We look forward to the CIPR Midlands Conference every year. It’s an opportunity to learn about the recent developments in our industry as well as network with our peers from across the Midlands. This year three of our team – Georgie, Emma and Anita – attended to get the latest insights.  

This year, the theme was ‘Accelerating Influence’ and with five keynote speakers, three skills workshops, and even an appearance from Traitors winner and comms pro, Rachel Duffy, the team were treated to a jampacked day. One topic in particular dominated the conversation – AI. 

Here’s our takeaways about how businesses can get their comms strategy AI-ready:  

1. Earned media is more important than ever  

With 1 in 3 people now skipping a search engine in favour of asking an AI LLM, and Google’s AI answers reaching more than 2 billion people, it’s vital that businesses are tailoring their comms strategy to make sure they are appearing in AI searches.  

While a search engine lists the websites in order of trust and relevance, with sponsored results having a prominent spot at the top of the page, large language models, such as ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity, mainly use information found in news publications to inform and source their answers. The more trusted the news outlet or relevant the publication, the more likely it is to appear in the answer. This means that not only do businesses have to have a presence in the media to appear in an AI’s search result, but the publication also has to be reputable and high-quality.  

Don’t get us wrong, earned media has always been important for building brand awareness and credibility, however, with the dawn of AI, it’s gone from being a key part of a business’ comms strategy to arguably a make-or-break component.  

2. Trusted experts are becoming more valuable for journalists 

We are living through a trust crisis. For example, when the Prime Minister resigned, there was reports all over the internet with different reasons why and contrasting perspectives on what would happen next. In this climate, journalists are valuing trusted sources that they are familiar with more than ever to ensure what they report is correct, truthful and stands out from the noise. Communications team that will have the most success aren’t those sharing the most content, but those the media trust to get it right.  

Like every industry, the newsroom is experimenting with AI for aiding initial research finding contact details, as well as for mapping and analysis. However, AI information is being checked, verified and edited constantly. Businesses and comms teams should treat content with the same extreme care as these established institutions, using valuable, verified, expert sources and triple checking any data.    

Your PR team should be aware and stay update to date with how journalists are using AI to find stories, but also how content in the age of AI is impacting who they want to work with and what they require from a source.  

3. Searches have become more complex, and content needs to catch up 

One of the benefits of AI when compared with a traditional search engine is that people can easily find the answer to more specific, complex or subjective questions. For example, when researching a topic on a search engine, people usually only type in a few words, for example ‘restaurants in Birmingham’, compared with AI where people can input longer prompts, such as ‘what vegetarian and vegan restaurants are there within one hour of Birmingham City Centre?’  

We’ve established that to appear in the results businesses need to be in media outlets, however, it’s also important to note that AI has a content preference for different types of queries. For example, if the question is comparative – e.g. which is the best restaurant in Birmingham? – then the AI is more likely to use a listicle article, whereas for more complicated or technical questions, it is more likely to pull a journalistic article with indicators of trust.  

This means businesses need to be anticipating what questions and prompts their audience will be inputting into AI and publishing different types and forms of content in order to appear.  

4. Don’t fall into productivity trap  

There’s no sugarcoating it; AI can be used as a shortcut for many administrative tasks: research, data analysis, and, yes, even creating content. But don’t be fooled into thinking that means AI can be left to take over this function to publish more content quickly. Large language models work by repackaging existing information, which means, if everybody in your industry is using AI to create content on the same or similar topics, very quickly it can create a ‘sea of sameness’. Everyone knows that the first rule in business is to stand out from competitors and have a unique selling point. Using AI as a shortcut for content creation can risk undoing years of hard work.  

AI also does not have the human touch. While this may sound like an obvious point, people do get a feeling when they’re reading AI-generated content (and it’s not always because of a high number of large dashes!) It does not yet have the ability to understand emotional resonance, cultural nuance or organisational politics. These are particularly important for content to land, especially things like speech-writing or internal communications. 

Ultimately, AI should be used to enhance and expand a human’s capability, but it will never be a substitute for their creativity or judgement.  

Want to learn more about our team can help get your business AI ready? Contact the team today.