Ten months down, and just under two to go! But how do we make the most of the year as we get closer to the finish line? What can we do to finish 2023 strong?
In short: a lot!
Across industries, now can be an excellent time to reinforce all the good work your brand has done throughout the year. For some specific industries like tech or ecommerce, it’s even a time when communications will be ramping up, such as for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Regardless of your industry, here are some tried-and-true tips for tackling the end of the year.
Struggling with ideas for how to close out 2023? Reach out to Cision PR Newswire’s Communications Strategy Consultancy for help! [email protected]
Tip 1: Don’t fly blind
Break the year down empirically with data.
Firstly, which milestones and announcements from my brand got the highest media reaction and engagement?
Yes, numbers and data can help you to get a full picture of what worked well for the year — but more importantly, they can help management and executives to do so (think budget planning for 2024 😉).
What was our best-received news for this year? What is the media most interested in about our brand? How should we keep telling our story, and what should we change?
A media monitoring tool such as the Cision Communications Cloud® can be quite powerful in answering these questions with hard data. It can also help you to drill down and analyze which messaging resonated the most and among which types of media. All of this helps enormously as you wrap up the year and begin strategic planning for 2024.
Tip 2: Drive home those key messages and accomplishments
“Repetition makes reputation, and reputation makes customers” – Elizabeth Arden
Now that you’ve got data, you’ve also got a clear picture of what to highlight in year-end communications. To make sure that your biggest accomplishments are top-of-mind for the media and key stakeholders, the next step is to highlight and reiterate these in your communications — and a year-in-review type news release would achieve this well.
Pro tip: For publicly listed companies, year-end comms also play a key role for investor relations — setting the stage for annual earnings announcements at the beginning of each year.
For such a release, it’s important to:
Portray brand news in the bigger picture – What did your brand do this year in terms of an AI strategy? What were your key ESG accomplishments? These were highly relevant to a lot of news this year, so connecting brand news to larger trends is a great way to tell your story (or, even better, show how you are starting an impactful trend or solving a problem in a unique way).
Tell your story visually too – Videos, images and infographics boost engagement while helping to reinforce key messages.
Give results in concrete form using data and figures.
Highlight major customer success stories.
Tip 3: Use year-end to cultivate meaningful, sincere media relationships
Don’t reach out to journalists and influencers only when you need something.
Whether you are just starting to engage some media contacts, or you’ve already got a solid network, this time of year can be an excellent time to…leave them alone about work and focus on building genuine and meaningful relationships.
Think about it—how busy do people get at the end of the year? Well, journalists are people, too.
Unless some news about your brand is relevant to their beat and timely, such as ramp-up for CES, it is generally best to use the end of the year to focus more on fostering positive relationships with journalists.
To help with this, the Cision Communications Cloud platform also has a Cision Connect Influencer Database that can be instrumental in identifying key people and building community among journalists. With the ability to directly send digital communications to over 850,000 contacts, it would be a great way to create or maintain your media list and send out a special holiday or new year greeting.
Regardless of your industry, make sure at the end of the year you have access to ample data and analytics for a full picture, reiterate key highlights from the year, and are staying relationship-oriented with media contacts. Here's to making the most out of the remainder of 2023!
Get in touch with the APAC Communications Strategy Consultancy for more information: [email protected]
About Andrew Bavelock
Based in Taiwan, Andrew Bavelock is a Senior Communications Strategy Consultant at Cision PR Newswire with over 8 years of experience across various communications roles. His interests and expertise cover tech, politics, sustainability and ESG, education and logistics.