It works best when your strategy is already strong.
Gini Dietrich is the founder, CEO and author of Spin Sucks, host of the Spin Sucks podcast.
Every time a shiny new technology bursts onto the scene, there’s a rush to declare traditional models obsolete. The PR industry is no exception. The news release is dead. Legacy media is dead. Podcasting is dead. SEO is dead. Everything is dead!
Then AI comes along, and not only have all the things been declared dead, but we’re left wondering if we need to rethink everything.
We don’t.
If anything, this is the time for PR to shine — and we can do that by simply strengthening our strategic foundation.
Sure, the tools have changed (again), but how we do our work remains the same.
We still build brand, reputation and trust. We are still storytellers. We still build relationships. And we still need a framework to do it all strategically.
Frameworks like the PESO Model have helped communicators integrate paid, earned, shared and owned media into cohesive campaigns that drive results. And now, as AI transforms how we plan, create and measure, integration is more essential than ever.
Because AI isn’t a new media type, it’s a layer that sharpens what already works — if we use it intentionally.
When paid, earned, shared and owned media work together, they create a multiplier effect, where each media type amplifies the others.
AI doesn’t replace that strategy. It accelerates it.
Used well, AI tools help unify planning, speed up execution and reveal cross-channel insights that would’ve taken days to compile manually.
Here’s how AI is transforming each media type — not in silos, but as part of an operating system, so to speak.
Paid media: Precision that amplifies everything else
AI is making paid media smarter — from predictive audience targeting to real-time budget shifts and automated A/B testing — and can spot performance patterns across time zones, devices or micro-moments that would overwhelm a person trying to analyze all that data.
But the real value isn’t just in more efficient spending. It’s in how paid can amplify everything else you’re already doing.
When your best-performing earned headlines inform your ad copy, your highest-ranking blog posts get budget behind them, and your most engaging social content gets promoted to new audiences, paid stops being a silo, and starts becoming a force multiplier.
AI helps you identify what’s working across shared, owned and earned, then put paid spend behind it to scale your reach faster and farther. Great ideas deserve more than organic reach — they deserve strategic lift. AI delivers it.
It can also monitor earned media sentiment and volume and automatically increase or decrease paid spending as appropriate. For example, suppose earned monitoring detects negative coverage trending. In that case, AI might pause brand awareness campaigns and shift budget to search ads targeting your brand name to control the narrative in search results.
Earned media: From placement to authority builder
AI can streamline the earned media process by suggesting the right reporters, analyzing their past coverage and drafting initial outreach based on timely angles. It can also monitor news cycles, trending topics and competitor coverage to identify windows for reactive pitching or commentary.
For example, when AI detects breaking industry news, it can instantly suggest angles that position your executives as expert sources and even draft rapid-response pitches before the news cycle moves on.
AI can analyze which publications and content types actually move the needle for your goals — brand awareness, lead generation or thought leadership — helping you focus efforts on pitching for placements that matter rather than just volume.
But the opportunity goes well beyond media pitching.
Contributed content — bylined articles, op-eds, expert commentary — is where earned and owned converge. It allows you to control your message while gaining third-party validation.
And AI can help here, too: summarizing your best-performing content, identifying trends your audience cares about and drafting a first pass of your piece.
Used strategically, contributed content becomes the linchpin:
- It reinforces key messages developed in owned media.
- It builds credibility that earns citations in AI-generated answers.
- It provides quotable content for social and shared channels.
The more your ideas appear in trusted publications and are amplified across other media types, the more likely tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity will cite them.
Shared media: Social intelligence that strengthens every channel
AI-powered tools are revolutionizing social listening and content performance. They don’t just track mentions or likes — they detect patterns in engagement, spot shifts in audience sentiment and highlight which topics and formats are gaining traction across platforms.
They can track how conversations migrate between platforms — starting on LinkedIn, moving to X or Threads, then landing in industry forums. This helps you understand the full lifecycle of discussions and identify the optimal platform for entering or amplifying conversations at different stages.
That intelligence doesn’t just help your social strategy. It feeds the entire media engine.
When AI surfaces a theme your audience is engaging with, that insight can shape your next blog post (owned), headline a media pitch (earned) or inspire a value prop to test in your ad copy (paid).
It’s not about reacting to trends — it’s about letting your audience’s real-time behavior inform the full campaign.
Owned media: Discoverability in a zero-click, AI-powered world
Owned media has always been the foundation of your message. But in today’s AI-fueled environment, it’s not just about what you publish — it’s about how findable, citable and trustworthy that content is across the broader digital ecosystem.
Traditional SEO rewarded keyword stuffing and backlinks. But generative AI tools don’t crawl your website. They cite what’s been consistently referenced, contextually reinforced and validated by trusted third parties.
That means your content won’t appear in an AI-generated answer just because it’s optimized. It shows up because it’s part of a larger authority ecosystem, supported by earned placements, shared conversations and brand signals across the web.
Owned media is now your discoverability engine. AI helps ensure the engine is aligned, integrated and working to drive visibility where it matters.
Integration and measurement
AI can show you what’s working across all four media types, where you’re gaining traction and where to double down. Instead of siloed vanity metrics like media impressions, AVEs, follower counts or website traffic, AI enables cross-channel attribution, deeper behavioral insights and predictive models that anticipate what your audience will respond to next.
AI helps you see how that contributed article drove traffic to your website, which social posts sparked earned media interest and where to put paid spend behind the messages that are already working.
Where to start now
The good news is you don’t need to launch a full-blown AI task force to start seeing results. A few small, strategic shifts can make your content work harder without burning out your team or your budget.
Here’s where to begin if you want to dip your toe in:
- Ask your AI tool of choice to summarize media coverage or that 37-page client report no one wants to read.
- Run your next social media post through a headline optimizer — it’s like spellcheck for engagement.
- Use SEO tools to spot where your blog content is phoning it in.
- Turn on a social listening tool and let it whisper trending topics and pitch-worthy themes in your ear.
- Set up a simple dashboard to see how your paid, earned, shared and owned efforts are actually working together — or not.
Start small. Track what moves the needle. Double down on what works. And then pretend you planned it that way all along.
AI works best when the strategy is already strong
AI may be fast, but speed without direction is just spinning your wheels. The real advantage comes when you drop it into a clear, connected strategy that makes every channel work harder together.
An integrated approach gives AI something to amplify. It turns scattered tactics into a coordinated system, where insights from one channel fuel performance in the others.
So no, you don’t need to burn your playbook every time technology changes. You need to keep refining it and use AI to make it sharper, faster and more predictive.
Because AI isn’t here to run your strategy — it’s here to make your good strategy impossible to miss.
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