ChatGPT is big news, and all kinds of businesses are scrambling to discover how they might be able to use it to gain a competitive advantage. So what does it mean for PR agencies?
Everybody knows you can use ChatGPT for marketing to write content for you, but it’s capable of helping agencies in far more ways than that.
In this article, we’ll look at some tips on using ChatGPT for PR agencies to increase their revenues, cut costs, and deliver excellent results for their clients.
Table of Contents
Why use ChatGPT for PR Agencies?
How To Increase PR Agency Revenues with ChatGPT
How To Cut PR Agency Costs with ChatGPT
How to Deliver Better PR Results with ChatGPT
Why use ChatGPT for PR Agencies?
Although ChatGPT is absolutely not a replacement for even a junior PR executive, it does offer some benefits over human staff members.
For a start, it is very inexpensive. You can use the free public version, or you can subscribe to ChatGPT+ and get access to the latest version, as well as priority usage during high volume periods, for about the same cost as a cup of coffee every week.
Given how useful the tool can be, it’s a no-brainer to subscribe.
Secondly, ChatGPT is available 24/7 every day of the year. We all know that sometimes PR can be a round-the-clock job, especially when an unexpected comms crisis hits at an unfortunate time, and in those situations, it can prove invaluable.
Finally, ChatGPT is fast. While it may not deliver the same quality of work as a professional PR person, it can do the work much more quickly, and sometimes that’s exactly what you need.
How To Increase PR Agency Revenues with ChatGPT
The tool can help you to streamline your entire new business process, from outreach to pitching. For example, let's imagine you want to do a little prospecting by sending out some cold emails to a few different companies.
How To Use ChatGPT for PR Agency Prospecting Emails
You can start by asking ChatGPT to write those emails for you, using a prompt like this:
PR PROMPT: I work at a small PR agency, and am trying to win some new clients. Please write an email I can send to the CMO of Fluffee-Stuff, a soft furnishings manufacturer, explaining how our PR services could be of value to them. Here are some further details about the company: [add in as much information about the prospect here]
You could help ChatGPT do a better job by also providing it with some background information on your agency, such as specialist expertise, and industry experience. Although it would be wise to edit the emails before sending, this is still a much quicker way to generate a lot of tailored emails rather than writing them all from scratch.
How To Use ChatGPT for Creating a PR Plan
ChatGPT remembers the context of each discussion thread you create. So if you create a separate chat thread for each of the emails you want to send, you can later continue the conversation with ChatGPT about that specific company, which can be handy for generating further content.
For example, you can ask ChatGPT to help you create a PR strategy:
PR PROMPT: Fluffee-Stuff is planning to launch a new range of jumbo-sized cushions with popular internet memes printed on them, as a novelty gift in time for the holiday shopping season. Please create a PR launch plan that my agency can recommend to the client.
Of course, you’re a PR professional with plenty of experience of creating this kind of plan, but the advantage of using ChatGPT is that it can give you a skeleton to work with very quickly, and then you can add in your own creative ideas.
How To Use ChatGPT for Creating a PR Pitch Deck
Even though the tool can only be used to output text (for now) you can still use it to help you build new business PR agency pitch decks.
PR PROMPT: Fluffee-Stuff has invited my agency to pitch for their PR needs. Please create a 20-slide pitch deck to help us win the account. Two slides should be dedicated to the jumbo-cushion launch, but also include an overview of a plan for their ongoing PR needs. For each slide include three sections; the text to be displayed on the slide, a description of the imagery to be used on the slide, and notes covering the key points we should discuss when we present that slide.
Again, bear in mind that the more background information you provide, along with specific details about your needs, the better ChatGPT can work for you.
How To Cut PR Agency Costs with ChatGPT
Reducing costs is where ChatGPT can really shine for PR agencies, as it can help you automate a lot of time-consuming tasks and help your executives to spend less time on low-value work, so they can spend more time on high-value billable projects for clients.
How to Build PR Coverage Reports with ChatGPT
For example, when building coverage reports, you can use ChatGPT to quickly summarize the content of long articles using a prompt like this:
PR PROMPT: I work for the Fluffee-Stuff PR department. Please summarize the following article, focusing on the points that are most relevant to our brand. Also, explain the sentiment of this article, and whether it’s positive or negative for our company. [Add article text here]
While we don’t recommend you replace your copywriters with ChatGPT, it can be a useful tool to help them create content faster. When it comes to writing engaging copy that achieves the specific objectives you need, human writers are simply better than AI, but there are a couple of problems with writing that AI can help with:
- Getting started is often the hardest part - writers call this “the tyranny of the blank page.”
- As Ernest Hemingway put it “All writing is rewriting” - which means good editing is as important as good writing.
Tip: Learn more about Meltwater's AI-Powered PR Assistant, and check out the Meltwater AI Writing Assistant for Social Media Managers
So, if you’re struggling to get started writing a press release, think-piece, blog post, or whatever else, you can use ChatGPT to get started. Even with a good prompt, the output almost certainly won’t be exactly what you need, but it will at least provide you with a more productive starting point than an empty document. This means you can start the re-writing stage earlier and get to the end result much quicker than if you had to write the whole thing from scratch.
The prompt you would use for this depends on what you need to write, but it’s good practice to include as much detail as possible, as though you were providing a brief to a professional copywriter. In this way, you can help ChatGPT to deliver a better first draft that will require less editing.
How to Save Time with Media Outreach Using ChatGPT
You can save time with media outreach too. In the same way that we showed how to use ChatGPT to help you write new business pitches, you can also use it to create media pitches more quickly.
Ideally, you should use this prompt in a chat thread where you have already discussed the business and product you want to pitch so that the AI will remember all of the relevant contexts. Otherwise, you will need to explain the context again in a larger prompt:
PR PROMPT: Write an email to convince a lifestyle journalist at Vanity Fair magazine that a story about the new Fluffee-Stuff jumbo meme cushion would be of interest to their discerning audience.
You could also use the same approach for influencer marketing outreach.
How To Deliver Better PR Results with ChatGPT
Nothing beats the experience and instincts of a PR professional, but just as ChatGPT can help skilled copywriters work more effectively, it can also help PR execs get better results, faster.
How To Use ChatGPT for PR Brainstorming
You can use ChatGPT as an extra source of inspiration in brainstorms, or when you want to do a quick brainstorm but there aren’t enough people around. Simply ask it for help on pretty much anything, and it will give you a list of ideas which will usually be of mixed quality, but if nothing else they might at least help spark your own creativity.
For example:
PR PROMPT: I need some new creative ideas to promote the Fluffee-Stuff jumbo meme cushions in the media. Please give me 10 new PR story ideas that might convince journalists in lifestyle magazines and national newspapers to write about this product.
How To Use ChatGPT for Personalizing Texts for Clients
ChatGPT can also help you to personalize everything like emails to clients, journalists, or influencers, press releases, reports, and more, simply by asking it to take a look at the item through the lens of the intended audience. Here’s an example.
PR PROMPT: Please read the following text from a monthly PR activity summary, and help me personalize it so that it’s more relevant to the needs of my client. My client is the head of influencer marketing at Fluffee-Stuff, and her main concerns are a) ensuring my agency consistently provides her with strong ROI, b) building relationships with a wider circle of popular influencers, and finally c) making sure the Fluffee Stuff brand is seen as fun, friendly, and high quality. Analyze this text and give me some suggestions for ensuring the report is specifically relevant to her: [add report text here]
How To Use ChatGPT for Summarizing Texts
As well as creating content, you can use ChatGPT to digest information more efficiently. How many times have you downloaded an interesting-looking report, or bookmarked an article, promising yourself you’ll read it later, only to eventually delete it six months later, unread.
Instead, paste the content into ChatGPT and ask it to summarize the most important information so you can absorb it in a couple of minutes.
This makes it easier for you to stay informed on industry trends and new ideas that will help you to deliver better results for your clients.
Conclusion: Embracing the Power of ChatGPT for PR Agencies
These are just a few examples of how PR agencies can use ChatGPT, and hopefully, they have inspired you to find new ways to use the tool.
At Meltwater we have embedded the power of ChatGPT into our Media Relations suite to help PR professionals carry out media outreach activity more effectively, and into our Social Media Management suite too, empowering social media managers to create engaging content faster than ever.
Learn more about our solutions when you fill out the following form to request a demo.
