AI has now become our wise friend next door, who has an answer to all our questions. Every one of us has given it a go, be it to find just the right caption for that Instagram post or to research a new topic thoroughly. No wonder, AI is estimated to potentially contribute approx $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030! This insane number makes all the more sense as we see the substantial rise in the total global corporate AI investment from 2015 to 2022 below.
The PR industry has also jumped on the bandwagon, and how! The use of AI among PR pros has increased from 28 percent in March 2023 to 64 percent in December 2023. So let us dive right into how AI is changing the art of good, responsible PR across the globe.
1. It’s your launchpad out of the ideation drought
Let’s be honest, there are a lot of ideas floating around the room while brainstorming but sometimes none of them hit the mark or seem extremely redundant to your previous PR strategies. That’s where generative AI can be your knight in shining armor.
It is best to keep in mind that AI is not creative. However, it can help you be creative by giving the much-needed kindling to ignite that spark and come up with an amazing new idea.
Now, you must be thinking that the AI platforms might be giving the same ideas to one and all, how do you stand out then?
Martin Seeley, CEO of Mattress Next Day says, “Well, the human touch is always necessary when working with these ideas. What you can do is, use the topics provided as a launchpad and dig deeper or redirect the basic topic and give it an interesting turn that might engage your audience. This amazing tech helps you find the latest trends, unique ideas, and even inspirations from the past, primarily helping you do your job better with much less effort!”
2. It skyrockets personalization possibilities
In this era of content overload, personalization has become the most important aspect of any PR strategy. 7 out of 10 business leaders have increased their investment in personalization in 2023! Not just that, even the consumers are now expecting personalization and get irked by its absence, according to Mckinsey & Company’s reports.
Saba Mobebpour, CEO of Dropshipping Categories says, “Aiding enhanced personalization is one of the most notable contributions of AI to any PR strategy. The algorithm can be godsent for curating tailored content for each of your clients and in turn, those who consume their content. Generative AI can you insights into the audience’s behavioral patterns as well as their preferences.”
Such data can help you craft pitches, emails, and messages targeted toward specific demographics. Leveraging AI for compelling storytelling helps go beyond just adding the name of the consumer and speaks to their pain points, values, and aspirations. It is a way to hyper-personalize your PR campaigns such that they resonate profoundly with the intended consumers.
3. It collects feedback and social insights
Apart from content creation and research that aids in personalization, AI can also perform advanced sentiment analysis for a deeper understanding of the consumer’s thought process. Several tools in the market perform sentiment analysis through machine learning and natural language processing. They collect information about the consumer’s attitude and asses their emotional state.
For PR pros, it is a groundbreaking feature since it allows them to comprehend how the public feels about their campaigns’s offerings, marketing initiatives, and commercials. The sophisticated sentiment analysis of AI separates the positive and negative evaluations, giving a clear picture of the strategy’s benefits and drawbacks. The agents can utilize this information to create marketing reports and suggestions for the product’s future development.
Alex Taylor, Head of Marketing at Digital Signage NYC says, “These days you can use multilingual sentiment analysis to gain a global advantage. Multilingual sentiment analysis collects significant sentiment information from multilingual content by utilizing native language machine learning. These programs capture the subtleties inherent in the particular grammatical rules of each language.”
By using such data, your communications efforts targeting non-English audiences are strengthened, and you can create a brand that caters to the wide range of needs of your target market.
4. It helps you choose the appropriate influencers for your campaign
Influencer marketing is the fastest-growing method to reach your target audience nowadays, as seen above. However, tapping into the influencer space can be risky if you select influencers only based on broad categories like fitness or fashion and vanity metrics (likes and shares). This can result in collaborating with unfitting or, worse, dishonest influencers.
The growth of global influencer market size over the years.
Being as particular as possible about an influencer’s audience and areas of expertise during the influencer discovery process is preferable. For example, instead of merely mentioning “fashion,” mention “clothing,” and more precisely, “athleisure clothing”
To determine whether the influencer’s audience is a suitable fit for your company, AI technology gathers detailed audience demographic data, including age, gender, geography, marital status, and interests.
Chase Hughes, Founder of ProAI says, “ AI algorithms are capable of sifting through the actual content of hundreds and thousands of influencers to find those that consistently have high engagement rates and post about themes related to your company.”
5. It’s your anchor during crisis
When it comes to crisis management, artificial intelligence and public relations work hand in hand, providing clarity in an otherwise unclear environment. These tools allow you to develop tactics to reduce the likelihood that negative sentiment will escalate into a crisis by predicting when and how it could.
Furthermore, you will be equipped to act swiftly in the event of a crisis to prevent it from getting worse. AI’s automated response skills and real-time data analysis are instrumental in emergencies. Generative AI tools provide instant crisis support for channel stability, communication management, and strategy tweaking.
All your media monitoring platforms can be equipped with AI-powered tools that can recognize and flag information that may be altered or fraudulent. By making sure trustworthy monitoring methods are in place, PR specialists can stop the spread of false information.
Eran Mizrahi, CEO of Ingredient Brothers says “PR teams can also develop thorough crisis management strategies with the help of AI to be ready for the potential of a false information incident. Effective crisis management preparedness must include prompt action, honest communication, and involvement from key stakeholders.”
Ultimately, the human touch remains essential!
Every new technological age ushers forth a fresh set of dangers and anxieties. The reality of these worries will emerge when AI further develops in the future and increasingly influences human interactions and interpersonal contact.
Tailor-made AI tools for PR pros are growing more and more significant because of the wide array of advantages as we have seen above. However, it’s critical to keep in mind that these new instruments are ultimately our virtual assistants.
Furthermore, AI is prone to errors that PR experts have long since outgrown, just like any new helper. Artificial intelligence can imitate human intellect and produce material faster than ever before. But the ability to judge comes from our human experience which we should inculcate in any output generated by AI tools.
Double-checking everything will make your strategies much more accurate and in turn impactful. Also, make sure that you prioritize data security when working with AI tools. You should also evaluate the AI tools for biases to avoid tainted outcomes when working on any given campaign!
Lastly, have fun with the new AI tools as they advance, and make sure you come up with out-of-the-box ideas. This will keep your strategies fresh and updated and keep your clients high on the list of trendsetters.
