As a good communications professional, you know you have to get on the artificial intelligence (AI) bandwagon, but you don’t even know where to start. Here are 5 tips to get you started and keep you up to date.
1.- Play, test, experiment
If you want to learn how toprompt(giving instructions to the AI), you have to writeprompts. There’s no point in watching hundreds of videos and downloading endless listings of prompts if you do not apply them. This is like languages: if you know all the grammar and then don’t dare to speak it, you won’t be able to communicate.
2.- Start with the generalist tools
ChatGPT, Google Bard, AI Bing. Start several conversations (which you can then save in your account) adopting different roles: one as a corporate communications expert, one as a crisis management expert, one as a social media manager… Ask questions by providing background information and precise instructions. Try them out prompts on the different tools and draw your own conclusions.
3.- Install AI extensions in your browser and on your mobile phone.
Merlin and You.com accompany you while you surf the Internet and help you summarise the main ideas of a web page or translate its content. With You.com you can chat via WhatsApp. Others like LuzIA and Carina IA (both Spanish) become your AI assistants via WhatsApp: they help you organise a trip, look up information or transcribe audios.
4.- Discover specific tools for corporate communication
PressPal.ai, by Muck Rack, writes press releases and suggests journalists to send the release to. It works in English and its database of journalists is mainly from the United States, but is improving every day.
For any task you can think of, you will find hundreds of tools that can help you. Don’t be overwhelmed: look for reviews, pick a couple and try them out. Little by little you will have your own TOP 10 of the must-have AI tools for your day-to-day life.
Integrate AI tools into your routine.
There is no point in being the Wikipedia of AI if these tools do not help you in your daily work. It’s not about using them all, but about choosing the ones that work best for you and help you with your tasks, and integrating them into your day. This way you will gain time to think and to do more strategic tasks. Define your AI diet and remember that bingeing is never good for you.
If you follow these 5 steps, you will soon have discovered the benefits of AI and identified the tools that make your life easier. You may even get used to working with them all the time. But let me make two final reflections:
- La IA todavía no te sustituye. It needs your cooperation to deliver good results. You are the thinking head who designs the prompts and the AI executes them. In addition, you will have to review the answers you are given to validate them and cross-check (do repromting) as many times as necessary. That is why your knowledge of strategic communication and your experience remain essential.
- Ethics and common sense are your choice.. AI are tools and it is up to you to decide how to use them. Be careful with the information you provide, especially if you work with free accounts, where you pay with your data and your usage (don’t forget that generative AI learns with you). Never enter sensitive information, as it may become part of the AI repository and appear in the results of the next user’s questions.
Now you have the ingredients you need to take action. You know: AI won’t take your job, but maybe another communication professional who knows how to use AI will.. So get on the AI train as soon as possible to make sure you don’t get left behind! And if you don’t want to make the journey alone, I’ll come with you!
