Taking PR into the age of AI and automation

When AI, automation, and PR were first mentioned in the same sentence, most people were intrigued but reluctant at the same time. Despite initial hesitation, the application of AI in the PR industry is going to happen and the use cases are quite diverse, ranging from tracking and predicting consumer behaviour to conceptualisation and optimising user experiences.

AI’s growth coincides with a rapidly changing media landscape in Asia. In recent years – digital media has impacted audience attention, while journalists face tighter deadlines, trying to break a story first. With billions of dollars flooding into artificial intelligence and machine learning, both the PR industry and the media can benefit from this development. But how exactly is this dynamic going to change?

Why do we need AI?

While marketers already utilise machine learning, analysing data of customers more efficiently, AI is the next evolutionary stepping stone. But what exactly will AI do for PR? Can AI help to understand a journalist’s beat better? Will it ensure that they publish a certain story?

The short answer is no, but the benefits of AI are not hard to understand, as simple processes can be automated and optimised. Using scripted knowledge and repeated tasks, AI is already solving problems in other industries, including traffic control, manufacturing, and fraud detection.

Complementing – not replacing

The key to answering these questions is not how AI will replace human skills, but rather how it is going to complement and support PR professionals. There is no denying that automation is already important to the PR industry today. Media monitoring, for example, is often perceived as a tiresome but necessary task. The use of automation to track media activity frees up working hours that can be used more efficiently.

Besides effective media monitoring, AI will also support PR professionals with tasks that are traditionally time-consuming. Researching, compiling reports, and building media lists no longer will have to be done manually. The predictive analysis capabilities of AI will offer deeper insights into trends and market movements.

Predicting social sentiments

Using AI technology, PR practitioners have the option to leverage real-time data to make more informed decisions, which is especially useful in the realm of crisis communications. Remember when UBER (and United Airlines) failed to understand the extent of their crisis? The #boycottuber (or #boycottunited) storm became bigger than it needed to be from the brand’s perspective.

Using predictive measuring of social media sentiments, both brands could have reacted more quickly – instead of sitting it out. Unfortunately for UBER, it once again faces consumer backlash for covering up a massive hack and security breach that exposed the data of 57 million users and drivers. Let’s hope the ride sharing app has learnt from its mistake and is better equipped to handle #boycottuber. 

While AI might not offer insights into what a particular journalist thinks, certain algorithms will be able to predict sentiments as well as when interest among consumers might peak, offering an opportunity s to get certain stories published.

Nurturing media relations

One shouldn’t be lured into a false sense of guaranteed coverage and be confuddled by the notion of how AI can help to increase your chances of being featured as an industry thought-leader.

Media relations have always been a crucial part of any seasoned PR practitioner’s arsenal. Having a relationship with media will continue to give you two things:

  1. The ability to pick up your phone and speak to them about a potential story (and the odds of them entertaining your pitch despite their busy schedules).
  2. They will reciprocate and reach out to you if you have proven yourself to be a reliable go-to person that provides the information they need, accurately, and in a timely fashion.

The human interaction will continue to be relevant in PR because AI won’t be able to build bonds with journalists. While AI is becoming more than a resourceful helping hand, the intuition of PR professionals is still needed to make sense of it all.

Need help with your PR strategy? Drop us a message at hello@mutant.com.sg

Planning a tech B2B content calendar in 2017

2017 has arrived, and that means another year of content that needs to be planned. For tech B2B companies, it should go without saying that your company blog is important for generating leads, engaging and retaining your community, or simply letting people know the lights are on. On a broad level, not much changes, but every year brings its own quirks. So how do you plan blog content for 2017? Here’s some key trends to keep in mind:

More people are looking at you on mobile

This varies from company to company, so check your Google Analytics to see how many people are reading your blog from mobile. If it’s more than 30%, start cutting content down to size. No point being verbose if it makes people swipe away.

Mobile-friendly also means thinking about how to handle content other than text. Widescreen formats still work, but important details or text should be viewable even when shrunk down to 4 inches wide.

Your site should also be mobile friendly – it’s easy bonus points for ranking better on Google. Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to make sure your content works well on mobile. But please, draft your content on a keyboard. Being typo-free goes a long way towards looking professional.

Hedge your traffic sources

It’s 2017, so write for humans first. Robots should always come second, but don’t forget about them.

Facebook will never stop tweaking their ranking algorithms, so don’t expect what works today on Facebook to work forever. Because of Facebook’s endless changes, 2016 saw the prolific collapse of a number of clickbait-like sites, and plenty of collateral damage at respectable news outlets. Fake news looks likely to follow, but I’d like to hope we’re all honest people here ☺. Of course, Facebook is still a valuable source of traffic, but a sustainable strategy means looking beyond the gold rush.

On the Google front, the search engine continues to update its ranking algorithm, aiming to prioritise original content that makes people stay, read and share. Focus on interesting content, and don’t forget to support it with meta tags, and just a smattering of keywords in the right places.

Ideally, traffic should come from a combination of social, search, back links and dark social. If a single source accounts for more than half your referral traffic, think of how to diversify and buffer against algorithm changes.

Go live

Consider live content to make your posts more visible. Videos streamed ‘in the now’ do not just rank higher on Facebook and Twitter, they also give you a reason to repeatedly post related Tweets and photos to stay visible and hit different hashtags for the duration.

This tactic works best when you actively go out and network. Attend (or organise) events with a huge following, meet reputable people and tag them in a photo. Leverage their following to reach a new audience. Bonus points if you can feature them in your content and they share it. Offline activities boost your online presence – who’d have thought?

Plan it out

When you’re ready to start making your content calendar, click below for a free content template. This is based on the very same template we use to plan client content throughout the year. On the “content calendar” tab, you can plan your posts to make sure a regular stream of content goes out every week. On the “report” tab, a pivot table has already been created, where you can filter by month or content type to make sure you have the right balance.

 

If you need any help with your 2017 content marketing efforts, drop us a note at hello@mutant.com.sg.