Jacob Streiter is a VP on the Rosen Group.
It’s the query on each PR skilled’s thoughts: How do you benefit from ChatGPT?
Effectively, right here’s an excellent begin: Get comfy while not having to make use of it in any respect. Like, actually comfy.
At any time when a brand new know-how or innovation emerges and carries with it such nice pleasure and risk, right here is, due to human nature, what inevitably occurs:
- Many individuals, particularly these youthful and extra technologically inclined, overuse and misuse it.
- Others, typically those that are extra senior, postpone utilizing it and thereby miss out on its advantages.
- Daring claims are made about its anticipated long-term influence, each utopian and dystopian.
From my standpoint, I see quite a few causes to be enthusiastic about ChatGPT, whereas I additionally see legitimate considerations — together with these about its overuse.
The dangers of overuse
Here’s what occurs if you happen to lean too closely on ChatGPT, particularly if you happen to’re a PR newbie:
- Your writing will lack nuance, model, persona and an general “human contact” — components that are invaluable in grabbing the eye of media. The end result: Your pitches will fall flat!
- Precedence messaging factors offered by your shopper will, a method or one other, find yourself getting fumbled.
- Accomplished assignments — stuffed with concepts, data and language generated by ChatGPT — may appear OK at a look however, upon a better evaluate by your managers, will miss the mark.
- In the end, your writing, modifying, ideating and broader talent set will turn into stunted and stay underdeveloped.
So, how does a PR skilled maximize ChatGPT’s advantages whereas minimizing its dangers? The brief reply: By utilizing it as a instrument that enhances — reasonably than replaces — your abilities and information.
ChatGPT will get the ball rolling. However is it even the correct of ball?
In my expertise so far, I’ve discovered that ChatGPT is finest used as a instrument for preliminary thought technology (e.g. Give me weblog publish concepts masking Millennials and private finance); fast analysis (e.g. Give me the highest 10 private finance media retailers); and synthesis of relevant-but-complex subjects (e.g. Merely and concisely, how does the inventory market work?).
In every case, ChatGPT helps get the ball rolling — nevertheless it’s finally your accountability to carry it to the correct vacation spot. It’s additionally as much as you to determine if it’s even the correct sort of ball you want within the first place.
The higher you re with out ChatGPT, the higher you’ll be with it
The stronger your PR talent set and information base, the higher positioned you’ll be to get probably the most out of ChatGPT. Right here’s why:
- A extra seasoned eye to nuance lets you extra successfully vet, fine-tune and customise.
- You’ll be able to delegate your mind energy to ChatGPT so as to shortly retrieve data that you just already know however don’t wish to spend your scarce psychological bandwidth on (e.g. an inventory of media retailers). And your information base equips you to make use of that retrieved data most properly.
- Realizing what you particularly want, together with what a high-quality finish product appears like, empowers you to make use of ChatGPT with increased ranges of precision, discretion and effectiveness.
- You might be higher in a position to establish if, in a given activity, ChatGPT’s options aren’t a match in your wants. And since you have got your broader talent set and information base to fall again on, you don’t really feel pressured to maintain utilizing it in these occasions when it’s turning out to be less than the duty. In different phrases: you may set excessive requirements for ChatGPT as a result of you have got walk-away worth!
Now, a situation: Let’s say you fall into the “extra skilled however much less technologically inclined” class. And whilst you haven’t but tried ChatGPT, you’ve determined it’s lastly that point. How must you go about it?
Right here’s one strategy: Strive asking a junior colleague for assist. Possibly they will share with you their technical know-how and ideas, whilst you impart a few of your information and knowledge.
In spite of everything, all of us get higher by studying from one another, proper?