Shanti Sadhwani, Founder, SOAR PR.We’re entering a new era in PR, one where influence can’t be bought, and virality doesn’t guarantee value.
For years, brands and agencies have chased algorithms and follower counts, convinced that bigger meant better. But influence is no longer about who shouts the loudest. It’s about who’s listening and who’s being heard in return. This shift isn’t subtle, it’s seismic.
Today, audiences are tuning out the polished, picture-perfect feeds and tuning into creators who show up with substance, consistency, and candour. The new currency of influence is trust, intimacy and relevance. Yet more often than not, briefs still arrive with rigid checklists like “500K+ followers” and “high engagement rates.”
While those KPIs may win boardroom approval, they often miss the point entirely. Real influence doesn’t live in dashboards. It lives in DMs, comment threads, subscriber channels – the unseen ecosystem of loyalty that no backend metric can fully quantify.
Change the metrics of success
If you’re only using old metrics to measure new influence, you’re flying blind. That’s not to say numbers don’t matter, they absolutely do, but they’re not the full story.
We’re witnessing the rise of the microverse, which are hyper-engaged communities built by creators who may not be mainstream, but are deeply trusted in their niches.
A parenting coach with 12k followers who replies to every comment might convert better for a family brand than a lifestyle influencer with 800k followers and no meaningful interactions.
Why? Because people aren’t just scrolling anymore, they’re seeking belonging.
We must begin integrating performance metrics with relationship metrics. In doing so, stop treating creators as channels but valuing them as community builders, cultural translators, and long-term partners. This is where tools like Instagram subscription channels, Discord communities, and close-friends stories are quietly rewriting the rules. These are micro-trust incubators, telling us who’s building real relationships behind the scenes.
PR must evolve to still influence
Influence, in its most powerful form, is about permission. Permission to enter someone’s feed, their thoughts, their purchase decisions. That permission is earned through consistency, empathy, and showing up every day, not only when a brand campaign is on.
That’s where PR’s role is evolving fast. We need to be credibility architects and media matchmakers, ensuring the right voices carry the right stories to the right communities, with care.
So where does the industry go from here?
We need to reimagine how we measure success. Believability is everything. Future-forward PR should start asking:
- Does this creator’s community feel safe enough to be vulnerable?
- Is there evidence of dialogue, not just broadcast?
- Is this content co-created or copy-pasted?
- Would this post still matter if the product wasn’t in it?
As PR professionals, we should be just as focused on who has private influence as we are on public-facing reach.
In the near future, I believe we’ll see two major shifts:
- Co-creation will trump control. Brands that invite creators into the process from the beginning, versus just borrowing their platforms for a post, won’t just earn likes; they will earn loyalty because campaigns will be amplified from the inside out authentically.
- A new metric will emerge: Return on Trust (RoT). Instead of only asking “how many people saw it?”, we’ll start asking “how many people believed it?” Measuring how deeply, not just how widely, a campaign resonates, will define success.
Because here’s the truth: content can go viral in seconds, but community takes time. The brands that will thrive are the ones willing to invest in both.
Let’s stop chasing followers, and start cultivating followings and micro communities. Let’s stop optimising for short-term impressions and start designing for long-term impact.
In a world oversaturated with content, influence is no longer only about how many people hear you; it’s about who’s still listening when the campaign ends.
And that, more than any metric, is what the future of PR and influence is built on.
By Shanti Sadhwani, Founder, SOAR PR.
