Social Media & SEO

As 2026 approaches, it pays to take stock of everything that occurred in 2025 and how it could impact the next year of the PR industry. Some friends in the communications world approached PRNEWS with predictions for the coming year for many PR tenets including digital, crisis, media relations and more.

What topics attracted the most attention from PR professionals this year? Take a look at the PRNEWS top 5 most-read stories in 2025. Crisis and digital PR seemed to engage our audience most—particularly anything having to do with Substack or LinkedIn.

This week’s PR Roundup looks at how Vanity Fair and journalist Olivia Nuzzi decided to part ways after a public scandal, how Instagram is promoting its Teen Accounts through conversations with Usher and his kids, and what was the word of the year on social media in 2025?

How can PR specialists harness the cultural phenomenon of K-Pop oshikatsu in their own work?

This week’s PR Roundup examines how a nationwide shredded-cheese recall put brand trust and transparency to the test, Black Friday chatter revealing just how quickly attention spikes—and disappears—in today’s media ecosystem, and Meals on Wheels delivering one of the season’s most resonant Giving Tuesday messages.

Muck Rack’s Generative Pulse Summit opened on the heels of its Dec. 2025 “What is AI Reading?” Report release, which showed just how much AI search engines and GEO rely on journalism and other forms of earned media to shape their answers. 

If it feels like every brand has been running a sale for months, you’re not imagining it. According to a recent CNBC report, consumers are showing clear signs of discount fatigue ahead of Black Friday.

PR Roundup examines how to respond when your leadership insults members of the media, using the example of Trump and a reporter he called “piggy,” how the Cloudflare CEO responded after another outage and a new report acknowledging that users want brands on Bluesky for customer care.

PRNEWS sat down with Morning Consult for an inside look at its latest Fastest Growing Brands report. The discussion provides PR pros with information regarding Gen Z and traditional media consumption, tips for earned media in the era of AI, and the big impact of TikTok. 

This week’s roundup looks at the communication strategies from airlines amid travel disruptions and a Q&A with USAA’s chief communicator on its Honor Through Action program for Veterans Day.