PR Professionals Are Drowning in a Sea of Platforms, And AI Might Be the Only Lifeline

Look, I've been in this PR game long enough to know when something's not working anymore. And let me tell you, this whole fixation on the same old media channels? It's like wearing socks with sandals - everyone knows it's wrong, but people keep doing it anyway!

THE ABSURDITY OF TODAY'S PR LANDSCAPE

You know what's ridiculous? The expectation that we PR people can somehow track every single platform where journalists are posting requests. I mean, seriously? What am I supposed to do, hire a team of interns just to scroll through Twitter—sorry, "X" now, because apparently one letter is better than five—all day looking for hashtags?

And it's not just Twitter anymore! Now we've got HARO, Qwoted, Substack, LinkedIn, Peter Shankman's SOS... Who can keep up with this? It's like trying to watch five TV shows simultaneously. You can't do it! You'll miss something important, and then your client calls asking why they weren't in that big story everyone's talking about.

"Well, sorry, I was busy checking 17 different platforms while also trying to craft the perfect pitch that doesn't sound like every other pitch the journalist received that day!"

AI: THE RELUCTANT HERO WE DIDN'T KNOW WE NEEDED

Look, I'm not typically the gal singing the praises of technology. Usually, it just creates more problems than it solves. But in this case? AI might actually be useful for once.

AI doesn't get distracted by office gossip or need coffee breaks. It doesn't get overwhelmed looking at multiple platforms at once. Tools like Help Reporters Out (not to be confused with HARO, because why make things simple?) can aggregate all those journalist requests in one place.

Is it perfect? Of course not. Nothing is perfect. That's just life. But it gives us back time—time we can use to actually build relationships with journalists instead of stalking them online like some weird ex who can't let go.

Relationship building is still the cornerstone of good PR. AI just helps us get past the tedious stuff so we can focus on what matters.

THE EDITORIAL CALENDAR CONUNDRUM

You want to know another thing that drives me crazy? Trying to match pitches to editorial calendars. It's like trying to hit a moving target while blindfolded.

"Oh, you want to pitch a story about sustainable fashion? Well, that outlet covered it last week, this one is planning to cover it next month, and this other one already has three stories in the pipeline about it."

How are we supposed to know all of this? Spend hours Googling and digging through websites? Who has that kind of time?

This is another area where AI actually makes sense. Let the machines track all the content themes and article patterns. Tools like Perplexity or OpenAI can do this grunt work for us.

And sentiment analysis? Don't get me started on manually tracking the sentiment of media coverage. It's like trying to read the minds of hundreds of journalists simultaneously. I can barely understand what one person is thinking! That's why tools like Talkwalker are taking over this task.

JOURNALIST MUSICAL CHAIRS

Have you noticed how journalists move around more than toddlers at a birthday party these days? One minute they're at The New York Times, the next they've got a Substack newsletter, then they're hosting a podcast, then they're back at some publication you've never heard of.

How are we supposed to keep track of all this? I can barely remember where I put my keys in the morning, let alone track the career moves of hundreds of journalists!

AI tools like Dazzle and Meltwater can track these moves for us. They can tell us when a journalist posts that dreaded "I have personal news" update on LinkedIn. (By the way, why does everyone phrase it that way? Can't they just say, "I got a new job"? But I digress.)

EMBRACING AI WITHOUT LOSING OUR MINDS

Here's the thing about AI and PR: we need to be the ones shaping how these tools work. If we leave it to people who don't understand our industry, we'll end up with more problems than solutions.

It's like letting someone who's never cooked before reorganize your kitchen. They might have good intentions, but they'll put the spatulas in the refrigerator and the salt in the bathroom.

AI gives us a chance to get back to what PR should be about: building genuine relationships with journalists and helping them tell stories that actually matter to people. Not just pushing client messaging that nobody cares about.

Is AI perfect? No. Does it create its own set of problems? Absolutely. Will it occasionally hallucinate facts and make me want to throw my computer out the window? Probably.

But compared to the alternative—drowning in a sea of platforms while journalists ignore our pitches—I'll take AI any day. At least until something better comes along. And knowing the tech industry, that'll probably be tomorrow.

Because at the end of the day, good PR isn't about the tools—it's about not annoying journalists with irrelevant pitches. And if AI can help us do that, then maybe, just maybe, it's worth all the hype.

NEED HELP GETTING YOUR PR STRATEGY OUT OF THE STONE AGE?

Look, if you're still scrolling through Twitter manually looking for journalist requests, we need to talk. It's like watching someone hunt and peck on a keyboard—painful to witness and completely unnecessary.

The team at Winsome Marketing can drag your PR strategy into 2025, kicking and screaming if necessary. Contact us today before your competitors do. Or don't. It's your business on the line, not mine.