Public relations professionals are no strangers to the ever-changing media landscape and the need to keep up with technological advances. How PR pros operate looks different than it did ten or even five years ago. As AI continues to evolve, publicists have the opportunity to leverage AI and stay ahead of the curve. My Crafted colleague tackled the question of whether generative AI is a friend or foe to PR practitioners for Forbes – and while AI isn’t a substitution for human intuition and inductive reasoning, there are many areas where using AI can help you work smarter, not harder.
According to Prowly’s The State of PR Technology 2023, over 75% of respondents identified automating repetitive tasks to free up time for more strategic work as the main benefit of leveraging AI. There are various AI tools that can help automate time-consuming tasks like media monitoring, reporting and research. Here are a few ways that AI can help PR pros with their work.
- Brainstorming
- When 3pm hits and the creative juices aren’t flowing like they were earlier in the day, but you still have a pitch or press release you need to draft, you can turn to chatbots to help generate ideas for creative subject lines and headlines.
- Reporting
- Whether you do daily, weekly or monthly reporting, these reports are often time-consuming and ripe for optimization. Many media monitoring tools already incorporate some form of AI in their reporting and chatbots can help generate article summaries and identify key information and trends.
- Accuracy
- We’ve all been there, agonizing over an email, reading it over and over again before finally hitting send. While it’s always important to proofread our work before sending it, using AI to help check your writing can add an extra layer of protection.
Top Tools for PR Pros
- Chatbots
- OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard are two of the top players. Armed with the right prompt, users can navigate these chatbots effectively and elicit more accurate responses. The more specific your prompt, the better your response will be. If the first generated response doesn’t quite answer your question, try repositioning it and looking up the best ways to position your question.
- Grammarly
- Grammarly is an AI-powered writing assistant that can help PR pros ensure their work is polished and error-free. Whether you’re writing an email to a client or drafting a press release, Grammarly can help you catch any typos, grammatical errors, or style inconsistencies before hitting send.
- Muck Rack’s PressPal.ai
- Positioned as a brainstorming tool, PressPal.ai can draft a press release and provide a list of relevant journalists to target based on the keywords used in the draft release. The generated release won’t be anywhere near final and should always be reviewed and edited.
AI is a powerful tool, but it is important to remember that it is not a replacement for human judgment and sentiment. AI-generated content should always be considered a starting point, rather than a final product. By using AI as a tool or assistant of sorts, PR professionals can save time on mundane tasks to focus on generating creative ideas and content.