How leaders are investing in artificial intelligence to improve public relations

While many companies invest their entire marketing budget in digital marketing, leaders in the field of public relations (PR) say they can achieve similar or better results by combining public relations with artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other advanced technologies have permeated every aspect of life. In a survey of 6,000 consumers, 33% said they thought they would use AI technology; in fact, 77% were using AI.

Public relations is often an integral part of businesses, large or small. But traditionally, most PR operations rely on humans. For example, press releases, memos, and other written communications are written by public relations specialists, either inside the company or hired through an agency.

AI is now making strides in the PR industry, with many impressive tools in the market using AI to improve the PR capabilities of PR agencies and businesses. Yet public relations still has a long way to go to fully embrace AI.

Here are five ways AI can benefit and change public relations:

Speech to text conversion

AI capabilities to transcribe speech can be extremely useful for PR teams. This technology can save you a lot of time because audio speech is widely used in public relations, from transcribing interviews to writing podcasts.

Public relations officers can record interviews and speeches and transcribe them using AI-powered tools. Using natural language processing (NLP) technology, these tools can not only transcribe audio, but also translate it without losing context.

Contact tracing and recommendation

Perhaps the greatest benefit AI can offer public relations is identifying and recommending media contacts to pitch. In the 2021 State of PR report, 34% of PR professionals said finding journalists is their biggest challenge. It is time-consuming and often unsuccessful.

“With data analysis and language processing capabilities, AI can find and recommend contacts who are perhaps more likely to respond to PR pitches,” says Valentin Saitarli, CEO and co-founder of the AI-powered PR platform PRAI.co. Artificial intelligence can handle these mundane and arguably more difficult tasks, freeing up time for other important PR tasks.

Additionally, by selecting journalists and media personalities relevant to the company’s niche/industry, it increases the likelihood of your pitches being selected.

Predictive data analysis

Big Data is transforming different industries by shedding huge amounts of data to get actionable insights from huge amounts of data. But data analysis doesn’t stop at contact recommendations. It can also forecast granular details about these contacts so that PR professionals can make better decisions about what to offer and to whom.

Predictive data analysis can also help identify PR trends and their likely success rate. This can help refine the PR strategy and find the contacts most likely to help you achieve your goals.

Natural language generation

The natural language generation capabilities of AI have come a long way. In 2016, the Washington Post experimented with an AI tool to cover the Rio Olympics. In 2020, the first AI-written press release was released.

With this technology, companies can use AI bots to write press releases and other public relations materials. As these tools learn more, they can feel more natural and relevant.

AI fact checking

Fact-checking is arguably the most important task in news publishing. Due to the amount of data it processes, the AI ​​can back up all of its claims with facts.

Dealing with Emotions in Responses

The next step in AI, especially robotics, is the recognition of human emotions. This application can have positive consequences for public relations. By recognizing emotions and feelings, PR tools can gauge what to say or write and how to handle a situation.

With language processing and facial expression recognition, AI tools may be able to record how the public or media react to a brand’s image.

Quantify the return on investment in PR

Saitarli says, “AI is truly revolutionary for PR, which is why we created PRAI. It is an AI-powered platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses to empower their PR processes. »

Businesses can use the power of AI to do most of the work in-house and generate publicity for their brands.

It is often difficult to measure the ROI of a PR campaign, as visibility and authority tend to be unquantifiable. However, one of the benefits of using PR outreach software is its ability to provide campaign metrics that help quantify campaign success.