Since its debut launch to the public in November 2022, ChatGPT has sparked both excitement and concern about its potential implications for the future of work and humanity at large.
Developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT boasts unparalleled proficiency in both comprehending and generating natural language text, making it an attractive tool for a variety of applications.
One of the industries set to be impacted by AI is public relations, and while some may view this as a double-edged sword, there is widespread optimism among professionals in the field.
A groundbreaking study by Sandpiper and PRovoke Media revealed that 86% of global PR professionals view artificial intelligence (AI) as a positive opportunity, despite predictions of job displacement and loss of control.
This article aims to explore how PR professionals can leverage the power of ChatGPT to stay at the forefront of the industry’s latest technological developments. ChatGPT is one of many AI tools for PR but it’s perhaps the most versatile.
Although the technology is still in its nascent stages, we believe that by automating and streamlining various aspects of the PR workflow, ChatGPT will become an indispensable tool in every PR team’s arsenal.
By reducing time-consuming tasks and enabling teams to focus on creative and strategic work, ChatGPT will become a part of the PR skillset and has the potential to transform the way PR professionals work and stay ahead of the curve.
What is ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) language model that has been trained on a vast amount of text data to generate human-like responses to natural language input. It is designed to understand and respond to written text, and can be used for a wide range of applications, such as chatbots, customer service, and content creation.
It is based on a technology called “transformer models,” which allows it to process large amounts of text data and learn from it. This means that ChatGPT is constantly improving as it learns from new text data that it encounters.
One of the key features of ChatGPT is its ability to generate responses that are contextually relevant to the input it receives. If you ask it a question about a specific topic, ChatGPT will generate a response that is tailored to that topic based on the information it has learned from the text data it has been trained on.
Another important aspect of ChatGPT is its ability to generate responses that are grammatically correct and coherent. This is achieved through a process called “language modelling,” which involves predicting the most likely next word in a sentence based on the words that came before it.
While ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can be used to automate a wide range of language-related tasks, it’s important to note that while it is very good at generating human-like responses, it is not perfect and may sometimes generate inappropriate or inaccurate responses.
Therefore, it’s important to monitor its performance and ensure that it is used appropriately in any given context.
ChatGPT use cases for the PR professional
ChatGPT can be used to support a variety of tasks in the PR workflow. From content creation to media monitoring and even potentially during crisis situations. By providing comprehensive support across the content marketing strategy spectrum, ChatGPT empowers communication teams to work more efficiently and effectively, ultimately enabling them to focus on other strategic tasks.
Writing and editing
ChatGPT’s ability to generate and edit written content with remarkable speed and accuracy can significantly reduce the workload for communication teams. It can facilitate the entire writing and editing process, from brainstorming ideas and generating content to proofreading, summarising important points, and even adjusting the tone of voice as per requirement.
Social media post generation
ChatGPT’s ability to generate relevant and engaging content quickly and efficiently makes it a valuable tool for social media content creation. It can help identify relevant topics for social media posts based on keyword research, audience interests, or trending topics in the industry and can then produce a large number of posts that are relevant, engaging, and on-brand.
Media monitoring and sentiment analysis
ChatGPT offers customisable sentiment analysis capabilities that are very fast and can process large amounts of data in real-time. Using NLP and deep learning it is able to accurately detect the sentiment of news articles and other media content. It can even detect the sentiment of individual sentences and phrases within the text. The technology has the potential to change the way we monitor brand mentions and understand public opinion.
Search engine optimisation
In addition to its content creation capabilities, ChatGPT can also provide extensive support in the development of SEO content, encompassing keyword research, topical clustering, article writing, and meta-tags. Recognising the potential of ChatGPT in this realm, third-party SEO software providers are already leveraging its API to create dedicated SEO tools powered by its advanced capabilities. By integrating ChatGPT into their SEO strategy, communication teams can significantly enhance their content’s visibility and discoverability, ultimately driving traffic to their website and improving their search engine ranking.
Brainstorming and ideation
ChatGPT’s ability to generate a large number of ideas quickly and efficiently can save time for PR professionals and improve the quality and creativity of their campaigns. By automating the ideation process, it can also help generate ideas that may not have been considered otherwise, leading to more innovative and successful campaigns. With ChatGPT as a member of a brainstorming session, communication teams can benefit from the expertise of the world’s most knowledgeable ‘individual’, resulting in more comprehensive and well-rounded sessions.
Article summarising
ChatGPT’s advanced natural language processing (NLP) algorithm enables it to read numerous articles and efficiently summarise the critical points, saving time for busy executives. When an article is inputted into ChatGPT, its NLP algorithm analyses the text, identifying the most pertinent and relevant information. The process encompasses identifying key phrases and sentences, determining the article’s topic, and comprehending the context and meaning of the content. By streamlining the summarisation process, ChatGPT can provide executives with a concise and comprehensive overview of the most critical aspects of the day’s news, allowing them to make informed decisions more quickly and efficiently.
Crisis situations
ChatGPT can be a valuable tool and offer various benefits in crisis communication situations. It can quickly generate draft statements that an organisation can use to address concerns or counter misinformation. Additionally, it can produce crisis-specific key messages based on the situation and stakeholder concerns, enabling companies to provide a more tailored response.
Furthermore, ChatGPT can generate potential questions and responses that journalists may ask during a crisis, helping organisations to prepare more effectively for media inquiries. By leveraging these capabilities, ChatGPT can support organisations in managing crises more effectively and minimising reputational damage.
Although generative AI and deepfake technology have the potential to damage the reputation of businesses and brands by spreading false information, ChatGPT can assist in combating this issue.
Training ChatGPT’s AI technology on brand voice and style
It is possible to train ChatGPT to your own specific requirements by fine-tuning its existing language models on a customised dataset.
Training ChatGPT to better understand your brand’s voice and language involves fine-tuning its existing language models on a dataset of text that is specific to your brand’s tone and style. Here are some tips on how to do it effectively:
- Collect a dataset of brand-specific text: Collect a dataset of text that is specific to your brand’s tone and style, such as social media posts, marketing materials, and customer communications. This dataset should be representative of the language and tone used by your brand.
- Fine-tune ChatGPT on the dataset: Use the dataset to fine-tune ChatGPT’s existing language models. This will help ChatGPT to better understand and replicate your brand’s voice and language.
- Provide feedback to ChatGPT: As ChatGPT generates responses, it’s important to provide feedback to help it improve its responses. Here are some tips on how to provide effective feedback:
- Be specific: When providing feedback, be as specific as possible about what worked well and what didn’t. If ChatGPT generates a response that is too formal, you can provide feedback telling it so and suggest alternative phrasing.
- Provide examples: Providing examples of the type of language and tone that you would like ChatGPT to replicate can be helpful. This can include examples of text from your brand’s marketing materials or social media posts.
- Use a consistent voice: When providing feedback, try to use a consistent voice and tone. This will help ChatGPT to better understand the style and tone that you are looking for.
- Monitor performance: Finally, monitor ChatGPT’s performance over time and continue to provide feedback as needed. This will help to ensure that it continues to improve its understanding of your brand’s voice and language.
Best practices for using ChatGPT in PR
While ChatGPT is a useful tool in PR, it’s crucial to acknowledge that it can’t fully replace human expertise and judgement. Therefore, it’s essential to use ChatGPT responsibly and in conjunction with best professional practices.
This means that PR professionals should not solely rely on ChatGPT’s responses and should exercise critical thinking to ensure that the generated content aligns with their goals and values. By combining ChatGPT with their own knowledge and experience, PR professionals can leverage its capabilities to enhance their PR strategies while ensuring that they maintain their standards of excellence.
Best practices for using ChatGPT
- Be transparent with clients and colleagues: When using ChatGPT to generate content for PR campaigns, it’s important to be transparent with everyone involved about the use of AI. This can help to build trust and ensure everybody understands the nature of the content produced.
- Monitor ChatGPT’s responses: It’s important to monitor ChatGPT’s responses for accuracy and appropriateness. This can be done through manual reviews or by setting up automated systems to flag inappropriate responses.
- Set up safeguards to prevent inappropriate responses: It’s important to set up safeguards such as blacklisting certain words or phrases, limiting the scope of responses, and implementing filters to detect and prevent inappropriate content.
- Train ChatGPT on brand-specific language: To ensure that ChatGPT reflects your brand’s tone and style, it’s important to train it on a dataset of brand-specific language. This can help to ensure that ChatGPT’s responses are consistent with your brand’s voice.
- Test ChatGPT’s responses: Before deploying ChatGPT in a live PR campaign, it’s important to test its responses thoroughly to ensure that it is accurately capturing the messaging and intent of the campaign.
- Use ChatGPT as a tool, not a replacement: ChatGPT can be a powerful tool for generating content and other PR tactics, but it should not be relied upon as a replacement for human creativity and PR strategy. It’s important to use ChatGPT in conjunction with human input and oversight to ensure that the resulting content is of high quality and aligns with overall PR objectives.
- Continuously improve ChatGPT’s performance: Finally, it’s important to continuously monitor and improve ChatGPT’s performance. This can be done by analysing client feedback, monitoring metrics such as accuracy and response time, and providing ongoing training to refine its language models.
By following these best practices, PR professionals can use ChatGPT effectively and responsibly to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of their PR campaigns and day-to-day roles.
ChatGPT prompts for public relations
ChatGPT prompts are the starting point or input text that a user provides to the ChatGPT language model to generate a response. In other words, prompts are the initial text that sets the context or topic of a conversation with ChatGPT.
When a user types in a prompt or a question, the ChatGPT model uses its deep learning algorithms to analyse and understand the meaning behind the prompt and generate a response that is relevant and coherent to the context of the conversation.
As a PR professional, ChatGPT prompts are a way to start a conversation with the ChatGPT language model and get relevant responses that can help you in your work.
Prompts can be used to ask ChatGPT questions about a particular brand or company, or to get insights on current events and industry trends. For example, a PR professional may ask ChatGPT to generate some new ideas for a PR campaign or to edit an article they’ve written.
ChatGPT prompts can also be used to explore different communication strategies and messaging approaches. For instance, a PR professional could provide a prompt about a controversial issue and ask ChatGPT to generate possible messaging strategies that could help address the issue.
Prompts can also be used to get ChatGPT to do a specific task such as content creation or editing.
Below are some ChatGPT prompts for communication professionals. While this list is not exhaustive, new prompts and use cases will continue to emerge as it is increasingly used.
Writing prompts
Get help with article outlines
Create an article outline for [Insert Topic here]. Make it concise yet ensure no information is left outWrite a blog post
Write a 500-word blog post on [Insert Topic here]Write a specific blog post
I need a [type of blog post] that will provide valuable and relevant information to my [ideal customer persona] and persuade them to take [desired action] on my [website/product].Create a guide
Create a beginner's guide to using SEO. Topics should include keyword research, tools, and article layout. Include examples where necessary. The guide should be no longer than [insert desired word limit]Generate headlines
Create [#] headlines about [Insert Topic]
The headlines should be eye-catching, punchy, and memorableMake ChatGPT write like you (or someone else)
[Insert text]
Analyse the writing style and write about building a business as the above author would writeEdit your writing
[Insert text]
Proofread the above text for spelling and grammar. Make the sentences more clearRewrite articles
[Insert article]
Rewrite my article to make it more interesting to read Add metaphors to articles
Suggest X metaphors to describe the benefits of [Insert product/service]Social media prompts
Add metaphors to articles
I want you to act as my social media manager for my [business details and what you usually post about]. Give me at least 5 examples of an interesting "About" section for my Linkedln profile, write in a polite and friendly tone, my customers will read these things. Business details: A direct-to-consumer company company based in the UKTweet creator
My tweet content is typically about [list of topics your write about]
I will be feeding you 20 separate tweets, each tweet will be separated by an '!'
Go through these tweets and gain an understanding of my writing style and formula. Let me know when you are done reading and analysing the tweets and I'll give you next steps
My last 20 tweets:
[Insert your last 20 tweets]Create tweets
Write 7 Tweets on [insert topic] that inspire actionTwitter thread
I need a Twitter thread idea that will draw in my [ideal customer persona] with a relatable and authentic message, and then persuade them to take [desired action] with a strong call-to-actionResearch and planning prompts
Explain complex subjects simply
Explain the Pythagorean Theorem in simple terms.Summarise notes
I’m giving you my notes from a client event for the last three days. Summarise them into concise yet helpful points for me to read and share with people who didn’t attend
[Insert notes]Convert transcripts
Generate 7 questions based on this transcript
[Insert video transcript]Turn notes into a project plan
Turn these notes above into a project plan highlighting key objectives, tasks and deliverables with estimated time durations [Insert notes)PR and marketing prompts
Come up with PR campaign ideas
Give me a list creative PR campaign ideas for [insert brand or product] targeting 18 to 30yr olds in [insert location] Create an influencer campaign
I need an influencer marketing campaign outline that will engage my [ideal customer persona] with [specific type of content] from [influencer type] who can showcase the unique features and benefits of our [product/service] in a fun and creative wayDevelop a compelling brand story
Help me create a powerful brand story for my brand using the Hero's Journey framework
[Insert business or personal brand description]Become an advertiser
I want you to act as an advertiser. You will create a campaign to promote a product or service of your choice. You will choose a target audience, develop key messages and slogans, select the media channels for promotion, and decide on any additional activities needed to reach your goals. My first suggestion request is “I need help creating an advertising campaign for a new type of energy drink targeting young adults aged 18-30”Use different frameworks
Using the ‘Emotional Appeal’ framework, please write a marketing campaign outline that uses [emotional appeal] to persuade [ideal customer persona] to take action and purchase our [product/service]. Choose an emotion such as [fear], [happiness], or [guilt]Create ad creatives
Create three pairs of ad scripts and ad creatives for [product/business] and describe the instructions on how to implement them. Identify the target audience for the [product/business] and create ads to achieve the [goal]. Ensure that the ads possess [qualities]
Business = [Insert here]
Goal = [Insert here]
Qualities = [Insert here]Should PR teams invest in ChatGPT Plus
ChatGPT offers two distinct options: The standard version, which is free for all users, and the ‘Plus’ version, which provides an array of additional features at a cost of $20 per month.
For those currently using the free version of ChatGPT, there is no need for concern, as this version will remain available for the foreseeable future. However, OpenAI introduced the Plus option in February 2023 which offers a range of supplementary capabilities.
ChatGPT Plus grants you five core advantages over the free version, namely:
- Consistent access to ChatGPT: As a paying user, you will be able to access the chatbot even during periods of high demand.
- GPT-4 access: OpenAI recently announced a new, more capable language model titled GPT-4. It’s an optional feature that’s only available if your account has a ChatGPT Plus subscription.
- Plugin access: Plugins are third-party extensions designed to extend the functionality of ChatGPT. According to OpenAI, “Plugins are tools designed specifically for language models with safety as a core principle, and help ChatGPT access up-to-date information, run computations, or use third-party services.”
- Mobile access: In May 2023, OpenAI announced they are rolling out a mobile version of ChatGPT to Plus users. The initial rollout was to US users then rest of world. Plus users have access to ChatGPT at their fingertips.
- Turbo mode: ChatGPT Plus lets you use a speed-optimised language model dubbed Turbo. It’s unclear if switching from regular to turbo mode affects the quality of responses, but the feature is currently in alpha (early access). That said, you can easily switch between them if you’re an active subscriber.
- Priority access to new features: ChatGPT has received nearly a dozen updates since its release, meaning it’s constantly improving. With the subscription, you’ll be able to test new features and enhancements before general release.
Higher limits: OpenAI hasn’t publicly disclosed this as a feature, but many subscribers have reported higher hourly limits. If you frequently face ChatGPT’s Internal server error or Too many requests message, consider subscribing to the paid tier.
Getting started with ChatGPT
If you’re a communications professional who has never used ChatGPT before, here are some steps to get you started:
Familiarise yourself with the capabilities of ChatGPT
Before you start using ChatGPT, it’s essential to understand what the language model can do and its limitations. Research some use cases for ChatGPT in communications and marketing, and read some examples of how other professionals have used it in their workflow.
Identify your goals
What are your objectives for using ChatGPT? Do you want to generate new ideas for a campaign, get insights on current events, or explore messaging strategies? Knowing what you want to achieve will help you craft effective prompts that will yield relevant and actionable responses.
Craft your prompts carefully
The quality of the prompts you provide to ChatGPT will impact the quality of the responses you receive. Be clear, concise, and specific with your prompts, and make sure they’re relevant to your goals.
Start small
Begin with simple prompts to get a feel for how ChatGPT works and how it generates responses. For example, you could start by asking ChatGPT to define a term or provide a brief overview of a topic.
Refine your prompts based on the responses you receive
As you start to get responses from ChatGPT, evaluate the quality of the responses and adjust your prompts accordingly. Experiment with different phrasings and keywords to see how they impact the responses.
Use the responses to inspire action
The ultimate goal of using ChatGPT is to generate insights and ideas that can help you in your work as a communications professional. Use the responses you receive to inspire action, whether it be developing a new campaign strategy, crafting a messaging approach, or exploring new ideas for content creation.
Inform your team or clients
Share your findings with your colleagues and clients about what works and what doesn’t. Understand its usefulness and help others get up to speed with it.
Overall, the key to getting started with ChatGPT is to experiment, learn, and adjust as you go. With some practice, you’ll be able to use the language model to generate valuable insights and ideas that can help you in your work as a communications professional.
Make it a team-wide endeavour
Don’t depend on having one ‘ChatGPT expert’ in your PR team and ensure all team members can use it comprehensively. By doing so, you can ensure that your team can effectively leverage ChatGPT’s capabilities to enhance workflow and productivity.
The future of ChatGPT and PR
The future of ChatGPT for PR professionals is exciting and full of possibilities. As the technology continues to evolve, the potential applications for ChatGPT in the field of communications will only expand. Here are some potential developments that could shape the future of ChatGPT for communications professionals:
- Improved accuracy and relevance: As the technology powering ChatGPT continues to advance, the accuracy and relevance of the responses it generates will improve. This will make ChatGPT an even more valuable tool for PR professionals seeking to gain insights, develop messaging strategies, and explore new ideas.
- Integration with other tools: ChatGPT could be integrated with other tools already used by PR teams, such as social media monitoring and analytics platforms. This could allow for more sophisticated analysis and insights, as well as more streamlined workflows.
- Personalisation: ChatGPT could become more personalised, with the ability to learn from previous interactions and provide customised responses based on individual preferences and needs. This could make ChatGPT an even more powerful tool for PR professionals seeking to tailor their messaging and strategies to specific audiences.
- Collaboration: ChatGPT could be used to facilitate collaboration among PR professionals across different teams and organisations. For example, it could be used to generate ideas for joint campaigns or to facilitate brainstorming sessions among geographically dispersed teams.
Overall, the future of ChatGPT for communications professionals is bright, with the potential to help professionals gain insights, develop strategies, and collaborate in new and innovative ways. As the technology continues to evolve, the possibilities for using ChatGPT to improve outcomes will only expand.