By Leila Simpson, Consultant, Ingredient Communications
In the world of PR and marketing, the potential of generative artificial intelligence (A.I.) arouses excitement and fear in equal measures. We recently pointed out some of the pitfalls – and it’s certainly wise to be cautious. However, hesitancy to embrace new technology can blunt your competitive edge. So, with that in mind, here’s a list of how you might consider using it to supercharge your B2B PR and marketing.
1. Developing foundational knowledge
Search engines are great for when you need something explaining, but sifting through thousands of results to find exactly the one you want can be confusing and time-consuming. ‘Large language’ A.I. models such as ChatGPT can do much of the heavy lifting for you. In general, the more detailed and longer your ‘prompt’ (the information you give the A.I. model) then the higher quality the outcome. But even if you’re not 100% happy with what it produces first time, you can refine your prompt to get a result that more closely aligns with your needs.
Prompt examples:
“Explain the concept of…”
“What are the key principles of…”
2. Generating ideas
A.I. loves brainstorming. It’ll keep generating fresh ideas indefinitely, and you can ask it to refine and build on any of the ideas it suggests. In terms of idea generation, I like to think of A.I. as being like a young intern sitting at a desk in the corner: full of bright ideas but needing an experienced mentor (i.e. you!) to refine their input.
Prompt examples:
“Give me five attention-grabbing ideas on the topic of…”
“Generate three innovative solutions to the problem of…”
3. Improving copy
A.I. is very good at rephrasing and refining text according to your specifications. It can align you to a word count, restructure paragraphs, and provide you with many useful templates. It can also take technical copy and make it more accessible to a wider audience.
Prompt examples:
“Reduce this text to 500 words”
“Make this article understandable to a 14-year-old child”
4. Stylising
A.I. can adopt a certain persona – via a practice known as ‘role prompting’. It can be fun to play around with, but also useful professionally if you’re seeking to achieve a certain tone of voice.
Prompt examples:
“Generate a press release on this topic in the style of a B2B journalist”
“Rephrase this copy in a formal corporate tone”
5. Sentiment analysis
A.I. can be programmed to judge how a particular company or brand is being talked about online. The data it finds can then be used for reputation management and crisis communications. You wouldn’t use a large language A.I. program for this task. Instead, you would employ a specialist tool for media monitoring. And instead of entering prompts, you would train it to look for positive and negative sentiments towards your company or brand (or your competitors’). However, as with any data processing task, be aware of associated data protection regulations.
In all of these ways, A.I. can be a useful tool to support your PR and marketing strategy. However, right now, there are still dangers in relying on it too heavily, and these pose real legal and reputational risks to your business. In particular, A.I. is known to ‘hallucinate’ (make things up, including references). That’s probably fine if you’re using it to write a short story or a poem, but not so helpful if you’re creating, say, a press release or feature article. So, you’ll always need a human expert to check anything that’s A.I.-generated before you publish it.
Nevertheless, A.I. is not going away – so getting familiar with it now will give you an advantage over others who hesitate to embrace its potential.
Image credit: Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock.com
