AI is redefining how marketing, communications, and PR professionals approach their day-to-day work, with savvy pros increasingly using tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to create content and craft larger comms strategies. When used effectively, AI tools can help teams significantly boost their productivity, drive efficiencies, and inform better decision-making.
According to the 2025 Comms Report from Cision and PRWeek, 91% of senior communications leaders are factoring AI into their overall strategy. This greater emphasis underscores the importance of being able to create effective AI prompts, making it a crucial skill for workers. Yet, Cision finds only 18% of comms teams feel confident in their ability to craft useful prompts.
If you fall within the other 82%, you are not alone – and fortunately, we’ve got you covered. Below are eight starter prompts from Cision to generate ideas and accelerate PR campaigns.
Content Development and Creation
AI is an excellent tool for idea generation, as it can process massive amounts of data and identify patterns that the average person might miss, making it an ideal brainstorming partner. When starting out, it can be helpful to think of your AI prompts as conversation starters. Providing this additional context will help the tool generate more specialized output. Two useful query examples are:
1. “Help me develop 3-5 concise, engaging key messages for [your brand’s name] that captures the company’s unique value proposition and resonates with [your target audience].”
2. “Develop a social media campaign strategy for [your company] that highlights [specific unique selling point], targeting [your specific audience] across [relevant platforms].”
Crisis and Reputation Management
Anyone facing a crisis is likely looking for all the help they can get. AI can provide a much-needed boost, whether it’s in response to customer complaints or monitoring social sentiment. When using it in these instances, provide specific context about your organization’s values, tone of voice, and examples of past messaging. This will help ensure the AI tool produces output that matches the consistency and sensitivity you seek with your messaging. A couple good examples in this area are:
3. “We’re receiving multiple customer complaints about [specific issue]. Help me draft a response strategy that demonstrates empathy, addresses the concern, and protects our brand reputation.”
4. “Develop a comprehensive sentiment analysis approach for our recent social media mentions, identifying key themes, sentiment trends, and actionable insights.”
Media Relations
Like with idea generation, AI can enhance media relations research through its ability to analyze large volumes of data. AI tools can help with tracking brand mentions, news articles, social media activity, and online conversations in real-time. They can also help automate the process of gathering and analyzing data from various sources, providing insights into media coverage, audience sentiment, and campaign performance. Two useful prompts that marketing, comms, and PR pros can use are:
5. “Suggest strategies for identifying and connecting with top-tier journalists and media outlets specializing in [your specific industry/sector], including potential outreach methods.”
6. “Conduct a competitive PR analysis, examining our competitors’ recent media coverage, messaging strategies, and potential gaps we can exploit.”
Event and Campaign Management
Planning a PR or event campaign can be a complex task. When using AI to help with this, break down the exercise into smaller prompts instead of requesting all the information you need at once. This will aid in producing the desired result. For instance, start by generating your key messages, then ask your AI tool to adapt these across different channels and audiences. Some example prompts you could use are:
7. “Generate innovative PR campaign ideas that showcase [your product’s] impact and differentiate us from competitors.”
8. “Develop a comprehensive event promotion strategy that includes media outreach, social media teaser campaign, influencer engagement, and potential press preview opportunities.”
Remember, while AI can help simplify your day-to-day work, it can only take you so far. AI is far from perfect and can produce flawed, biased, or inaccurate information. To be leveraged most effectively, AI must be employed with human oversight that can craft the best prompts and validate and refine the content it creates. This will ensure that AI is being used in a way that maximizes value and meets the standards of your business while unlocking innovation and delivering the advantages you seek. Need help turbocharging the success of your next PR campaign with a combination of proven expertise and the latest tools? Let’s chat.