How I use AI to support public relations

Last year, I found myself dedicating 300 hours to proposal preparation over a four-month period. This led me to consider whether we were focusing on the right business opportunities. To gain insight, I utilized Gemini and a script in Google Docs to analyze five years of proposals alongside client invoicing records. It became apparent that a specific category of potential clients consistently resulted in no wins.

Consequently, we now decline such work, and this analysis informs a tool that evaluates each new brief prior to initiating a proposal. This shift in decision-making has significantly altered how we allocate our time and resources.

As the founder and operator of Pinpoint PR, a communications consultancy based in Singapore, my career spans three decades during which I honed methods for comprehending a client's business and determining the impact of various communications strategies. This year, I have invested significant time in training AI tools to apply these established methodologies.

Before commencing a proposal, I construct a competitive intelligence skill file tailored for the AI, guiding its analysis through specialized lenses at each stage. The AI examines the company and its regional presence, scrutinizes media coverage, investigates competitors, and identifies potential avenues for communication. Additionally, I provide the AI with a coverage export from our media monitoring platform to gather supplementary information.

Within a 20 to 30 minute timeframe, I receive an initial appraisal for further investigation and evaluation.

While research lays the foundation for our recommendations, experience and intuition remain crucial in the process. The broad research conducted provides my colleagues and I with a basis for discussing findings and formulating recommendations. Using AI for research and strategy development has become increasingly common, with a Muck Rack survey revealing that 76% of PR professionals employ generative AI for various tasks such as editing, research, writing, and strategy planning.

My approach involves developing a sequence of prompts that build upon previous findings, allowing the comprehensive research to inform the messaging, strategy, and proposed activities. This approach enables us to devote more time to examining the implications of our proposed strategy. Furthermore, I leverage AI to compile a claims register alongside the draft strategy, meticulously recording the source of each proof point and distinguishing between evidence, inference, and assumption. This practice highlights potential gaps and areas requiring further verification.

The application of AI has also transformed my approach to creating public content and advising clients on their visibility in AI-generated responses. Businesses typically articulate their offerings through capabilities. A consultancy lists its disciplines, while a technology company describes its products. Prospective customers must then connect these descriptions to the challenges they face.

To address this, we revised our website to focus on relatable scenarios and demonstrate how our expertise can assist. Case studies and supporting evidence were incorporated to facilitate the connection between the problem and our proposed solutions. This strategy is central to our approach in answer engine optimization (AEO) and generative engine optimization (GEO).

By making content user-friendly as an answer and strengthening the supporting evidence, we aim to increase the likelihood of our content being recognized and cited by AI assistants. Through Squarespace's AI Visibility tool, I monitor how often Pinpoint appears in responses from ChatGPT and Gemini. Notably, seven of the twelve questions related to our consultancy, with five inquiring about choosing an agency or addressing communications concerns without explicitly mentioning our name.

The recent relaunch of our website in late May has resulted in three to five highly qualified inquiries per week, a significant increase from the previously dry pipeline of leads. While I cannot definitively attribute this rise to AI visibility alone, considering the timing and the previously weak lead generation, it lends credence to this hypothesis.

The benefits of AI in my professional practice are substantial. I have never been more productive, capable of analyzing greater volumes of information, testing diverse approaches, and developing work with heightened precision. However, meticulous attention to wording remains essential. For instance, a fee proposal drafted by AI might inaccurately suggest services such as "spokesperson interview preparation," which could be misconstrued as offering formal media training.

Similarly, "crisis preparedness" might erroneously imply inclusion in a live incident management scope.