Published on November 14, 2024
Bringing AI into the PR workflow will aid in tedious tasks and prepare for complex ones.
Strip away the hype, and AI performs the function of a scaffold. PR specialists who know how to set it up safely will get closer to where they can start doing the real work of creation at an elevated level. The best AI tools for PR provide a structure that helps people rise to the top.
The AI tools featured here continue to improve even as we review them. Software developers are folding AI into a wider range of products, including scheduling software and task management apps. Generative AI promises to make personal digital assistant software able to not only lock in meeting times but also draft memos, compile agendas and find key documents to make calls more productive.
AI technology is advancing quickly for many functions, so these choices are tentative. But here are tools the Purpose Brand team has followed or tried over the past year.
So Much AI to Choose. Should I Play or Pay?
Subscriptions can offer giant upgrades over free tools. In its bake-off of the leading AI tools, 2024 Landscape Report, the Edelman PR agency gave high marks to the subscription products ChatGPT Enterprise, Google Gemini and Microsoft 365 Copilot. Each had its strengths: ChatGPT in information processing, content summarization, design (with Dall-E 3) and qualitative analysis. Gemini excelled at information retrieval and web research. Microsoft 365 Copilot was preferred for voice consistency, enterprise ecosystem research and integrations.
The best enterprise software constantly updates code to take advantage of the new language models. They also provide custom reference libraries that help PR agencies specify creative goals, target specific personas, store detailed instructions, follow brand style guidelines or adhere to document formats. Evaluating software subscriptions will call for one simple yardstick: Is the price worth the time saved?
A free program is still the best way to test AI capabilities, because users then can envision and document a process that software investment would improve. The first stop for marketers in evaluating AI should be to read the terms of service (or have a chatbot explain them!) and then consider the risks of using a public tool. Even custom chatbots, unless they’re hosted on the agency’s server, might use uploads as training data for other customers—not critical for published material but a red flag for proprietary data. Make sure personally identifiable information is scrubbed from any file fed to a chatbot.
The new AI technology will have little impact on PR agencies unless they understand how their team members will benefit. The best tool for a PR task is the one that fits comfortably in the team’s workflow. Each member will have use cases for AI. Encouraging them to experiment will help managers understand the time or cost returns from an AI investment.
Artificial Intelligence in Marketing
- Can AI Write a Press Release?
- Marketers Need a Chatbot Optimization Strategy
- Generative AI From DALL-E Turns Text to Images
- AI Content Creation Case Studies
Best AI Tools for PR Projects
Assign Anything and Everything to Chatbots
If ChatGPT is the Swiss army knife of chatbots, Copilot and Gemini are the cookware and utensils stored all over the campsite. All three get the job done for any task listed here. Many people on our teams go to the same chatbot regularly without asking if they need another, while some choose based on the nature of the assignment. Any of them will clear the way for team members to add value. A cumbersome or limiting process encourages them to look for better ways to accomplish the task.
How to Schedule Meetings With AI
As natural language processing and speech recognition improve, voice-activated PDAs such as Alexa, Google Assistant (aka “Hey Google”) and Siri are sharpening their listening skills and can log recurring calendar events and appointments. Clara coordinates meeting times and sends invitations to participants on an email chain.
How to Generate Transcripts with AI
Fast and cheap transcripts simplify calls, letting account managers build relationships while the rest of the team follows up from meeting notes. Rev Voice Record will save a phone conversation as an mp3 file, and dropping an mp3 into Slack creates a quick transcript team follow-up. Note-taking apps such as Otter and Fireflies can sit in on video conferences to take notes and list action items.
Best AI Tools for Content Creation
How to Build Out a Blog Site With AI
Microsoft’s early decision to footnote its Bing chat results sold many content marketers on Copilot. Tools on the Hubspot blogging platform include an idea and title generator and an integrated content writer. GoCharlie outlines posts, then generates search-friendly text and images to build the knowledge base for a product or service.
How to Write Op-Eds and Speeches With AI
Among ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini, the latter has the most natural, un-chatbot tone. Perplexity.ai finds trending topics for every query. HyperWrite can emulate notable authors as a ghostwriting crutch or follow brand style and tone guidelines.
How to Create AI Executive Summaries
Anthropic’s Claude 2.1 model can summarize up to 500 pages of reports and other uploaded material. It makes quick work of boiling down academic papers and business plans for a head start to drafting proposals or media pitches. The top-tier Google Gemini 1.5 model holds even more memory, and soon could be upgraded to recall thousands of pages.
How to Create AI Translations
Natural language processing is true to its name, producing machine translation in an unaffected manner. DeepLis sensitive to context, and Cohere’s Aya model is trained in 101 languages. The Microsoft Translator app is a handy live interpreter. Clinical or other precise content needs a native speaker’s review.
How to Build E-Commerce Sites with AI
Cohere’s RAG model draws from enterprise sources such as product spreadsheets to create catalog items.
Best AI Tools for Social Media
How to Use AI to Prepare Social Media Posts
ChatGPT has an edge over Copilot and Gemini for generating headlines and images, and Gemini produces detailed hashtag lists, but all are hit-or-miss post authors. Copy.ai builds headlines, captions and hashtags into the copywriting workflow. Lately looks for conversion cues with a focus on lead generation.
How to Use AI to Repurpose Content
Jasper supports integrated marketing campaigns with an array of templates and collaboration features. Subscriptions are pricey but combine features that are widely useful in media organizations, including copyediting and plagiarism checkers. WordAI is more of a rewrite machine, built to recast material for new uses or audiences.
How to Use AI to Write Newsletters
Rasa.io scrapes industry news from the trade press, mainstream media and LinkedIn feeds to automate newsletter production in a briefing format, which gives PR firms and their clients the ability to reach out to contacts on a more frequent cadence.
Social Media Marketing
- AI in PR: How to Use Generative AI From DALL-E to Turn Text to Images
- Purpose Campaign Trends: Anchoring Brands in a Fast-Moving World
- Conversational AI in Marketing: A Calculated Guess at PR’s Future
Best AI Creative Tools
How to Check Spelling and Grammar With AI
Microsoft Word lets users build custom dictionaries and gives them a series of grammar and clarity checkboxes for custom proofreading. With a Copilot Pro subscription, Microsoft 365 users get writing help as well. The Grammarly for Office add-on gives a real-time spell-check, though its review prompt tends to cover up comments and controls.
How to Create Visuals With AI
Designers feel comfortable with Midjourney’s growing aesthetic range, which helps them specify artistic styles beyond its Discord gaming roots. Social media teams often build X cards (or whatever Twitter cards are called these days) in Canva, and a ChatGPT session to ideate posts often ends with building an illustration in DALL-E like the one earlier in this post. Adobe Creative Cloud users will find Firefly close at hand in Photoshop, Illustrator and Stock; Edelman found Adobe offered the strongest imaging toolset.
How to Create Video With AI
Media campaign video needs to stand up against the production values of its adjacent placements, and janky AI just won’t do. This often limits its use to pre-production storyboarding or post-production visual effects. HeyGen produces talking video avatars that personalize customer engagements. Editing tools like GlossAI and Visla can add simple Ken Burns animation pans or text-over-B-roll treatments to social media posts.
Best AI Tools for Audience Analysis
How AI Can Respond to Audience Sentiment
While AI has transformed natural language processing, social media software has latched onto natural language understanding to track and react to audience feedback. Edelman rated Quid and Meltwater as category leaders–Quid for social listening and Meltwater for topical analysis. Brand24, Sprout Social and other social media tools use AI to analyze the positive or negative tone of brand or company mentions; Hootsuite and Meltwater AI tools extend to media monitoring for other online media, a boon to crisis communications. Copy.ai will draft custom emails, evaluate leads and perform other sales functions. Lavender and Persado are also built for personalized and persuasive messaging.
How to Use AI to Prepare Analytics Reports
Customer relationship management AI such as Salesforce Einstein gives marketers a native source to build narratives around their data. Canva’s AI prompts rely on presentation templates to assist in slide-building. Copilot in PowerPoint will draft a deck or tweak it. The Writer AI studio draws coherent narratives and trend insights from data and has robust security features.
How SEO Can Do That SEO Thing That SEOs Do
Marketmuse runs competitive audits to suggest content aligned to a target customer’s search intent. Copymatic, Demandwell and Fraze can score and employ key phrases as it writes. The popular SEO tools have sharpened their market analysis as well, notably Semrush. Even old-school SEOs are hyperusers of AI-enhanced Google search, Google Trends and Google Ads.
Technology PR Case Studies
- Aviation Services Branding Takes Flight
- Birthing an International Life Sciences Center
- Establishing a New Retail Technology Leader
- Social Media Framework Sets Stage for Project Management Success
Best Ways AI Helps Manage a PR Business
How to Review Contracts With AI
Payment, notice periods and other contract terms are vital for marketing agencies and routine for lawyers. Attorneys are looking for AI shortcuts too, and redlining tools such as Spellbook or Ironclad make revision less of a costly slog. For occasional use, GPT-4 does not give legal advice but can explain arcane text, and while a chatbot might miss a few things it’s better than nothing. Along these lines, marketing speaker Christopher S. Penn suggests using ChatGPT to read through terms of service, including ChatGPT’s tricky privacy policy.
How to Use AI to Set and Meet Deadlines
Project management software is unwieldy for technologists and creatives alike, but automation hold the promise of making responsive and reliable planning partners from Asana, Basecamp, ClickUp and on through the project management alphabet. AI integrations scan account managers’ past projects to help set timelines, while online workspaces such as Monday and Notion track progress, manage editorial calendars and follow style guides.
What’s the the ROI for AI in PR?
All businesses want to work smarter, and understanding AI will give communications professionals an unprecedented opportunity to produce quality work quickly at low cost. Seizing the opportunity requires adapting new technology to traditional PR services. Continuous learning in AI technology will help them speak authentically in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Guidelines and training for AI use will lower their risk and raise their standards. Many PR firms have managed to thrive with informal processes, but hybrid workplaces and contract arrangements have put them under strain. AI gives communicators yet another reason to review their processes. Like any professional business, PR firms need to ensure sensitive use of client information and clear ownership of AI-enhanced work.
Managers also should consider how AI can bring equity to their organization’s career development. Generative AI takes people as they are, shaggy or polished in their analytical and communications skills, and helps them take on more ambitious projects. Its thoughtful use stands to give leaders more insight into the talent in their organization and clarity into how to develop and enhance their skills. With this clarity, PR firms can take a more inclusive approach to recruitment and a more nuanced approach to job opportunities and advancement.