Writing Buddy for Content Creation
With this installment of our GenAI blog series, we'll discuss GenAI’s most touted advantage: streamlining the writing process for press releases, blogs, social media and more. This is particularly helpful when providing Content Creation services to our clients. But a knowledgeable human must still prompt AI appropriately and edit its output. Just like PR pros must exercise critical thinking in other PR activities, they must do the same when engineering GenAI prompts for content creation then vetting and editing GenAI's output.
GenAI’s tendency to repeat technology descriptions, benefits and phrasing word-for-word when writing about newer technology is a key consideration when leveraging this method. We experienced this recently when a series of client blogs required extensive editing to eliminate exact phrasing repetitions between adjacent paragraphs. However, as any PR practitioner understands, most of the writing process is rewriting and editing. So, GenAI can slash your time investment and get you to the editing stage quicker. Just remember that its output is not infallible, though it does present powerful capabilities to help you kill the blank page and see a fresh angle in action.
When using GenAI to produce content, analogy prompts can yield interesting results. Just for fun, let’s ask ChatGPT to use "The Matrix" as a metaphor for Zero Trust Architecture:
Question: Can you write a microblog using Zero Trust Architecture as a metaphor for the Matrix?
Answer:
The Matrix of Security: Zero Trust Architecture
In the digital realm, much like in the Matrix, reality isn't always what it seems. The world of cyberspace is filled with illusions and hidden threats. That's where Zero Trust Architecture comes in - the Neo of network security. Much like Neo's refusal to accept the world at face value, Zero Trust demands that no individual or system is trusted by default, whether inside or outside the network. It's the red pill of cybersecurity, unveiling the underlying complexity and constantly challenging the status quo. In the Matrix, nothing was taken at face value, and the heroes were always vigilant and questioning. Zero Trust operates on the same principle, continually verifying every user, every device, every connection. You don't have to be "The One" to see through the digital façade. Embrace Zero Trust Architecture and free your network from the deceptive world where threats hide in plain sight. Trust nothing. Verify everything. Welcome to the real world of network security.
This is a decent starting point that requires editing to match the client's tone and style, but this output shows what’s possible when you use GenAI to apply a basic metaphor angle to a particular technology. While we encourage clients and PR practitioners to edit GenAI’s output, we also encourage using GenAI as an editor. Although language models may not have Track Changes yet, they can punch up content to make language truer to the content’s intended meaning and target market. GenAI can provide impressively comprehensive reasoning for suggested word choices according to the sentence's intended meaning, helping you write clearly and concisely about technical information.
However, we’ve found GenAI still falls short in matching a specific author’s idiosyncratic tone and personality when writing bylined articles. You still need that human component to resonate with your client’s target audience when writing longer thought leadership pieces. Press releases, procedural documentation, social media posts and short blogs are one thing. But if your target audience invests time into reading long-form content supposedly sharing a human perspective, they want something in return. They want an emotional exchange. The imperfections that make us human also make us relatable, so it’s important to implement a unique viewpoint and tone in thought leadership content. If you lean too much on GenAI, your thought leadership content risks being soulless and robotic – the opposite of emotional resonance.
While GenAI may not replace the human component in creative content, it is helpful for creative brainstorming, leading us to our next method.
Join us next week for Part 4 of this blog series, where we’ll outline our next two methods for leveraging GenAI in B2B tech PR: Idea Generator for Media Relations and Quick Researcher for Trend and Thought Leadership.