In a recent PR Net webinar, Aaron Kwittken, Founder & CEO of PRophet, shared forward-thinking strategies to help communications professionals future-proof their careers in the age of AI. He outlined a human-led, AI-fed approach to communications, encouraging professionals at every level to adopt the mindset of a “comms engineer” and integrate AI tools to enhance strategy, creativity, and performance.
The takeaways:
- AI won’t replace communications professionals; instead, it will enhance their impact by handling the time-intensive parts of the job (e.g. identifying the right reporter, influencer discovery, note-taking, etc.)
- Look at AI as having another person in the room with access to a large corpus of data, that allows you to expand your understanding of things plus give you feedback, inspiration, etc.
- It doesn't have to be right, just has to be different, because that helps you develop new ways of thinking)
- Tomorrow’s communicators will take on the role of “communications engineer,” and must have an understanding of: statistics, data visualization, critical thinking, source and fact checking, theatre and production, prompting and writing and presenting
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the next frontier for visibility
- As people turn to AI-powered tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity for search, comms pros must adapt their strategies to ensure they show up in AI-generated responses, not just traditional search results
- Communicators will need to rethink content structure and distribution to make it “GEO-ready” and aligned with how generative platforms source and synthesize information
- SEO is expected to decline by 25% in 2026, so you still need SEO-friendly language in your content
- Key differences: SEO focuses on keywords and rankings and the goal is clicks; GEO focuses on context and the goal is visibility
- How to show up in large language models (LLMs) search:
- Make content (web copy, press releases, etc.) conversational, question-driven, use subheads and bullet points, include charts, graphs and video
- Mention brand names, partners/influencers, executive titles, use semantic keywords aligned to your content
