5 Tips For More Authentic Public Relations

 
With so many tech-mediated messages and AI-driven conversations cluttering inboxes, social communities, and publications, being authentic is one way to differentiate a brand and drive better engagement. Savvy communicators understand why authenticity is important in social media, but might overlook its potential in public relations. An interview with Laura Lorenzetti, the executive editor of LinkedIn News, explains why it’s time to put authenticity to work.

When it comes to what performs best, authenticity is key. Polished, corporate-style videos have a time and place, but some of the most engaging content is casual, off-the-cuff and conversational. Videos that feel personal and unscripted resonate with viewers because they create a sense of connection.

Instagram and Facebook are the traditional platforms for brands to connect with their audiences. Now that we see authenticity is playing well on LinkedIn, it’s time to use authentic and casual content for more successful public relations.

Use more authentic videos and images more often and in more places

Slick production-quality videos and static images are no longer the only multimedia that work in PR. In fact, in some situations those highly produced videos are a negative. When the story is of human interest, an overly produced video is jarring and could be seen as disingenuous. Pay attention to the topic and match the tone of videos and static images to the audience you are trying to reach.

To show a product, use photos of people rather than the product by itself. Get active shots and “fill the frame” with the subject. Perfection is no longer required. There is a place and time for more formality in stories, but loosen up a bit and you’ll probably have better pickup.

With respect to production quality, nearly anything snapped with an iPhone camera is good enough provided the image is framed well. Product images can always be the “additional materials” supplied with press releases but lead with that more personal shot. Remember to make captions real and descriptive, too.

Use people from different roles in the company as spokespersons

It doesn’t have to always be an executive who represents the company. To engage more with your audience, show all levels including customer service reps and trainers, technicians, designers, and data experts. Through them, tell the deeper story so that your audience senses more depth about the company and the people who work there.

We’ve seen examples of multiple spokespersons used a lot in social posts, but it can also work in public relations, especially for bylined articles and thought leadership. Your target audiences value hearing from staff who are closer to the implementation process or who know technical details about the product. Giving a peek behind the curtain helps brands feel more approachable and your audience will respond with more loyalty.

Share stories and content that are not solely about the brand

Think of the content going into social streams and posts much more broadly. In addition to the product news, share stories that have only a peripheral connection to the company. This same strategy works for public relations. In thought leadership, write about broader issues. With your spokesperson’s name and company affiliation in the byline you’ll still have a backlink.

Another source of great content comes from the media themselves. Share stories from reporters who cover your space even when the story is not about your company or market. This is a public relations strategy as much as it is a social strategy. By frequently sharing a target reporter’s content, you are building a relationship with them.

Let customers tell the story

Find ways to have customers talk about your product. If incentives are given, disclose that. Better still is to not use incentives at all — that way the content truly is authentic. One way to collect these stories is to hire a third-party to interview users for case studies or user studies. From a product development perspective, we tend to think of user studies as being only of value internally, but the comments and feedback given by customers is rich material. Use the quotes and comments in press releases and thought leadership. Even if you can only use first names, each comment adds value and richness.

Even better, get recordings of the case study and user study interviews. If you’ve secured the appropriate permission, those videos are great additions to public relations and social posts. We’ve helped several companies collect  video testimonials at trade shows. Energy from the show feeds more oomph and realism into the video and makes them powerful additions to press releases and bylines.

The extra benefit of this effort is that unscripted video testimony from users helps jolt communicators from using the same company-centric language. Users never describe a product like how an engineering or product development team would. Instead, they describes products based on change, either how it made something easier or better for them, and what that change meant to them or the people they care about. That is quite different from how marketing and PR teams typically describe a product. Pay attention to the user and find a way to use what they say matters.

Drop the adjectives when describing products

Press releases can be maddeningly filled with vagaries. To fix that, drop the hyperbole and meaningless adjectives. Second, explain products in real terms – borrowing from those great unscripted videos. Adjectives and adjectival phrases like these below* have been used so much that they could sink the pick up of a story. Several reports have written posts about their most hated words and those that will kill a story’s potential. Avoid falling into that waste bin and strike them from press releases, pitches (especially), and thought leadership.

My test to determine if a descriptor should be stricken is to ask if the claim implies something that could or should be quantified numerically. If numbers would give evidence to the claim and those numbers are explicitly stated as evidence, delete the adjective.

• Market-leading
• Cutting-edge
• Revolutionary
• Innovative
• Seamless
• Scalable
• Breakthrough
• Comprehensive
• Robust

Don’t stop at the press release copy either. Try making boilerplates less stuffy. Facts are still necessary (like number of users), but try opening the boilerplate with a mission-orientated statement. Here’s a fictional example:

We’re Brightlens and our mission is to bring more color to people’s lives. Our 5 million users live in all 50 states and use Brightlens in amateur and professional photography. Our 300+ employees are photographers, engineers, chemists, and artists who know that images mean everything. Through a patented approach to lens optics, Brightlens filters cut glare, enhance color saturation, and generally make photographs stunning.

When worrying about word choice or feeling rough on a videotaped interview would damage the brand, a writer friend of mine recently said, “Authenticity is always the right answer.” His point was that you can’t go wrong in describing a product and its benefits when the audience can sense authenticity. A few words might be misspoken in a video or quotes be less polished but it will feel like a real person spoke those words. That matters to consumers because it adds “realness” to a company and product.

It helps to have a branding guide so that there is messaging uniformity across the board. For company leaders who may be reluctant to give employees the leeway needed to be less formal in PR, having a set of guidelines might be enough to convince reluctant executives that it’s time to bring more authenticity into PR. Here are two examples of brand guidelines that establish a vision, but also give latitude in interpretation: the Colorado School of Mines and Johns Hopkins University.

* I gave ChatGPT 4.0 a list of four adjectives and asked it to list several others. The first four are mine, and the others are a portion of what ChatGPT generated.

This was originally published in PR in EdTech on LinkedIn on July 24, 2025.