Each January, social media feeds and email inboxes are inundated with prophesies for the new year. While I typically avoid adding to the noise, 2025 promises such significant shifts that I feel compelled to share my top 5 PR and marketing predictions for the year ahead.
As organizations plan and prioritize their 2025 resources, understanding these potential developments is crucial.
1 – AI-Written Content Will Breed the Need for Authenticity
As AI homogenizes language, it will be easier to spot AI content, and we’ll crave (and prefer) uniqueness and authenticity.
AI is an incredible tool for research, outlines and even jump-starting writer’s block. It cannot, however, replace the expertise, talent and nuanced brand understanding that a professional human content creator can provide.
Those who harness AI as an assistant to enhance a broader, sophisticated approach to content creation will reap the rewards. Those who, instead, rely on AI as a replacement for talent will stumble over their short-sightedness.
2 – Social Media Fragmentation Will Continue
With changes at Meta, the future of TikTok in flux and new social channels in play, social media may be the biggest wildcard for marketers and communicators in 2025.
With that said, Meta certainly isn’t going to crumble anytime soon. It’s become too much of an ingrained habit for most users (even when they try to quit), and it’s still the most tried and true platform for social ad spending.
In 2025, social ad spending is expected to climb again, reaching more than $82 billion. Facebook is likely to take the lion’s share of that spend, more than 80%, followed by LinkedIn and Pinterest with four and two percent respectively (Statista).
At Thrive, we’ve always advised clients against trying to be everywhere all at once, but as TikTok and the exodus from X have shown, putting all your eggs in one social media basket is also not advisable. The solution? A balanced approach. Don’t panic or make knee-jerk business decisions. However, brands need to know and go where their target audience is … and where they are most likely headed next.
3 – Earned Media Will Continue to Transform and Niche
Over the past decade, the earned media landscape has changed dramatically, with shrinking traditional media outlets and expanding “pay-to-play” models.
That doesn’t mean journalism is dead or traditional earned media no longer exists, but it is not what it used to be. And we’ll see that trend continue in 2025.
Organizations typically want coverage by the major mastheads, but success will come with a willingness to explore niche publications and other mediums like podcasts, substack and trade media.
4 – Owned Content Will Be More Important Than Ever in 2025
Owned content channels – those that are fully owned and controlled by a business – will be more important than ever.
Owned channels include:
- Your Website
- Your Blog
- Your Email (lists and e-newsletters/email blasts)
What About Social Media? Is it Owned, Shared or Paid?
It can be some or all of the above. While your social media account profiles and the content you create are “owned,” you don’t control if, how and/or when users will see and interact with it. This makes social media more “rented” than “owned.”
When you run ads to promote your social content, then it becomes “paid media.”
The power of social media is its “shared media” capabilities. When users like, comment and share your owned content, it builds relationships and further disseminates your content to increase reach and engagement.
5 – Great Content Will Reign King for Google SEO AND AI-Powered Search Engines
The most tried and true “trick” that works for SEO is providing valuable content that fits what your target audience is looking for. Ensuring the search engines that serve up results can find your content will also continue to be vital in 2025.
And while Google will still be #1 for the foreseeable future, usage of AI language model platforms like Gemini (from Google), ChatGPT, Microsoft Co-Pilot and others will grow.
AI language models primarily pull data from publicly available sources on the internet to train the models. They access information through web scraping and search engines, which includes content from websites, social media posts and online articles. The humans who review, test and fact-check the AI language models also pull their information from public sources.
Whatever you can do to make your site visible, valuable and trustworthy will help you rank on Google … AND AI platforms as well.
Of course, there are many layers of complexity to Google SEO and AI-powered search strategies, but THE MOST HELPFUL thing your business can do is simple: ensure you create and maintain the best, most valuable content online in your space that you can.
As with all predictions, hindsight is 20-20. It will be interesting to review these at the end of the year and see where I hit (or missed) the mark.
Have questions or want to book a consultation? Reach out!
