AI has unlimited potential, and that can excite some and scare others. For better, it can cut costs by accomplishing some tasks in a fraction of the time. For worse, it can misinterpret or misrepresent your message with devastating results.
Before you use AI to DIY your own communications campaigns, consider that AI has made the need for skilled communicators more pressing than ever. Here are six reasons why.
AI makes a communicator’s work more relevant and impactful.
When someone searches on Google, generative AI agents like Gemini provide summary answers to the query before displaying traditional links. This is called generative engine optimization (GEO), and users are increasingly relying on it for quick answers to their Google searches. To generate these answers, Gemini searches well-known publications with high visibility, news articles, blogs, websites, videos and forums for content that is concise and easy to parse.
The value of a news story about your organization has exponentially increased. The benefit now is not only the article itself, but also the long-lasting, compounding impact that article can have in legitimizing your organization through GEO. The more impactful the placement and accurate the story, the likelier it is your organization will be positioned as a subject matter authority in Google search results. Thus, the irony is that AI has made experienced communicators more important than ever. Communicators, not computers, get these stories told.
Impactful relationship management can only be executed by real humans.
Elmore specializes in managing communications around complex, multi-organizational projects to align different groups with varying priorities. We understand the goals, sensitivities and personalities of various stakeholders. AI could provide a relationship management strategy, but only using publicly available, broad-based knowledge. Partnering with an agency or communicator who has institutional knowledge and personal experience working with specific stakeholders will preserve relationships and maximize impact.
Your relationship with your audience is too important to be outsourced to a machine.
Yes, using AI can save you time in accomplishing tactical tasks like drafting content, but you still need someone with experience and discernment to land the plane. Ask yourself: would I really stake my relationship with this reporter/my audience/my client on the accuracy of what this AI agent has produced?
Building relationships with these groups takes empathy, skill and the ability to navigate nuance, a combination of traits humans — and moreover, expert communicators — posses. AI can write pitches, but it can’t replace the relationships and trust communicators have built with reporters over years of working together.
Sometimes AI slows you down.
AI tools don’t always get you to an end result faster. Sometimes, you can find yourself in loop of continuous iteration, trying to refine the prompt, the tone or the output. It’s often faster to have a human who understands the context draft the content.
Obviously-AI-generated content can delegitimize your message.
Audiences are perceptive and quick to sus out phoniness. When a follower scrolls your content and sees posts that don’t align with what they’ve come to expect — whether a particular voice, tone, length or humanity in your messages — they don’t feel valued. They may feel insulted when AI was clearly used to draft a post or create a graphic, like you didn’t think they would notice, or that you don’t feel speaking to them directly is worth your time. When that trust is broken, it’s hard to repair.
AI can tell you what you want to hear, but it can’t tell you what you need.
Unlike an AI agent, a real-life communicator can discern from a client’s perceived “wants,” say, a press release or a new social media account, to foster a dialogue about the larger strategic goal and the best way to accomplish it. Communicators know which questions to ask to develop an optimal strategy.
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AI can be a helpful tool. But it does not replace having a strategic communications advisor on your team. Elmore brings irreplicable empathy, humanity, institutional knowledge and strategic thinking to every client, partner and reporter interaction. Unlike AI, we manage relationships by seeing the big picture, in context, to guide you to maximum impact. How can we help you?
