The $33,000 bad comms impact

Hey besties,

The group chat overfloweth this week. Let’s dive in 👇️

🤖 Reporter Bot: Business Insider reporter Amanda Hoover made an AI version of herself to talk to experts (including me) about when it makes sense for journalists to use AI. My thoughts: AI is the scaffolding, not the art... so best not to use it for the literal reporting. Also, I hate talking to bots. (PS, this piece inspired me to write my own OTR AI ethics and disclosure policy. Check it out.)

📉 Peak press release AI notice: Muck Rack's latest What is AI Reading? report found the mother of all GEO cheat codes plummeted from 6% to 1% of overall citations. But fear not, all ye who have purchased dozens of wire releases this year: the folks at Muck Rack tell me 1% is still a significant citation figure, and press releases AI notices remain a strong GEO strategy.

You all to me, I’m sure.

💸 $33,000 comms value: Axios HQ dropped their latest State of Internal Communications Report. OTR members know all about tying their comms work to business revenue numbers, but here's a new stat for you: $33k per employee. That's how much bad communications is costing (60 days per year for the $200k employee). Ouch.

🌅 Some optimist news: Ezra Klein takes an economic look at why the AI Job Apocalypse (Probably) Won't Happen — and explains that the job of the future is one of human relationships. I knew I liked you, Ez.

📊 PR tools poll results: Last week, I asked how you're approaching PR tools. The results were… mixed. Most of you are building your own tools (38%), followed by buying from a vendor (34%) and doing it the old-fashioned way… aka manually (28%). My favorite response came from a Comms Bestie Group Chat reader who said D: all of the above. 👇️

I’ve never been a big platform user and I’ve been maintaining my own PR database for decades, so for some projects I’ll pull lists from my own, Cision, OnePitch and Qwoted, for others I might just use my own lists.

Then I have my research and pitch development process which hubs, a longtime AI fan and vibe coder, is systemizing with AI to be more time efficient than it’s been.

And truly if you need to research sometimes AIs are great, other times not so much, so I’m happy to dig into Google to research, contacts, what they’ve covered recently, outlets, potentials speaking engagements, etc.

-Susan von Seggern, Comms Bestie Group Chat Reader

🍋 One for the road: Ali Pope sees us.

Chat soon,
Gab Ferree
Founder & Your Comms BFF, Off the Record

PS: Last week’s most-clicked was my post about… socks. 💀

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The $33,000 bad comms impact

-Susan von Seggern, Comms Bestie Group Chat Reader

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