator elevates himself into an adviser when he also knows how and when to remain silent for the business’s long-term health.

Learning the business is how we helped a client develop quality KPIs. They first came to us with a lot of useless measures like pitch volume. By the end of the conversation, we turned it around to them to answer questions like:

•       Did the USA Today op-ed help the sales team?
•       Was the Financial Times interview repurposed by business development?
•       How much content time did earned media save because placements could be repurposed on the blog and in newsletters?

Questions Earn More Influence Than Answers

The best advisors usually arrive with questions. Call it “ask, don’t tell.”

Sarah Graham applies the same mindset in cybersecurity. As buyers shift from CISOs toward developers and CTOs — and increasingly use AI tools to research vendors — she constantly asks where audiences actually spend time and how communications should evolve. This is especially important when trying to help technically sound CEOs who are small today but want to scale, because it helps keep everyone focused on success. 

Dudley emphasized another question communicators often skip in a crisis: Who is actually affected? Before speaking, determine whether the primary audience is employees, customers, investors, or regulators. Maybe it’s someone else entirely.

Keller suggested organizing audiences into three buckets:

•       core stakeholders who must align
•       critical stakeholders who require active management
•       contextual audiences worth monitoring

You can’t be lazy about this. The right answer is going to be different in every situation.

Internal Communications Is Business Strategy

Another remarkable point of agreement across both panels was the importance of internal communications. Employees have become ambassadors, skeptics, influencers, and fact-checkers. That’s all wrapped up in the job now.

Keller argued that organizations should tell employees first whenever possible, while assuming that anything communicated internally could become public within minutes — in other words, as O’Brien observed, today’s internal conversation can quickly become tomorrow’s headline.

Dudley described employees as the organization’s authenticity test. They know whether leadership’s words match leadership’s actions.

Bellehumeur stressed that employees trust direct supervisors far more than CEOs several levels removed, making manager communication one of the most important tools in any communications strategy. We’re talking about a lot more than just keeping HR happy here.

C-Suite: Think, Speak, Lead

Across both conversations, the message was consistent: Communicators who earn lasting influence are doing more than simply writing better messages. The next level is that they understand the business. They ask smarter questions. They build trust before it’s needed. They connect communications to growth, risk, operations, finance, and strategy. And they’re willing to tell leaders difficult truths when everyone else is simply nodding along.

Speaking C-suite has to go beyond learning executive buzzwords or faking it ’til you make it. You have to do the work, which starts with learning to think like an executive before you ever speak like one. That will get you in the right headspace to understand that your goal is not to ask politely for a seat at the table. The people already sitting there will get up and come to you, because they can’t afford not to.

Watch each panel below.

In a trilogy of Cracking the Comms Code episodes, we convened industry experts and thought leaders to explore how PR professionals can level up their skillsets to drive the greatest possible impact. Here’s what they told us.

Elevating your PR skillset

Our panelists agreed that although sector knowledge can be a genuine advantage in specialized fields, core skills matter more than narrow experience. PR professionals with strong fundamentals — writing, storytelling, media relations, audience awareness — will always be in demand across industries. What matters is whether you’ve handled similar challenges, not whether you’ve worked for an identical company.

Bringing the right mindset is just as important. That means showing up curious, coachable, and prepared to ask the right questions so you can learn quickly. Understanding how your client’s business works is critical. PR professionals need to know what leadership cares about, how the company makes money, the challenges it faces, and how communications can move the needle.

When speaking with decision-makers, avoid slipping into jargon. Translate your value into business language. Tactics like placements and outputs are only part of the story — what matters is how they connect to a broader strategic goal. The role of a strong PR advisor is to guide leadership and speak credibly to the C-suite. Dig deeper into this conversation with Amanda Coyle of Resilere Partners, Ted Merz of Principals Media, and Executive Communication Strategist Trish Nicolas.

Getting it right from the start

Too many PR campaigns fail before they’ve even begun. Teams build in isolation, protect the “big reveal,” and then wonder why nothing lands. The smarter approach is simple: Test early. Float ideas with a small group of trusted reporters, gather real feedback, and refine before committing.

Relationships matter here. They won’t save a weak story, but they do provide signal — faster replies, honest reactions, and a clearer sense of what will resonate.

Execution then becomes about removing friction. Make the reporter’s job easy. Offer your spokesperson, but also offer multiple angles. Package assets in a way that works for the particular reporter you’re courting. Coverage is far more likely when you’ve laid the groundwork.

It’s also important to think beyond attribution. Getting your client named could be “a good start” instead of the victory. Shaping the broader narrative — and being included as a credible voice within it — often matters more.

None of this works without a clear understanding of the client’s business. PR decisions should reflect commercial reality, internal politics, and leadership priorities. Talk to senior stakeholders early, and make sure your ducks are in a row before you make a push. Many “PR problems” are, in reality, internal clarity problems.

When engaging media, keep it sharp. Pitches should be brutally concise. You don’t need to be comprehensive to garner interest, and you don’t need company boilerplate. If the first line doesn’t land, nothing else matters.

Finally, operate in the world as it is today. There are fewer journalists, with more noise and tighter competition. AI is accelerating output, but the quality isn’t keeping up. That makes targeting, relationships, and judgment more valuable. Chris Piedmont of Slide Nine, Adam Brooks of Candor, and Chase of METATHEORY break-down some of their tips and tricks for PR practitioners here.

From activity to outcomes

The shift PR agencies need to make is straightforward: stop obsessing over doing things, and instead obsess over accomplishing things.

That sounds simple, but it’s harder in practice. It means validating ideas early, aligning internally, executing cleanly, and focusing on influence over volume. Clients won’t be impressed if you tell them nothing but how busy you are. They care about what changed.

The starting point is clarity. Define success upfront in plain terms — revenue, reputation, influence — and work backward. Explain your impact in business language, or else you won’t make the case.

From there, strip out the noise. Drop jargon and long reports. A clear one-pager linking actions to outcomes will outperform any bloated deck. And remember whom you’re really serving: not just your day-to-day contact, but the C-suite above them. If your contact can’t easily explain your value internally, the chopping block is just down the road.

Execution works only when it connects to the wider business. PR amplifies marketing, sales, and positioning. Or at least it should. When it doesn’t, results will always fall short. In this panel discussion Lynda Carlisle of CS-Effect, Melissa Havel of Turnitin, and Ashley Dennison of CommsConsultants.com share their expertise on driving real client outcomes.

Truth-telling and meaningful metrics 

It’s also critical to be honest about what PR can and can’t do. You can’t guarantee coverage — and pretending you can erodes trust. What you can guarantee is consistency, direction, and a steady build of presence over time. That shift from chasing hits to building momentum is where many teams founder.

The same applies to targeting. Reach is easy to inflate and largely meaningless. Relevance is more elusive, and far more valuable. A small, engaged audience that reacts is worth more than a large one that barely knows you. Step away from the vanity metrics and measure what actually matters: message pull-through, meaningful engagement, and inbound signals.

At a higher level, the role itself needs to evolve. Strong practitioners act as partners. They push back, refine ideas, and stay close to the market. They provide activity, certainly, but the real value lies in their judgment.

That becomes even more important as AI accelerates output. Everyone is tied now in the race to see who can produce the most, but there’s still competition for who can think the best. Used properly, AI helps you move faster, not think less. Average content is now abundant. Insight is not.

In the end, everything comes down to one question: Did this PR campaign change anything that matters? Unless the answer is yes, clients have every right to be unhappy.

Watch each panel below.

Platforms like LinkedIn provide measurable metrics for success, giving teams something tangible to point to like impressions, engagement, follower growth, and reach. In a world obsessed with dashboards, that kind of feedback feels reassuring.

The quiet risk in today’s marketing ecosystem is that brands have allowed social media to crowd out other tools that build trust more deeply and often more effectively.

On a recent episode of Cracking the Comms Code, Dustin Siggins (Proven Media Solutions) sat down with Will Greenblatt, a public speaking and storytelling coach who helps founders command rooms, and Renée Lynn Frojo, a former journalist turned content strategist who advises service-based leaders on trust-driven growth.

No one disputed whether social media works. (It does.) The question was whether we’ve accidentally treated it as the whole answer — when for many organizations, it’s only part of the equation.

Optimizing for applause instead of authority 

Scroll through any feed, and you’ll see polished posts, clever hooks, and hot takes engineered for engagement. Marketing teams celebrate impressions. Executives snap screenshots of follower growth, and their agencies report on reach as if it were revenue.

Meanwhile, the pipeline stalls. Sales cycles lengthen, and trust erodes.

In 2026, social platforms still dominate mindshare, and the visibility they enable creates a dangerous assumption: If a campaign is loud, it must be effective. If everyone is on a platform, it must be the best place to build a brand.

The truth is that however good a tool social media (or, frankly, AI) might be, it can’t be the whole strategy. And for many organizations, it’s dramatically overvalued relative to other channels that build deeper, more durable trust.

The traffic trap: when visibility distracts from value

Renée framed the core mistake with precision: most leaders confuse a traffic business with a relationship business.

If you sell a commodity, a low-ticket offer, or something impulse-driven, traffic is oxygen. You need scale, volume, and constant visibility. Social media is structurally designed to serve that model.

But if you sell expertise, advisory services, high-ticket consulting, enterprise solutions, or anything involving long buying cycles, the dynamic changes. You don’t need 10,000 anonymous impressions. You need 20 highly qualified decision-makers who trust you enough to bet on you.

That will turn the focus fast from volume to credibility.

The problem is that social media metrics are seductive. They’re public and immediate, creating the illusion of momentum. But impressions are not influence, and engagement is not endorsement. You can “win” the algorithm and still lose the deal.

For communicators advising complex organizations, this distinction is critical. You must ask: are we optimizing for reach, or are we optimizing for relevance? Those two goals rarely align perfectly.

In-person events: compressed trust in a distracted world

There is something almost unfashionable about saying this in 2026, but it remains true: in-person events work. Not because digital failed, but because human attention functions differently in a physical space.

A social post competes with dozens of other posts. A keynote competes with nothing except the speaker’s own ability.

When a leader stands in front of a room and delivers insight with clarity, confidence, and coherence, the audience assigns authority in real time. There is no scroll. The algorithm has no power. 

During the podcast, Will made a point that deserves to be repeated. A few hundred impressions online are not equivalent to a few hundred people listening to you speak. Being on stage confers legitimacy. It signals that someone, somewhere, believed you were worth hearing.

That shift matters. It accelerates trust and shortens sales cycles.

For communicators, this means that investing in the skill of speaking is effectively building strategic infrastructure. A CEO who can hold a room, field tough questions, and articulate a clear narrative will outperform a CEO who only posts.

Like any other skill, getting there takes work. It requires reps. Panels. Industry events. Roundtables. Even local meetups. The best seed bed to compound authority is exposure.

Earned media: credibility you can’t manufacture yourself

Earned media remains one of the most misunderstood — and under-leveraged — branding tools available.

A social post says, “We believe this.” An earned placement says, “Someone else believes we’re worth publishing.” That distinction is enormous in markets, particularly where trust is fragile.

Renée, drawing from her journalism background, emphasized that earned media works best when it is genuinely audience-driven. The strongest placements aren’t self-promotional. They provide clarity, context, or expertise that the outlet’s readers actually need.

For smaller brands, this is especially powerful. You may not have brand recognition or a massive following, but a well placed byline in a respected trade publication or a substantive appearance on a relevant podcast can reposition you overnight in the eyes of the right audience.

And unlike a social post, earned media becomes a durable asset, supporting search presence, fortifying sales conversations, and showing that you’re serious.

Partnerships: distribution without desperation

Strategic partnerships allow you to borrow trust rather than manufacture it alone. When two organizations serve the same audience from complementary angles, collaboration becomes a multiplier.

This can take many forms: co-authored articles, joint webinars, referral agreements, bundled offers, shared event appearances. The mechanics matter less than the principle of aligning with someone your audience already trusts.

That alignment reduces friction. It will also expand reach without diluting your position, turning distribution into a relationship enterprise rather than the bland fruit of an algorithm.

For communicators, partnerships require discipline. They demand clarity about your audience and humility about your own reach. But executed well, they outperform isolated content strategies every time.

Social media is a storefront, not the machine room

None of this is an argument to abandon social media. In many industries, it functions as the new front door. Prospects will check your profile. They will scan how you think to decide whether you appear credible or incoherent.

Yes, social matters. But it should reinforce a broader system, not replace it.

The brands that will win in 2026 are not those posting the most. They are the ones building trust in multiple environments, including

• physical rooms, where attention is undivided;
• respected publications, where credibility can grow;
• through partnerships that expand reach intelligently; and
• in conversations that get down to brass tacks.

Social media is loud. It is immediate and addictive. Trust is a slower burn, and it’s harder to measure, but it builds the loyalty that drives revenue. 

Communicators who recognize the difference — and have the courage to rebalance accordingly — will outpace those still chasing applause.

So instead of adding another guess-based checklist to the pile, we brought working journalists together and asked them to describe how their jobs actually function – how they decide which pitches to open, who they call for comment under deadline pressure, and why otherwise solid ideas still miss.

Those conversations happened across two episodes of Cracking the Comms Code, and what emerged wasn’t etiquette advice. It was operational truth – the parts of reporting life that rarely make it into pitching guidance.

Below are the most revealing insights, drawn directly from the journalists themselves.

American media is shallow. Trade media is not.

One thing many public relations professionals forget is that spray-and-pray didn’t work when journalists were plentiful. Today, it’ll get you blocked, because trade reporters aren’t writing for the general public. Their audiences are looking for, to quote Washington Technology senior staff reporter Ross Wilkers, “something they didn’t already know about their own space.”

Anastassia Gliadkovsk, senior writer at Fierce Healthcare, put it a different way: “We’re not in an era where sending a pitch to a hundred reporters and hoping it sticks is practical anymore.”

Reporters move fast, juggle multiple deadlines, and scan for anything that helps them work more efficiently. Over time, they remember which pitches advance a story and which create extra work. That memory carries forward into being trusted for the former… and blocked with the latter.

If you forget that, your pitch is toast. Reframing headlines or offering general commentary does not move an industry forward. Trades reward deep dives into niche issues that make an impact.

Reliability wins the day

Ideas matter, but execution matters more – especially when big news breaks.

Barnini Chakraborty, senior investigations reporter at the Washington Examiner, made the stakes clear: “Someone can bring strong ideas and interesting sources, but if they can’t deliver when it matters, they stop being reliable.”

The same issue arises when trying to fake personalization. Quin Hillier, a columnist for Louisiana newspapers, warned: “When something is clearly pretending to be personal but isn’t, that’s when it becomes counterproductive. After a few of those, I block the sender.”

You have to be especially on point for cold pitches, fitting the stories reporters are actively working on or adding something new to a core beat.

Kerra Bolton, an independent journalist working with GoBankingRates, explained it plainly: “When I ask specific questions, the most helpful responses answer only what I asked – nothing extra.”

Additional framing, alternate angles, or scheduling steps slow things down. In fast-turnaround environments, that friction often costs the opportunity – and even a genuinely relevant pitch may never reach the inbox again. Because media relationships are built on real stories that matter

Trade reporters see trends before the mainstream

One of the quieter but more revealing moments came from how reporters described their role relative to national media. 

Joanna Fantozzi, senior editor at Nation’s Restaurant News, pointed to restaurant trends coverage at The New York Times as being a year or more behind she and her industry colleagues. “In B2B, we tend to understand trends and implications ahead of larger mainstream outlets.” 

What this means for PR professionals is that you need to be ahead of the game. Trade media is looking not for what’s already happened – but for what’s coming next. Do it long enough, and your clients and principals may become the next source for national dailies thanks to the trades. 

What most pitching advice gets wrong

These conversations made one thing clear: pitching doesn’t fail because tactics are bad. It fails because people misunderstand how reporters actually work.

Reporters don’t evaluate pitches in isolation. Over time, they form short, practical lists of people who make their jobs easier. These are PR pros who understand the audience, deliver when they commit, and know when to take a no and move on. Those lists are small, and they’re built quietly, story by story.

Once you’re on that list, you’re no longer just another email in the inbox. Your pitch gets read differently, your timing gets more leeway, and your ideas get more consideration.

That dynamic rarely shows up in pitching advice. But it’s how tier-1 trade coverage actually gets decided.

Check out the conversations in the links below.