The top 30+ digital tools for PR agencies
The best PR agencies need the best tools. We scoured the internet (and asked some PR pros) to compile this beefy list of the top tools for PR firms.
I have a serious question for you: how does your desktop look right now? Is it clean, minimalist, and calming? Or does it look like this:
A crazy desktop is just one sign that your PR agency workflow may not be working for you. Tools – the right tools – can take your stressful, chaotic, anxiety-inducing process and make it easy, clean, and (dare we say?) fun.
These are the tools that will get you there. I mean, what do you think is happening here? Not that it's any of my
Before we jump in, why even bother with tools? Well, tools are the key to making your life easier. Sure, you could write all your strategy sessions down on a piece of paper, and that may work for some of the more analog among us, but ultimately, a good tool can save you an absolutely bonkers amount of time in a week.
Not to mention, there are some things that simply cannot be done without a good tool (or ten). Tracking analytics, for example, is extremely difficult or impossible without the right tools. And while we've talked previously about the best overall PR tools, PR firms and agencies come with different sets of needs and challenges than the average PR consultant or solo warrior.
For starters, PR agencies are rarely a one-person show. Working collaboratively requires a unique set of software. Do you want to be emailing back the same Word document 40 times? No. Nobody wants that.
Agencies are also often juggling myriad clients and businesses at once, meaning the tools need to hold much greater volume than an in-house PR person working with only one business. Having one program to manage social media for 20 businesses is way easier than trying to remember 20 sets of passwords. Unless you have a mega-brain and unlimited mental space, which is cool and great for you.
Now that you've been successfully convinced as to the utter necessity of PR agency tools, let's talk. Our list of the best tools for PR agencies is organized by type of software, though many of these tools have multiple functions or features. We did our best to categorize them in a way that made sense.
Managing numerous clients will fall into chaos quickly without a strong, reliable project management tool. The following tools are powerhouses for collaborative task management.
Trello is a project management tool where you and your team can manage projects based on boards and cards, and lists. Oh my!
Trello is highly customizable, with plenty of themes, templates, and third-party integrations. You can organize everything from a master board or have several different boards for different clients. It's web-based, so it's perfect for working synchronously with a team, and you can add attachments, assign tasks, and track progress all from one visual interface. It also gives you the option to add some entirely frivolous delight to your task management, which is just a really nice touch.
Trello and Asana are often mentioned together because they're… kinda the same thing. Highly customizable project management collaboration web-based apps.
Many find Trello to be a bit more user-friendly, whereas Asana has a higher learning curve but has more advanced features. Ultimately, however, it comes down to personal preference, so it's certainly worth trying each on for size to decide what works best for you.
Linear.app is another project management tool, and one we happen to use at Prezly. The design is a bit different than Trello and Asana and the projects are "issue" based. But Linear.app is extremely flexible, and great for larger teams that want the flexibility of adding various parameters to their issues, such as appetite, priority, labels and a nested structure. It works well for tracking not only projects and tasks, but other things like bugs and improvements.
It also integrates beautifully with Slack, Intercom, and other remote-working/collaboration tools.
ClickUp has plenty of tools for your project management needs. While it has a free personal plan for solo users, there are plenty of collaborative and task delegation tools for teams and agencies (for a fee). It has tons of integrations and boasts to be a fantastic tool for things like event planning, strategy planning, brainstorming, drafting documents, and more.
Google Workspace is a popular project management tool. It's free. It's simple. Teams can collaborate synchronously through Sheets (spreadsheets), Docs (word processor), and more.
While it lacks some of the bells and whistles of more dedicated project-managing PR software, and many would tell you that it's kinda old fashioned, it's often more than enough for many teams. Plus, did we mention free and simple?
Working together seamlessly as an agency is critical to running a great PR firm. As many PR agencies are going remote or hybrid, the need to collab online is greater than ever. These tools will help you share ideas, work together on important projects, and have an important stress-crying session whenever needed.
At some point, you're going to want to talk to your team (presumably). Slack is a great messaging tool for remote teams or those who frequently communicate digitally. Your company or agency can create dedicated channels for managing discussions and projects.
Slack centralizes everything into one place, so you don't need to waste time sending a bunch of emails back and forth. Slack is a Prezly staple, and we coordinate pretty much everything over our team Slack. We're confident it will work wonders for PR agencies – particularly if your clients are also Slack users, since you can create shared channels just with them, which really helps keep everyone on the same page.
Another Prezly favorite, Notion is fantastic for working together, organizing company documents, creating meeting notes and company handbooks, tracking projects, building relational databases, and so much more. The limitations of Notion basically do not exist, and Notion could single-handedly run an entire nation if it wanted to. And we'd applaud it as a wonderful and glorious leader.
Sometimes text just doesn't cut it, and you and your team need to collaborate more… directly. And loudly. Zoom is perfect for a quick chat or an endless brainstorming session.
Discord is like Slack with its fun pants on. While it functions similarly (communities organized into chat channels), Discord is often used more for gaming and art, whereas Slack is more for business. That doesn't mean that you and your team can't take advantage of Discord to create something perfect for your agency's needs.
Airtable is a lot of things. It's databases. It's spreadsheets. It's a CRM (if you want it to be). Airtable is incredibly customizable, with many options for integrating with other PR software, meaning the possibilities are endless. The downside is that it looks like a spreadsheet, which can be a little uninspiring.
Many PR firms are spending an increasing amount of time juggling social media channels for their clients. For better or worse, we're all plugged into Elon's Twitter, and we can't escape. But thankfully, there are some great tools out there to make the terrible process of Instagramming and TikTokking and Mastadoning that much easier.
Buffer can take some of the pressure of managing social media and consolidate all that stress into one place. Does it make social media less stressful? No, of course not. But it is consolidated.
Buffer allows its users to manage multiple accounts, schedule social posts in advance, and tailor messages to the various platforms. Plus, you can track analytics and see your engagements in an easy-to-manage view. It's perfect for PR agencies who don't particularly want to have to log into a million different socials each day.
One thing to watch out for with Buffer and the other social media tools listed here is that they don't always work the best across all platforms. For example, a post you set up might look awesome on Twitter, but format horribly on Instagram, meaning you'll end up tackling those platforms separately all the same. That's why testing is so important.
HootSuite is another social media management tool. It tracks engagements, provides social media suggestions, and allows for bulk posting. HootSuite integrates with all the top social media players to make juggling many socials a breeze. They have individual and team plans for agencies.
Sprout Social is a social media management tool that works well for PR agency collaboration. Posts can be scheduled in advance, and Sprout Social will help track analytics and even has some social listening features.
Keeping track of contacts and clients is important, especially for PR agencies who are typically juggling numerous clients and all their wonderful contacts. It can get confusing, and fast.
A good CRM can help control the chaos, especially when numerous people are in and out of contacts all the time. Salesforce is one of the biggest in the game and has tons of features and integrations to keep your contacts in tip-top shape.
HubSpot is another popular CRM and sales software. It has enterprise options for PR agencies, so everyone can stay on the same page. They also provide other services, like social media management and email marketing, making this a more robust option than just a traditional CRM.
If you're a Microsoft die-hard, Dynamics 365 might be the CRM for you and your PR agency. It's another CRM with sales and marketing features, and it integrates well with the Microsoft ecosystem. It may be a little feature-heavy for some PR agencies, as it can also include HR, supply-chain management, and other seemingly unrelated services, but ultimately that will come down to personal preference.
Learn how a solid PR CRM setup can make a heap of difference for your media relations.
It's not enough for a PR agency to know how to write a press release. Agencies are now firmly in the content creation game, as more and more PR is happening over socials. Even if you're not a seasoned graphic designer or videographer, there are some great tools to give your team an aesthetic boost.
Figma is perfect for any PR team that needs to make beautiful art (like the masterpiece above). Or, if "art" is a bit lofty, then at least some powerful visuals.
Figma is awesome because you can collaborate super easily with your design team, and there are tons of powerful tools and plugins that make this design tool into a super… tool.
If your clients rely on video or audio as part of their strategy, Descript is a great service for assembling social media clips, editing long-form video and audio, creating transcriptions, and more. You can upload right to social media or content hosting platforms from Descript. It's perfect for a PR agency that knows the power of repurposing content and digital storytelling.
The CoSchedule Headline Analyzer is a neat, free tool for those who dread writing headlines. CoSchedule will break your headline down scientifically and let you know how it could be improved. PR agencies can take advantage of this neat tool to make more engaging headlines for clients' blog posts, emails, and more.
Canva gets a bad rep because a lot of what is produced on Canva looks distinctly Canva-ish. But it doesn't have to be that way. Even if you're not a graphic artist, there are many customizable templates and elements that can fit your clients' brand identities. And, unlike tools like Photoshop and Figma, Canva is quite user-friendly and perfect for a collaborative team.
Tools that take some of the sting out of writing, reviewing, and getting sign-off on your press release.
PR agencies spend a lot of time scouting out coverage opportunities for their clients. Throw the Rolodex away and use one (or all) of these handy PR agency tools for media contacts.
MuckRack is sort of like a phone book but for journalists and media personalities. It can be a powerful tool to build a curated, niche media list (so you don't have to buy a crappy one). MuckRack lets you find and connect with writers, journalists, and media outlets who write for the audiences you'd like to reach.
Love it or hate it, you can't deny that Twitter definitely… exists. And it certainly is still the go-to for many journalists and media personalities. Twitter's Communities feature is an interesting way to connect with people in your niche, and many journalists like (or even prefer) a quick DM over an email (obviously, how journalists like to be pitched will vary from person to person).
LinkedIn isn't just for HR aunties and digital nomad marketing bros anymore. Nor is it that thing you only grudgingly log into when you get laid off or need to see what your high school ex-boyfriend is doing these days.
LinkedIn can be a surprisingly great way to connect with others in your particular field. With over 900 million users, you're bound to find a few to connect with when building your agency's media list.
Connect with us on LinkedIn!
Connectively (formerly HARO or Help A Reporter Out) can be a fantastic tool for PR agencies that are looking to get that sweet, sweet media coverage for their clients (which is to say, all of them). It's a tool run by Cision that connects journalists with sources in related fields through daily digests.
We have an entire breakdown of the best HARO practices if you're into that sort of thing, if you don't like HARO, check out some of the best HARO alternatives for connecting with journalists.
Similar to HARO, Qwoted is a service that connects sources with journalists. It's a bit newer than HARO and unlike HARO's famed email digest format, Qwoted is a browser-based networking tool.
Meltwater is a media monitoring service that helps you track coverage from all over the internet and beyond. If you're wondering where your brand is being mentioned and in what light, media monitoring is great for scouring broadcast TV, podcasts, blogs, and articles.
They also provide social listening across the various platforms so you can know what the Gen Z kids are saying on TikTok without the indignity of downloading the app.
We love Google Alerts because it's quite a bit… freer than the other options. Not emotionally. Just financially. Google Alerts can be set up about you, your industry, your competitors, your sworn enemies.
Any and all topics you want to stay aware of, a Google Alert can be set up and you'll receive an email when someone on the internet has a hot take on the topic. This can be great for strategy, reactive PR, or simply just staying up to date.
Mention does audience listening, social insights, and, naturally, brand mention alerts. They even have tools for posting and scheduling social content, which is pretty cool! They have a dedicated agency plan for PR agencies, and automatic report generation, so you don't need to spend hours slaving over a hot PowerPoint.
Whether you're looking for an all-in-one brand management tool to grow your brand, prevent a crisis, or dabble in influencer marketing, Brandwatch might be the tool for you and your agency. They boast daily marketing trend reports so you can stay on top of the market for your clients. Fun fact: Brandwatch is also one of the best AI tools for PR →
If you happen to be in Belgium (Prezly is, after all, a Belgian company!), Belga.press is a fantastic resource for monitoring all the most important news in Belgium and beyond. They'll help you track, analyze, and report on the topics that are important to you, your agency, and your clients. Plus, it integrates perfectly with Prezly's coverage feature, which means you can see the coverage linked to contacts in your PR CRM.
If your clients are relying on you for help planning, organizing, and coordinating their events, check out these useful tools for making the whole process that much easier.
Eventbrite is popular in the event-hosting scene for a reason. Their service provides tools and resources to plan, host, promote, and engage with the event audience.
They work with both virtual and in-person events, and they even have a "free" option for free events (free is our favorite price) and are definitely worth a look for those of you dabbling in events PR.
WildApricot is an all-in-one event-planning software. You can manage event tickets, donations, a store, a website, online payments, and more with one simple tool.
Not everyone uses press release distribution services anymore, and many prefer a more direct approach to getting coverage. But if your agency clients want wire services as part of their distribution, these are the best in the biz.
Cision is a favorite among the public relations folks that still use wire services as part of their distribution strategy.
Get your clients' press releases in front of the eyes that want them with PRpro. PRpro has an international audience distribution, convenient pricing plans, and they even have a fabulous, feature-rich newsroom collaboration with Prezly (hey, that's us)!
Business Wire is a classic in the PR distribution game. They have multimedia options for press release distribution, and they distribute in 200+ countries.
Nobody wants to look at numbers, but at some point, you're going to need them. Use these tools to inform your PR agency's amazing strategy and measurement efforts.
Another great free product from the Google Overlords, Google Analytics gives you insights into how your site is performing, how visitors interact with your content, how many people are visiting your site and where they're visiting from, and so much more. Google Analytics is hugely powerful if you know how to use it (and there is a bit of a learning curve).
A word of caution: recent years have seen some privacy concerns brought against Google, particularly by businesses in Europe, so it's certainly worth considering these alternatives to Google Analytics 4 before you take the plunge.
Ahrefs is the OG of tracking website analytics. It has a ton of tools for strategic SEO for any great PR agency. You can not only track your website and your clients' websites, but also competitors, relevant keywords, run site audits, and more. It's one of our favorite tools for site analytics and SEO.
If SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and digital research are important to your clients, you may want to use Semrush. If it isn't important to your clients, you may want to make sure you didn't accidentally travel back in time 40 years. Semrush has tools for tracking analytics and informing strategy.
If you want a streamlined tool that does all the things, we have one fantastic solution (and absolutely no shame about our self-promotional plug).
We've discussed a lot of tools, but there's something special to be said for a tool that does… everything. Now, don't get us wrong, we understand the egregious bias of including ourselves in a top tools list. But Prezly is a pretty fantastic PR agency tool, if we do say so ourselves.
What is Prezly? It's an all-in-one PR powerhouse that lets you create beautiful newsrooms and press releases that integrate onto your clients' existing websites (or as a standalone), complete with analytics. It's a CRM with tons of options for maintaining those amazing relationships. It allows you to send multimedia campaigns to all of your favorite contacts. And it has tons of agency features to manage a few clients (or a few hundred).
Prezly – software for modern PR teams
Write & publish brand stories in an online newsroom
Send email campaigns, pitches & newsletters
Manage all your contact lists in a single CRM, with easy import & export
Measure performance to see who's engaging with your stories
AI is the talk of the town. The belle of the ball. Nobody can get enough of discussing the myriad ways that AI is going to revolutionize, destroy, change, redefine, and otherwise blow up all sorts of industries.
PR is no different. Thought leaders and amateurs alike in the PR space are feverishly shouting about the future of PR and how the industry is going to change and how we're all powerless to stop it.
The whole discourse around AI can be daunting. Is AI amazing? Is it horrible? Is it actually revolutionary, or are the people who are selling "prompt engineering" courses just overhyping it to shill their services?
We asked some real-life (non-AI) PR agency and comms folks how they're actually using AI, and we even spoke with a few who are simply opting out.
Tool used: ChatGPT
From the expert:
I use AI on the daily, both for my own content and clients’ content. With the right prompts, Chat GPT can come up with a solid outline for articles. It helps me defeat the blank page and triggers ideas. I find it useful for little things like choosing emojis and suggesting hashtags for social media posts. Yep, I could do all that myself, but if Chat GPT can do the grunt work it means I can deliver more for my clients.
I think of AI as my potter’s wheel. It churns my clay round and round so I can mould and shape that chunk of gunk into something beautiful.
Yep, what AI churns out is often bland and clichéd and I unfortunately I think we’re about to start drowning in dull content. But if used as a tool by a skilled communicator, it can help us deliver quality content, quicker.
Carla Ellerby, Communications Consultant & Content Writer, Composed Communication
As previously mentioned (and as we have screamed about on Twitter), generative AI is not creating new and interesting content. It is lightly regurgitating and repurposing old content.
But generative AI can be useful for getting over a bout of writer's block or creating a helpful outline for creating new articles. Should you exclusively rely on ChatGPT or Bard to write your blog or social media content? No, never. But it's still, like Carla said, a nice little assistant for the boring bits of content creation.
Tool used: Odin AI
From the expert:
Research for writing my novels and brainstorming ideas. I still believe everyone has their own voice but AI saves a lot of time. I use it for the tedious things like press releases.
Liv Arnold, Director & Author, Public Status PR
Writing press releases is never a bundle of fun, and it often ends up being a lot of dry technical information and not a lot of amusing artsy business. (Unless you use a cool service to house your aesthetic press releases online, not that we know anything about that. 👀)
If you just need to get the facts out there, generative AI can be a useful tool for structuring a press release or any other routine-but-uncreative document on your to-do list.
Say bonjour to Auto-Translation and Actually Useful AI™️
AI tool used: ChatGPT
From the expert:
ChatGPT really can work wonders for achieving brevity on a subject you're pitching to media. You can prompt various AI tools to summarize a topic in fewer and fewer words. Try it for fun sometime. That's a huge benefit to PR people.
Stephen Kent, Public Relations Specialist, Consumer Choice Center
If you're anything like me, you find that writing endless pages of text is easier than writing short, condensed snippets. Minimum word count? Yes, please! Maximum word count? Please, no, anything but that.
ChatGPT is here to condense your masterpieces. This is great for when you want to simply tease a longer post, include an excerpt, or just text your grandma with what you've been up to while at work. Simply add the text, tell ChatGPT you want it in a specific word count or as a brief summary, and voila!
How to get the most out of chatbots for your public relations efforts
Tools used: OpenAI (ChatGPT), Klipr
From the expert:
We outreach to hundreds of journalists a day, and our team is constantly striving to streamline workflow where possible. In the last six months, we’ve found that OpenAI has improved productivity and automation by leaps and bounds.
AI currently lacks the magic of human creativity, but it’s immensely useful for productivity and ideation. We’ve been using ChatGPT to create email headlines, and, much to the chagrin (or maybe relief!) of our copywriting team, these have been wildly successful. It always requires a bit of trial and error to get right, and ChatGPT finds it hard to relinquish its now iconic use of the colon, but the tool has demonstrated its potential for PRs tenfold.
Emailing journalists can be tricky to get right, but with ChatGPT we’ve been able to quickly localise and personalise our emails, which has seen an increase in open and response rates.
We’ve also merged our in-house coverage tool, klipr.io, with AI to create insights into reporting opportunities and trends in the news cycle.
The current buzz around AI and why it could threaten PR roles certainly has legs, and we’ll keep a watchful eye on the future. For the time being, it’s all about how to use AI in a creative way to foster productivity.
Kathryn Case, Marketing Manager, Kaizen Digital PR
Many PR agencies are using AI to bolster, not replace, their pitching and writing workflows. This will likely be a delicate balance for most, as the timesaving aspects of generative AI have to be weighed against the need for heavy edits of whatever Bard, ChatGPT, Jasper, and the rest are producing. But for many, a simple rough draft is often worth its weight in gold.
Klipr.io is another example of an AI tool that many may not have heard of but seems to be providing value for digital PR and finding link opportunities as part of an overall linkbuilding strategy.
AI tool used: Talla
From the expert:
One of the biggest benefits of AI is that it can automate administrative tasks. This is particularly helpful if, like me, you work in a remote setting. Coordinating with the rest of the team can be tricky, especially when you factor in time zones, schedules, and deadlines. We’ve experimented with using Talla, and so far, we are pleased with the results. It’s maximized efficiency with minimal effort.
Previously, we found that we weren’t optimizing our time. There were unnecessary delays between interactions, scheduling conflicts, and confusion, which made it harder to connect with our colleagues. Automating processes has saved us time and increased our productivity, giving us the space to focus on the things that really matter.
This has reduced the time spent waiting for responses, as in many instances you can simply ask Talla instead. It helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page, improving consistency across the board. This has enabled us to work in a more cohesive manner.
Jeremy Scott Foster, Founder & CEO, TravelFreak
Automating boring administrative tasks is really, in our opinion, where AI shines. So many of us spend far too much of our day in the weeds of little boring tasks and not doing the high-level, strategic, creative work we want to do. Tools like Talla do the lame bits for you so you can get back to the thing you were hired to do.
Other administrative AI tools to try:
AI tool used: Snipd
From the expert:
AI voice-to-text services like Snipd for podcasts have changed the game for locating the golden excerpts within dense podcast interviews. A better excerpt from a client makes for a better pitch.
Stephen Kent, Consumer Choice Center
Life moves fast, and nobody has the time to sit around and painstakingly transcribe huge audio files. There are also tons of juicy interview nuggets hidden within podcasts, and again, nobody wants to be transcribing all that. AI tools like Snipd can do some of that transcription work for you. While many speech-to-text services still have a long way to go before they're pitch-perfect, they can still save a ton of time over manually transcribing (or making an intern manually transcribe).
Other AI transcription tools to try:
AI tool used: ChatGPT
From the expert:
We recently started using ChatGPT to give us suggestions for reactive ideas. We had a campaign that wasn’t getting the coverage we expected and needed to turn something around quickly. So, we asked ChatGPT to generate ideas that were related to pets and mental health in light of mental health awareness week. Most of the ideas it gave us were good, but not something we could act on quickly. So we refined our prompts and asked it to generate ideas that could be executed with search data and the results were much more promising.
We looked at a number of search terms, such as ‘emotional support dog’ and ‘emotional support cat’ and then ranked them based on search volume to determine the most popular animals that people look for to comfort them. We then summarised our findings in a short press release and got a couple of comments from experts and managed to secure a number of links, including a link in the Huffington Post.
Lance Honeghan, Content & PR Executive, Avid Panda Digital Marketing
For many, coming up with ideas is just the absolute worst part of the job. Instead of endlessly scrolling through Twitter for inspo, why not ask ChatGPT for a few specific, targeted campaign ideas?
Tools used: Grammarly, Otter.ai, ChatGPT
From the expert:
I use Grammarly, an AI-powered writing assistant, on a daily basis, as well as Otter AI for transcribing interviews with SMEs. I also utilize ChatGPT for keyword research and brainstorming for new content ideas.
PR professionals will not be replaced by AI anytime soon. A large part of being successful in public relations is based upon understanding people, building relationships, and being creative. We should be utilizing AI to make our lives easier for things like brainstorming, copyediting, and transcribing, so that it frees up time to work on crafting creative pitches and building relationships.
Erica Velander, Associate PR & Marketing Manager, KNB Communications
Grammarly is a popular writing tool that leverages AI to double-check your content writing for speling mistakes. It won't do the writing for you, but it will use its AI superpowers to make sure you didn't split an infinitive or dangle a participle.
Other AI-powered writing tools to check out:
- ProWritingAid
- Deepl (for translations)
- WordTune
AI tool used: Brandwatch
From the expert:
At our company, we've employed Brandwatch for social listening. This process is very tedious and requires hours of work for very little result. Automating it with AI was the best decision we've made. It scours the internet for mentions of our brand and those of our clients. The AI will also analyze the mention to understand the context and sentiment. This helps shorten a lot of our processes. It's been a huge help for us.
Rodney Warner, CEO, Connective Web Design
Social listening, the act of monitoring online and analog communities for trends, sentiments, and brand mentions, can be remarkably time-consuming. Thankfully, there are plenty of tools, like Brandwatch, that are leveraging AI to take the "annoying" out of "the annoying responsibility of social monitoring."
Other social listening AI tools to check out:
Generative AI isn't for everyone, and many PR practitioners are holding out for a while. Some are doing it to maintain that human-to-human connection that makes PR special, some are doing it for privacy and security reasons, and others simply don't trust those sneaky robots. We spoke with a few pros who are taking a more measured approach to AI (for the time being).
From the expert:
We are taking advantage of A.I. tools such as A.I.-generated images and Chat GPT, of course. However, we take precautions to add to the content that Chat GPT generates with statistics and sources so that it is original.
See, the thing about Chat GPT is that you will find that it is good for templates to build off of. Not one person is an expert in everything and no one likes to start off from nothing. So in that sense, Chat GPT is good to have a good foundation to both learn and do your own learning and do a deep dive of things for your readers to enjoy.
But what it lacks is that human touch so in terms of PR & Communication I have sworn off its use. The more you use Chat GPT the more you will see the pattern and its generations become more and more evident. If I'm noticing it now, just wait until it becomes more mainstream so that others start to notice. More importantly, the people you want hope to collaborate with for some earned media and the like.
No, I believe, for PR anyway, that pitches should be authentic, personable, and done by a human. Though with A.I. the genie is out of the bottle and there's no doubt that a response from one of those will transcend to what a human can do I'm sure. I haven't tried it myself but I've been seeing more and more A/B testing by A.I. Could be interesting to see the results of that.
Jacob Flores, Marketing Coordinator & Outreach Specialist, Nuvi Global
Taking a moderate, or at least somewhat cautious, approach to generative AI is probably a good idea in this rapidly developing, slightly tumultuous artificial intelligence landscape. The laws and technology seem to be changing daily, if not hourly, and putting all your eggs in the generative AI basket, particularly for contact creation, could potentially backfire down the line.
And, as Jacob said, generative AI is just not producing A+, amazing, personalized, human content like some people seem to think it is. PR still is about connecting with people, and there is no great way to shortcut that.
From the expert:
As a PR Manager, I personally am not a fan of AI. I have not used it once in any of my pitches, press releases, etc. PR is literally all about human relationships. Although AI may appeal to others to use as inspiration for copy, I feel it brings a less authentic and personal feel to my pitches. I have heard there are ways to use AI to generate reports on media coverage and insights. I have not utilized any of that so far and could be curious how that side works, but as of now I am sticking to my own experience to guide me through.
Savannah Cruz, Public Relations Manager, BKN Creative
Many PR agencies are resisting the siren song of the generative AI, and for good reason. As most in the field know, the best way to garner positive press is through human relationships, as Savannah mentioned.
The best tools for your PR agency will largely depend on your individual agency needs, agency size, niche, and more. But we're confident that all of these tools will have something to offer the majority of PR agency folks.
Do you have an amazing tool to add to the list? Send us an email or reach out on Twitter, and we'll check it out!
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