Your PR Kit Needs a Makeover: How to Build a Social-First PR Strategy (+ Checklist)

Fun fact: Social media and video networks have overtaken news websites and apps as the most widely used source of online news globally.

According to the Reuters Institute’s 2026 Digital News Report, 54% of respondents use social media and video networks to access news. Meanwhile, 51% use news organizations’ own sites and apps.

Some countries have seen this trend before, but 2026 marks the first time it has happened at the global level — across 48 markets and among all age groups.

For marketers and business owners, the key takeaway is straightforward: You need a social-first PR strategy. While press outreach remains a key component of your strategy, you must also prepare social-ready assets for your brand stories and press materials.

Share these assets with your press contacts, and they’ll have everything they need to publish and share your announcements, right where their audiences are already looking.

Want to give your digital PR strategy a makeover? Download the checklist below, or explore each topic in the sections ahead:

• What the Reuters Institute’s 2026 data means for marketers and PR professionals
• What this means for your PR and content strategy
• Your social-first PR strategy for 2026
• FAQs

What the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026 found

According to the 2026 edition of the Reuters Institute Digital News Report, social media and video networks have overtaken news organizations’ own sites and apps as the most widely used sources of online news globally. In addition, a growing share of younger audiences is turning to AI chatbots for news. Here’s what the data shows:

Social media and video networks are now the #1 news source globally

For several years, social media had already become the dominant news source in individual countries. According to the latest Reuters Institute report, 2026 is the year that the trend went global.

Social media and video networks are now used by 54% of respondents for news, ahead of news organizations’ own websites and apps at 51%. That shift has been building: Social media as a main source of news has grown from 22% five years ago to 30% globally today.

Here’s what it means for your press coverage. When a publication runs your story, your audience is less likely to find it on that publication’s website and more likely to come across it through a social media or video platform.

Gen Z and millennials get their news on social, AI chatbots, and creators

52% of people aged 18-24 say social media, video platforms, and AI chatbots are their main sources of news. That’s 32 percentage points ahead of news sites and apps, which rank as the second main source.

Meanwhile, 44% of 25- to 34-year-olds also identify social media, video platforms, and AI chatbots as their main news sources. The study also reported that 10% of respondents use AI chatbots for news, up from 7% last year.

Creators are also a growing part of how younger audiences consume news, with 46% of respondents getting some news from creators of any type, and 27% get news specifically from news-focused creators or influencers.

These audiences find creators more entertaining, relatable, and easier to understand than traditional news outlets, though they rate them lower in terms of trustworthiness and impartiality. Note that most people who follow creators for news also consume news from traditional media, not instead of it.

The key takeaway? If your buyers are under 35, distribute your brand stories where they already get their news — and make sure your content is optimized for AI visibility, too.

Video has overtaken text as the preferred news format

77% of people globally consume online news video each week. In 45 of the 48 markets surveyed, more people now watch online news video than broadcast TV news. Audiences are watching on Facebook (43% for news), YouTube (34%), Instagram (26%), and TikTok (20%), which is the fastest-growing video platform for news.

What does this mean for your press materials? The platforms your audience turns to for news are video-first, and your press kit should reflect that.

What this means for your PR and content strategy

News consumption has evolved, and your PR strategy should adapt.

People are turning to different channels for news, such as social media, video networks, and AI chatbots. Their preferred news format has also evolved as more people today like watching the news than reading it.

Adopting a social-first PR strategy can help you maximize your reach. Think of a social-first PR strategy as a traditional press outreach on steroids.

Instead of just sharing a press release and a few photos, you prepare social-ready assets and video clips in your press materials. In addition, you improve your online presence by managing your reputation and, if needed, collaborating with content creators.

Your social-first PR strategy for 2026

Start by building press kits that make it easy for publications to review, publish, and share your announcement.

To get AI chatbots to cite you and accurately describe your brand, you need a combination of generative engine optimization (GEO), SEO, content marketing, and reputation management. And if your audience follows content creators for news, consider creator outreach as a complementary strategy.

1. Build a social-first PR package

A social-first press kit is your traditional press release plus a set of multimedia assets that make it easy for publications to cover and share your story.

Think of your press kit as a five-course meal, and your press release as its main course. It carries the story, but just as a meal is more than its entrée, your press kit should come with supporting elements that give publications everything they need to tell your brand story across formats.

Your social-first press kit should include:

Your Social-First PR Kit Must-haves

1. Press release
2. Video clips
3. Photos and infographics

Press release, the foundation of your kit

Write it with a key takeaways section at the top, so journalists can quickly assess whether the announcement fits their audience and beat.

This is already a standard practice in professional PR, and it reduces the time a journalist needs to spend before deciding whether to cover your story.

Video clips, the asset most brands are still missing

Include a 60- to 90-second announcement or explainer clip, a 30- to 45-second spokesperson soundbite, and a short B-roll package that gives publications creative flexibility.

Produce each clip in both vertical and horizontal orientations — vertical for Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts; horizontal for website embeds and standard YouTube uploads.

Along with your video files, include a transcription document that publications can use when adding subtitles to their produced videos.

Photos and original infographics

Share relevant photos that journalists can use for their articles, videos, or social media posts. Publications will adapt your visuals to fit their own brand guidelines, so give them high-quality source material to work with.

Original infographics are especially useful. A publication may use yours directly if the story is time-sensitive or adapt it if they have the bandwidth. Either way, you’ve made their job easier.

2. Manage your brand’s reputation

When a user asks an AI chatbot about your brand or products, the tool’s response pulls information available online and not just from your website.

While you can’t control the answer, you can influence the inputs. Here’s how to manage that:

• Audit your AI visibility
• Invest in generative engine optimization (GEO) and SEO efforts
• Earn reviews and manage your online reputation

Audit your AI visibility

Use an AI search visibility tool like OmniSEO or Semrush’s AI Visibility toolkit to assess your share of voice and brand mentions across AI platforms.

Start with the prompts your customers most likely use to find solutions for their problems, compare products, and get best-of lists.

Invest in generative engine optimization (GEO) and SEO efforts

AI platforms are more likely to surface brands with a strong, credible digital presence. To boost your credibility, invest in GEO, SEO, and content marketing.

GEO is a strategy that can help your brand appear, get cited, and stay visible in AI-generated search results. GEO builds on SEO, the practice of optimizing your website to appear in organic search results.

SEO involves making your site technically sound so search engine crawlers can find and understand your site content, and earning backlinks to improve your trustworthiness. In addition, SEO involves publishing helpful, authoritative content that can improve your site’s trust signals.

That said, GEO and SEO benefit from content marketing, which targets the topics you want to be associated with. Content marketing also helps you get more backlinks and get coverage from reputable websites, signals that tell AI systems that you’re a credible business.

Earn reviews and manage your online reputation

Encourage your customers to review your business. Positive, recent reviews give AI systems a reference about your brand.

Respond to every review, including the negative ones. You can turn bad reviews into an opportunity to resolve a customer’s issue and turn an unhappy customer into a loyalist.

Instead of deleting negative reviews, leave a sincere response to the negative comment and provide contact information so they can reach you and resolve their issue. The exchange won’t go unnoticed: AI chatbots can crawl your thoughtful responses to criticisms, which would reflect positively on how they describe your brand.

Monitor what’s being said about your brand on review sites and forums like Reddit. Staying on top of brand mentions across third-party channels lets you respond quickly and correct inaccuracies.

3. Consider adding creator outreach as a complementary strategy

Creator outreach makes sense when you need to reach audiences that have already moved away from traditional news sources, particularly younger buyers who follow creators in your niche alongside traditional media.

Remember that creator outreach doesn’t replace your traditional media pitching. This complementary strategy must run alongside it to reach a portion of your audience who also watches news from people.

Creator outreach is worth pursuing if:

• Your customers are mostly under 35 years old and already follows creators in your niche
• Your announcement has a natural fit with a creator’s existing content focus
• You have the bandwidth to research, personalize, and collaborate with the creator
• You’re prepared to provide video assets tailored to the creator’s platform and format

Pro tip: Personalize your outreach to content creators. Assess the creator’s style, values, and audience, then tailor your pitch accordingly.

FAQs

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The news landscape has evolved. Are you ready to adapt to change?

A social-first press kit, reputation management, and a personalized content creator outreach (if applicable) are practical responses to how people now consume news. If your PR strategy hasn’t caught up yet, now is a good time to start.

The changes don’t stop here, though, and brands that consistently monitor and adjust their PR strategy are the ones that stay ahead.

To have that kind of agility, partner with an experienced agency that tracks industry changes and makes necessary adjustments to deliver results for you.

WebFX is a full-service digital marketing agency that’s been in business for 30+ years in 200+ industries. Contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our online PR, content marketing, and reputation management services!