In last week’s PRC Digital Community meeting, a poll revealed that the AI savvy of senior leaders is significantly outpacing emerging talent (55% versus 9%). With AI rapidly evolving, ongoing education is essential for PR professionals at every level.
Here’s how your firm can develop strong AI skills and stay ahead:
1. Build Foundational AI Knowledge Firmwide—Create a culture where everyone has knowledge and speaks the same language around AI.
- Ensure everyone understands core AI concepts (such as machine learning, generative AI, data lakes, etc.).
- Promote a shared language and critical thinking about AI outputs. Clearly define what is client- or publication-ready—and what isn’t.
- Specify your firm’s approach to ethics: address bias, transparency, data privacy and human accountability.
2. Develop Prompting Skills by Career Stage—Good prompting communicates your intent clearly to the AI, guiding it to understand context, tone, and specific requirements.
- Entry-level: Learn basic prompts for drafting emails, press releases and social posts as well as conducting basic desktop research.
- Mid-level: Refine prompts for campaign planning, sentiment analysis and multi-step workflows.
- Senior-level: Deploy strategic prompting for scenario planning, executive comms, and thought leadership.
3. Provide Learning Resources—Providing a library of resources and tools ensures that everyone in the firm, at all levels, has the knowledge and access needed to successfully integrate AI into the firm’s processes and work.
- Offer role-specific prompt templates, training and experimental spaces for hands-on practice.
- Share real-world use cases and before/after comparisons. This is an opportunity to celebrate team successes.
4. Foster Continuous Improvement—As mentioned at the beginning, continuous improvement and education are critical in the fast-moving world of AI.
- Create very deliberate methods to encourage feedback and peer learning.
- Set goals, track and report on AI adoption, time saved and skill growth.
- Build cross-functional learning groups and internal “prompt mentors.”
5. Align AI with Business Goals—Finally, how can firms advance AI in safe ways that are aligned with business goals?
- Develop and update AI policies and review them with staff. Given the pace, every six months is a good cadence.
- Identify and set timelines to achieve AI integration in high-impact areas. Make operationalizing AI part of everyone’s performance goals.
The PRC is here to help every step of the way—from guidelines to learning. We’re excited to partner with Section on a free AI certification program, AI Advantage for PR Pros, to help you and your teams gain essential AI skills. For more information, please click here.