The concept of fake news began to rise during last year’s US elections with President Donald Trump, calling a lot of news sites out for reporting fake stories. This controversy has continued throughout his presidency and Facebook has since released a fact checking system to combat fake news sites.
The issue just doesn’t seem to be going away so here at Approach we wanted to look at how it could potentially have an effect on PR professionals, and how to avoid falling victim to fake news.
Relationship building
A big part of PR is building strong relationships with journalists but with the rise of fake news PR agencies may have to work twice as hard to gain a journalist’s trust.
It’s only right that journalists have become warier of things that are sent to them in the wake of the fake news controversy. So it’s important, now more than ever, to keep relationships strong with journalists in order for them to trust your links and updates.
Outreach fact checking
With fake news sites sometimes appearing even on the first page of Google, it can be hard to fish out the good from the bad.
With new clients and campaigns, be sure to research the sites and blogs that you’re speaking with, as a link from a fake news site may prove detrimental to your brand.
Trusted content
We all know the three magic words: content, content, content!
Like ourselves, most PR agencies have their own blog and it’s important you give your audience a reason to read your content. We’ve always thought it’s key to build trust with your audience but they might just need reassuring that you’re a trustworthy source in the world of constant and questionable news.
Social media
It’s standard practice to fact check before posting anything on a client’s or your own social media platform and in the past year we’ve seen many brands fall victim to posting something that wasn’t necessarily correct.
So just remember to check the source of an article before posting and look if it’s being reported elsewhere too.
Why not speak to us about our PR and social media services? We can help!
Image sourced from Pixabay.
