By: Doug Cipriani

Public relations moves at a rapid pace. Suddenly half the year is already in the rear-view mirror and discussions about the back half of the year are upon us. But before just moving forward on the back half plans you developed over six months ago, take pause to reflect on the first half of the year. Midyear is the perfect time to take a look at what’s working, what’s not working, how the year’s efforts are tracking, and what is best to prioritize through the rest of the year. When doing a midyear analysis, asking the right questions is essential to make the exercise successful. Answer these four thought starters to help guide any 1H check in.

1. How are the year-to-date results tracking against goals and KPIs?

Start analyzing the results driven year-to-date by looking back through all of the coverage highlights, social posts, media interviews, activations, and anything else done during the first part of the year. Then, take the time to analyze how this stacks up against the goals and/or KPIs set for the year.

  • Are you on track to meet the goal?
  • Have you already exceeded the KPI?
  • Do you need to step up efforts to get on track to meet the goal?
  • Are you reaching your priority outlets?
  • What sources are the most/best results coming from?
  • What got in your way? Or helped propel better performance than you planned?

By taking this introspective step, you’ll get a clear view on your results to-date for the year while there’s still plenty of time to course correct, redistribute efforts or adjust KPIs. It’s also helpful to take the time to understand the “why” behind all of these questions. Perhaps there was a major story in the news cycle that overshadowed an announcement or a competitor stole the interest. Whatever it is, taking the time to identify not just where you’re at for the year, but the “why you’re here” is essential to making the rest of the year successful.

2. How is the client and/or brand relationship?

Aside from results, the relationships with client contacts, leaders and decision makers at partner brands is an important ingredient in any working partnership. When analyzing these connections, think about:

  • How is the overall relationship with the client and brand?
  • Is there anyone we should be in contact with more or less often?
  • Do we regularly have the right people in the room?
  • What can we do to foster these relationships further?
  • What questions should we have asked earlier?
  • How can we improve the process for 2H?

A strong, positive relationship with effective ways of working makes for a successful partnership, so taking a beat to make sure these relationships are up to par will net both a positive and insightful workflow moving forward.

3. What are our key learnings so far this year?

With six months of work on campaigns, activations, media outreach, influencer partnerships, and everything else comes both successes and hiccups. Turning those experiences into future actions is key to smoother experiences. When thinking about key learnings to apply to the second half of the year, think about:

  • What went well that we should replicate or amplify?
  • What programs ran into bumps?
  • How could we avoid those bumps in the future?

The name of the game is to find both areas of strength and weakness and learn from them. Identifying successful and non-successful programs, ways of working, projects and tasks will be the way to home in on the good for the remaining six months of the year.

4. Where do we need to focus for the back half of the year?

Now apply your findings and insights to the work slated for the remainder of the year. By identifying programs that may need stronger efforts around them or relationships that need nurturing, time, resources, and efforts can be dedicated to having even an even stronger report when looking back at the end of the year.

Double Forte takes a strategic approach, working through all of the above on a regular basis to ensure fruitful and positive partnerships. Reach out to the team to learn more about how Double Forte can bring this approach to your business.

By: Doug Cipriani

Media relations is a dynamic skill with variables galore, making it easy to fall into the transactional rhythm of sending a pitch, securing a desired piece of coverage and moving onto the next. However, the strongest relationships with reporters aren’t built in the transactional moments – they’re built in the space in between those moments. That’s where the “friendly check in” comes into play.

Relationships Over Pitches

How you show up when you don’t need something from someone often matters more than how you show up when you do need something. This is true in personal relationships, and the same principle applies to media relations. Too often, media outreach is tied directly to an ask, whether it be a pitch, follow up or product sample offer. Once coverage lands, the conversation stops and the silence resets the relationship to start from scratch next time you reach out.

The friendly check in changes this ineffective cycle. It’s about expanding your outreach to go beyond pitching a specific angle or story to a reporter and instead reaching out without an underlying agenda. You don’t try to disguise your outreach as a non-pitch, it’s not “circling back” without any substance or sending frequent follow ups. Instead, you’re:

  • Keeping it authentic to build relationships that are larger than landing a story for your client.
  • Checking in to see how they’re doing, staying in touch on their life updates and working to build an authentic personal relationship.
  • Mitigating silence once coverage runs to not let space grow for the relationship to reset.
  • Filling the whitespace between story opportunities with intentional dialogue.
  • Avoiding the transactional nature by not contacting each other only when you want something.
  • Taking the time to build mutually beneficial relationships.

The Value Proposition

Focusing on building valuable relationships doesn’t just make interactions less transactional – it makes them mutual. Your outreach and conversations with media move from self-serving with the intention of landing coverage, to two-sided as you work to build a personal relationship. When you’re communicating with and without asks, the value then flows both ways. You’ll go to reporters with story ideas and they’ll come to you with source or product requests because you understand each other’s constraints and goals beyond a singular pitch.

When you consistently show up without an undercover agenda, you’re showing reporters that you see them as a person outside of the publication they write for. In their eyes, you become someone who understands their work, respects their time and values the relationship itself, not just the outcome.

Over time, this will lead to your email breaking through the noise of a reporter’s busy inbox. Your message will be one they actually open when they see the familiar name. The relationship you’ve built will create more responsive communication and will garner honest feedback on your ideas because you put in the work to bring it to that point.

Doing It the Right Way

Authentic relationship building doesn’t have to be complicated, but we suggest a few techniques to make it successful. The overarching key is identifying relevant yet natural moments to reach out. These touchpoints can be things like congratulating them on a new role or topic they’re covering, acknowledging a personal milestone, like moving or getting a new pet, or sharing your thoughts on one of their recent stories. Across all these moments, you’re including elements of timeliness, thoughtfulness and intention. The outreach isn’t disguised as a pitch, it’s a true touchpoint for connection.

To identify these moments, it takes a bit of proactive effort. Keep a pulse on target reporters’ social media channels and recent coverage feeds, looking for topics that make sense to connect on. Maybe you had a similar experience or advice to share for something they posted about on Instagram, or you particularly relate to one of their recent articles – reach out. To make this process more manageable, a personal tracker is key. Develop a master document for yourself that includes things like their contact information, notes from recent conversations and their personal interest or milestones you identify. Taking a few minutes each week to update this will make it easier to personalize your outreach and pick up conversations naturally over time.

When you’re having conversations with media, avoid coming across as scripted or overly formal. Your writing should take a conversational tone – you should ask questions and let your personality shine through. This will make you memorable and help the reporter feel that they’re talking to a real person behind the message, not just another PR contact they’re getting a mass blast from.

One of the most essential, and most difficult, parts of this approach is consistency. These relationships aren’t built with one email or one conversation – they take time, so carving out space in the week to do this is crucial. This can be as simple as taking 30 minutes on a Friday to review your key contacts social media profiles and recent coverage, responding to open conversations and updating your tracker with context for future reference. It’s easy to push this to the bottom of a busy to-do list, but investing the time here pays off in the long run.

This is a simple concept but extremely powerful in impact. Relationships go far, especially when properly nurtured. Taking the time to move from chasing coverage to building coverage makes all the difference. Interested in how strategic media relations can support your business? Reach out to the Double Forte team for more information.

PR in 2026: The Key Predictions Set to Lead the Industry

By: Doug Cipriani

Much like 2025, the year ahead is expected to bring significant changes, shifts, and developments to the PR world. From evolving newsroom dynamics that affect media relations workflows to new technology and AI-driven efficiencies, and even changes in how we communicate the value of PR itself, 2026 will introduce new rules and best practices that further push the industry forward.

LLMs, GEO, and All the AI Acronyms

According to Muck Rack’s 2025 State of PR report, AI topped the list of PR priorities for the next five years, with 59% of PR professionals expecting AI and automation to grow in importance. While we’ve all heard how AI is “changing everything,” its impact on PR is particularly significant because of how information is discovered, processed, and trusted.

As generative AI search continues to expand and platforms including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot all gain traction, the role of news coverage is becoming even more critical. We spoke about this in Double Forte’s own POV from 2025 on AI & The New Rules of Communications – these tools prioritize credible, authoritative sources, meaning earned media in top-tier publications will increasingly fuel AI-driven search results. In turn, this helps drive visibility, credibility, and traction for brands and clients.

This is where large language models (LLMs) come into play. LLMs continuously learn from the information that is inputted, making it essential for PR teams to prioritize coverage in outlets that are frequently sourced and cited. For example, Business Insider is one of the most commonly referenced publications by LLMs. Securing coverage in an outlet of this caliber not only reaches a large audience but also amplifies impact through increased visibility in generative AI search results.

Before leaning into this strategy, however, brands must understand their current visibility within LLMs. The start of the year is an ideal time to conduct an initial analysis and establish a baseline. By searching the types of questions an ideal customer might ask, you can determine whether and where a brand appears in AI-generated responses. This provides both a benchmark for measurement and clear insight into areas for improvement in the year ahead.

Translating PR Results Into C-Suite Language

Traditionally, PR success has been measured by volume of coverage and impressions. While these metrics remain valuable for marketing and communications teams, they’re often less meaningful to executive leadership. In 2026, clearly articulating PR’s business value will be essential to maintaining and growing C-suite support and budgets.

This requires reframing results in a way that aligns with broader business goals. In addition to coverage counts and impressions, consider which metrics truly matter to the organization. Where does the business see value and how can PR performance connect to it?

For example, did a piece of coverage that included a product link correlate with a spike in sales? Did a media placement contribute to increased visibility within LLMs or AI search results? By focusing on business outcomes rather than communications-only metrics, PR leaders can make their impact more tangible without requiring executives to connect the dots themselves.

Media Relations That Lands

The media landscape continues to evolve and 2026 will be no exception. Staying ahead of these changes will be critical to securing coverage that truly matters. One major shift is the growing trend of journalists self-publishing their work. While reporters once wrote exclusively for traditional outlets, nearly one-third now publish independently on platforms like Substack.

This move toward independence is creating new opportunities for PR professionals. Self-published content is often distributed to highly targeted subscriber lists made up of engaged readers who have opted in. While these platforms may appear “lower tier” on the surface, their audiences can be more influential and attentive than those of larger publications. As a result, success in media relations is becoming less about the URL and more about the audience that’s truly being reached.

Alongside this shift, micro-communities are expected to grow in importance in 2026. These focused spaces, where people seek advice, recommendations, and discussion, are increasingly where influence happens. Reddit threads, Discord servers and even YouTube comment sections are emerging as valuable channels to consider, particularly when influence and engagement are key objectives.

Finally, the human element will play a central role in storytelling in the year ahead. Stories that show how a brand or product impacts real people are more relatable and more compelling to reporters. This might come from employee experiences, customer testimonials or real-world use cases. Wherever it originates, human-centered storytelling will be a crucial consideration as journalists sift through pitches in 2026.

By taking time at the start of the year to reflect on how the industry is evolving, PR professionals can position themselves for success by adapting to change rather than resisting it. Interested in applying these trends to your own business? Reach out to Double Forte to learn more.