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Eye roll, please … (click-bait) headlines that riff on the mass media-AI theme of “Is X dead?” Journalism. Book writing. Heartwarming founder backstories on organic soup cans. Come on: This moldy oldie dates to the days of the Gutenberg press putting traveling troubadours out of work. 

Here's the latest example from Entrepreneur: "PR Isn’t Dead. It Just Needs to Speak AI." What's more, writer Elisette Carlson's subhead confuses me: "I’ve spent years helping brands get press and learned that the win isn’t the headline" (my emphasis). 

Like ... Entrepreneur's headline? 

Ah, but it's a good thing that Carlson cuts to the chase: AI taken in the right spirit works as a partner, not an adversary. In fact, it can keep your greatest hits alive far longer than in days of yore.

Here's what we can learn from Carlson, Founder of SMACK! Media and an expert whose marketing and comms experience dates back more than 20 years. 

Press is data. I love this line: "Today, coverage is input (ital). Your press and exposure become data for generative systems." In other words, where humans read, AI scans--or if you prefer, "reads" phrases and searches for text elements that allow an article to live on in its ecosystem. Put another way, AI searches before people online do and under the right conditions, will call up information again and again. So what unlocks all this? True to its name, it's the keyword. But what comprises that exactly?

The quote is the keyword. It's tempting to think that AI appreciates the pirouettes of catchy content first and foremost. But that's simply not the case. Yes, you'll want to engage readers and engage reporters. But as Carlson rightly asks, what happens once the initial splash of press coverage has subsided? The riddle that has vexed many a PR pro centers on how to keep the momentum going. AI solves this because it reaches for anchor text, headings and pull-quotes. These aren’t just aesthetic: Where AI is concerned, they’re semantic beacons.

Pay heed to the paywall. It's a mistake to assume that AI penetrates a content paywall where frustrated readers can't. Turns out that if your best hits live behind paywalls, you’re invisible to AI. And for the foreseeable future, publications large and small aren't about to give AI a pass–though arguably, they should. It’s their loss.

Here's how to translate all this into something actionable that AI will find searchable.

Plant, don’t post. No longer should press coverage be considered 'one/won and done." Keep it alive in your domain, linked and updated as though it's evergreen content--which is just the way AI treats it. 

Structure every story. Headlines, metadata and internal links now inform the PR craft. Again, ask yourself how AI sees the content universe, because intentionally crafting these elements translates to your AI ace in the hole.